Origins

Most Hull citizens will be unaware that Hull has an ancient street called Finkle Street, especially as it no longer even has a street sign. I however, have had a long-standing interest in the old town street, partly due to an old friend, but mostly by virtue of its unusual name, which always caught my eye when looking at old maps and plans of Hull – as do many of the other old street names – but that’s another story.

What remains of Finkle Street runs north to south from the busy dual carriageway that is Castle Street (formerly Mytongate) to a junction with Blanket Row, another ancient Hull street. Originally, Finkle Street extended further south beyond Blanket Row to the Humber bank, and this southern section curved to the west, at an angle to the rest of the street. Streets or roads with bends such as this were often named ‘Fenkl’, which derives from a Norse word meaning a bend or even an elbow, which over time has become corrupted to Finkle Street. However, the street was first recorded as Hale or Hales Street in the Hull Corporation bench books, from the early 14th Century, and property deeds confirm its existence at that date. The bench books record rentals paid to the corporation, and show that in 1347 the street was divided into at least 11 plots.

It is worth noting here that at this period in Hull’s history there were no actual roads leading into Hull, and most transport was by water into what was still a very newly developed town. Hence much of the town was developed from the south and west first – nearer the rivers and transport facilities.

This earliest of names referred to the ‘Hales’, an area of waste ground to the south and west of Holy Trinity church. Hale Street (Finkle Street) led to the Hales from the Humber. The vacant plots in the Hales had been set aside for a market area but this never came to fruition; at that time the ‘Hales’ land was valued at £4 - 3s. There was also an alley off Market Place named Hales Entry, and a churchyard for Holy Trinity was built on land in the Hales during 1301. The other vacant plots in this area had been allotted to tenants by 1295 but not yet built upon. In 1304, under orders from King Edward I, the remaining plots were let.

Early references to Finkle Street are difficult to establish, as the old Hale Street also appears to have stretched much further north, beyond the line of Mytongate. Confusion also arises when both Finkle Street and Hale Street are mentioned in the same period, as it appears that a section of the old street retained the old name after the ‘new’ name of Finkle Street came into common use. Unfortunately the archived documents regarding Finkle Street, from the middle of the 14th Century onwards, are dense and wordy, mostly in the form of deeds and rentals. The information readily discernable from them suggests that few plots actually had buildings on them, and that the land remained empty for decades except for a few smaller properties and gardens.

The available details of property transactions for this area begin in the 1360s, with the name Finkle first appearing circa 1408 (variously as Fynkell, Finkell, Fenkill etc.). No actual houses are mentioned in the street until the middle of the century, as earlier references to ‘tenements’ may just have related to land, and ‘messuages’ (dwelling houses) first appear circa 1368. The various rent and tax returns show there were very few properties or inhabitants in the street until the early 15th Century, but by the 1470s there were properties with gardens. These may be those shown on Wenceslaus Hollar’s plan of Hull, made in 1640 (see above), which shows only three or four buildings in Finkle Street. On the plan, Finkle Street is shown as ‘Finkell Streete’, and the only buildings shown are corner buildings that appear to front on to other streets. However, a later historian James Sheahan noted ‘in 1649 there was a mill in Finkle Street, and the street then chiefly consisted of gardens’.

The street seems to have had its main period of growth in the late 1600s and early 1700s, consistent with the mercantile and trading success of the town and the need to build on every available piece of land as the old walled town reached saturation point.

Building plans for Hull are not generally available until the 1850s, and Finkle Street plans are few, suggesting that the street was fully built up by then, and only a few new buildings were built after 1850; deeds are available for many properties from as early as 1614, but most are from circa 1700. Later plans show many houses and courts were bought and demolished for the construction of warehouses, as the street developed - the street had always been home to many businesses, mostly ran from the owner’s homes, which doubled as business premises. In Finkle Street, as in most streets within Hull and other towns throughout England, many small businesses supplemented their income by selling ale; Finkle Street’s several pubs developed from these small ale-houses recorded from the middle of the 18th Century.

Pubs

Looking briefly at the pubs that were in Finkle Street shows how tricky it is to pin a building down to an exact location using very few available sources. The numbers and names of three of the five pubs appear to change every few years, and some come and go within a year. Confusingly, some census returns list the same pub name twice with entirely different occupants and locations – the 1851 Census lists two pubs both called the Stoker’s Arms; a reference to a pub name which appears in only one trade directory. Now was this an error by the enumerator, or were there really two pubs with the same name, or did one man have two pubs? – you decide. The smaller beer-houses, of which very little information can be found were: -

Leeds Arms, at no.5 and/or no.8

No photograph of this old beerhouse is available as it was demolished in 1872/3 for the construction of Mr Lofthouse’s new warehouse. These are some of the known victuallers at the pub: -

Ship Victory, at no.20

The Ship Victory property may have been shown on the Hollar plan of Hull made in 1640, and its construction appears to be of at least that age. It was part of Thomas Temple’s pub chain in 1798, and when it was sold following his death in 1822 the estate consisted of a brewery in Marine Row, and eight public houses including the Old Theatre Coffee House in Finkle Street, the Admiral Nelson, the Plough & Ship, the Cup, the Coach & Horses, the Beverley Buff in Church Street, the White Hart in Cross Street and the Blacksmith’s Arms at Riplingham. In 1823 the Ship Victory was sold to Gleadow & Dibb and closed in 1901. It was demolished some years later in 1922, and several photos were made at this date relating to a complaint made following demolition; the adjoining house was allegedly made unfit due to water entering the property following the demolition works. The building that once housed the Ship Victory is shown below, in a photograph taken in 1922 just before demolition.

Foresters Arms / Prince Blucher, at ‘no.29’

The Forester’s Arms was located within another of Finkle Street’s most ancient buildings. It held only a beer-house licence and was acquired by Moors’ & Robson’s in 1899. Plans for its reconstruction for M&R are available, dated 1899, however it closed in 1900 and the licence was transferred to the Swann Inn Beverley Road.

No.27a, latterly part of the pub, was found unfit for human habitation in 1938 and ‘four persons of the working classes were evicted’. Plans and notes made at that time reveal that the ground floor rooms were only 6’6’’ high (THC/1218), and another Health Department image, dated 27.10.1938, shows the squalid condition. The photograph shown above right is from 1904, showing the pub just after closure.

Georgian Hull, by Ivan & Elizabeth Hall - published in 1978, described ‘houses of the 1660s in Finkle Street’ as ‘only recently demolished’ - these were almost certainly the buildings that had housed the Foresters’ Arms. A stone plaque, or medallion on the front of the building, obviously gone by 1978, bears the date ‘AD1657’, and is clearly visible on another of the 1930s photographs. Here are some of the victuallers: -

© Paul L Gibson

Hull March 2005, edited for the web June 2009

References from Stanwell

Health Department images available at Hull Local Studies Library and Hull City Archives: -