Hull (Kingston)

Hull or Kingston upon Hull is a city and unitary authority situated on the north bank of the Humber estuary.

It is surrounded by the East Riding of Yorkshire and forms part of that county for ceremonial purposes. It is part of the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England.

Modeling after settlement houses in London, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr built their “Hull House” in 1889 in what was then a poor, immigrant district of Chicago. Countless immigrants passed through its doors, learning English, citizenry, music, dance, art and a host of other skills, both for fun and practical reasons. Benny Goodman first picked up a clarinet there and Clarence Darrow, another social reformer, often gave lectures.

Unlike many other aged English cities, Hull has no cathedral. It does, however, contain the Holy Trinity Church, which claims to be the largest parish church in England.

Hull has an extensive museum and visitor quarter which includes Wilberforce House, Hull and East Riding Museum, the Ferens Art Gallery, the Maritime Museum, Streetlife and Transport Museum, the Spurn Lightship, the Arctic Corsair and the Deep. It also features the University of Hull and the associated Hull York Medical School, as well as a small campus of the University of Lincoln. There is also a large FE college, Hull College. Hull is the home of the Queens Gardens, the Hull Marina and is close to the Humber Bridge, the fourth-longest single-span suspension bridge in the world.

The city has a football team playing in the Championship (second tier), Hull City AFC, who play at the Kingston Communications Stadium.

The city has two Rugby League teams, Hull FC in the Super League who, along with Hull City AFC, play at the Kingston Communications Stadium; and Hull Kingston Rovers in League One of the National Leagues playing at Craven Park.

Hull is the only city in the UK with its own independent telephone network company, Kingston Communications, with its distinctive cream telephone boxes. Formed in the 1910s as a municipal department by the City Council, it remains the only locally-operated telephone company in the UK, although now privatised. Kingston Communications were one of the first telecoms operators in Europe to offer ADSL to business users, and the first in the world to run a interactive television service using ADSL and as such Hull has a modern telephone infrastructure.

The local accent is distinctive and noticeably different from the standard Yorkshire accent. The most notable feature of the accent is the strong “goat fronting” ; a word like goat, which is [gəʊt] in standard (southern) English and [goË?t] across most of Yorkshire, becomes [gɵË?t] ("geurt") in and around Hull.

Hull’s daily newspaper is the Hull Daily Mail. BBC Radio Humberside, Viking FM, Magic 1161, the University of Hull’s Jam 1575 and Kingstown Radio, the hospital-based radio station, all broadcast to the city.

Transport within the city is provided by two main bus operators — Stagecoach in Hull and East Yorkshire Motor Services. A smaller operator, Alpha Bus and Coach, provides one of the three Park and Ride services in the city, whilst East Yorkshire and Stagecoach provide the other two.

The port of Hull provides a nightly ferry service to Zeebrugge and Rotterdam.

Hull, Massachusetts in the USA is named after this city, as is Hull, Quebec, which is part of the Canadian national capital region.

Hull has often been voted as the least popular place to reside in the UK. Much of this is based on reputation alone without firsthand experience of the town.

Today, Hull House is owned by the University of Illinois at Chicago and is open as a museum. Pass by late at night and you may spot the famous “Hull House Baby” peering at you from the third floor. Legend has it that the baby’s father was a devil. Admission is free, but donations are encouraged.

They play at Craven Park in Hull in red and white home shirts, and blue and white away shirts, and are nicknamed ‘The Robins’.

We have a unique city with a proud heritage and strong foundations on which to build a prosperous and exciting future. Popular new developments in Hull, like the KC Stadium and The Deep, the fantastic Museums Quarter, as well as the £175m scheme to redevelop Ferensway, are attracting local, national and international attention.

The Port of Hull is one of the biggest and fastest growing in the UK; with the largest superferries in the world now operating from Hull, the city has excellent links with Europe. Thousands of people are employed in the city’s long-established food, pharmaceutical, chemical, communications and engineering sectors.