Our friend Andy Hazell contributed a chapter to our book ‘A River Full of Stories’, with some evocative photographs from Grosvenor Mill, and the Old Harbour and dry docks at night.
Here Andy revisits his time living at the mill overshadowing Scott Street Bridge, with a great view from above, of the bridge and traffic, all the way down river to North Bridge. He sent us 15 new photographs which you can see in the galleries after his story below.
Barges, Coasters and High Tide!
“A long time ago I bought a four storey linseed crushing mill on the River Hull.
It was built in 1828 and is a ‘loosely organised pile of bricks’. Ships and barges used to bring chemicals, and oils to the factories upstream, which they could only navigate at high tide. The river was narrow and the rumble of the Doxford or B&M diesels would make the windows rattle.
No matter how often you’d seen it, you couldn’t help but go to the kitchen window and wave at the crew, who were usually Bengali, Phillipino or West African.
The fuel tankers were painted scarlet and festooned with floodlights. The reflected red glow would often wake you as the tankers grumbled by at high tide in the middle of the night.
The ships are no more, but the Mill is still there”. Andy Hazell
All photographs by, and copyright, Andy Hazell
The TORA Sandavágur negotiates Scott Street Bridge.
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