The Open Bridges: A River Full Of Stories memory sharing days on the river and at Hull Maritime Museum have been full of fascinating conversations about days gone by working and living on the River Hull. We have learned about evocative, moving and entertaining memories from tales of using highly skilled local knowledge to navigate the river and bringing up families on barges to colourful characters, poaching and even murder.
Here’s a short film from the reminiscing day at Hull Maritime Museum earlier this month, former River Man John Drury in conversation with Russ Litten, reminiscing about lighters – dumb barges on the River.
Filmed in September 2018 by Humber Film Creative Community for Open Bridges Hull.
And here’s more of John’s conversation, his tale of a mishap on the River…
Thanks to Angus at the Mail for the use of the River archive photograph.
The idea for A River Full Of Stories came about when many of the 2000 visitors to the Open Bridges exhibition inside Scale Lane Bridge told us fascinating tales of their lives working on and around the river. We’ve been collecting stories throughout July – September 2018 and are now preparing the River Full Of Stories film, exhibition and book. We’ll keep the website blog up to date with stories and memories as we go along.
Rich & Lou Duffy-Howard
Open Bridges made history when for the first time all 13 of the bridges over the River Hull in the UK’s City of Culture 2017 raised, swung or closed simultaneously splitting the city of Hull in two at 20:17 hours on 22nd September 2017. Historic vessels sailed down the River to be met by 21st century tugs.
Open Bridges is an independent Hull/East Yorkshire based project.