Hull and Humberside
Sir: I agree with Richard West (Notebook, 5 August) and J. Geoffrey Brook (Letters, 12 August) that North Humberside is an inelegant and cumbersome substitute for the East Riding of Yorkshire. The word riding, by the way, stems from `thirding' a third part. To most Yorkshiremen the unnecessary re-drawing of historic boundaries and the re-naming of the constituent parts is unwelcome, but has had to be accepted as yet another manifestation of change in the name of progress. It is heartening to read in Mr Brook's letter of the formation of the Yorkshire Ridings Society, and I wish it well.
In the East Riding, the distinctive dark blue and yellow of the one-time East Yorkshire Motor Services (which once had specially designed double decker buses for passing through Beverley Bar) have given waY to the ubiquitous red 'National' buses, and, unkindest cut of all, the excellent brew (still excellent) dispensed under the name of Hull Brewery, is now called 'North Country'. Why not Humberside Bitter?
These things are little more than annoyances and matters for regret, having no really tangible effect on the area itself. Of greater sadness to me is the actual mutilation of the historic Old Town of Kingston-upon-Hull. Junkers 88s set the destruction in train and a new 'orbital' road is cutting a swathe through what remains. My now occasional visits to the place of my birth and boyhood are increasingly depressing, and not in the way that Shiva Naipaul was depressed by his Arts Council (tax payer) subsidised trip earlier this year. Mr Naipaul wrote insultingly of the people of Hull and of the schools and teachers, and in the process revealed his ignorance of the history of the place, including the recent history. Hull just happening to be in the Paths of bombers en-route to other targets! But then, as Mr Naipaul admitted, he didn't really know where the Humber was before his visit to Hull.
No, my sadness when I visit Hull is of a very different nature. I am sorry to see the once thriving Town Docks fallen into decay, the disappearance of most of High Street With only the no doubt temporary recompense of a distant prospect of Holy Trinity Church. Corporation Pier, although still affording fine views of the river and its traffic, is but a skeleton of its former self, and its use as a ferry landing by some tiricharacteristic successor to the once familiar paddle steamers will cease with the oPening of the Humber Bridge (not yet Opened, Mr West). I feel that some attempt should have been made to reconstruct at least part of the Old To in traditional style, which could have been an attractive and interesting resort for visitors and Hull people alike. On the credit Side, much good work is being done by the East Riding Archaeological Society and the Kingston-upon-Hull Museums and Art Gal leries to make excavations in the Old Town (before it's too late) and to add to the records of the richly interesting history of Kingston-upon-Hull. M Turner P.O. Box 716, Johore Bahru, Malaysia
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