In the Dock

The old Humber entrance to Victoria Dock with just a tiny fraction of the housing on the left

My new beginners psychic development class which I run with my good friend Linda takes place on Victoria Dock in the east of Hull on the north bank of the River Humber. Not in the dock thankfully, but as docks go, this is one of the prettiest you'll see - mainly because it's a working dock no longer.

Today this is a smart riverside community with a huge array of mixed hosing, its own lovely community centre where we hold the class, its own school, church, playing facilities, shop and public house of course. You can walk along the riverside and get panoramic views across the river toward northern Lincolnshire.

The Village Hall, sympathetically designed

My son did his dissertation on the old citadel a huge triangular fort which stood on some of what was Victoria Dock in the 17th century. It was built on the orders of King Charles ll to repel any foreign invasion.

The building of the Victoria Dock was finished in 1850, just two years after the military use of the citadel finished. I knew this dock as the 'timber dock'  - the storage and import of wood was its prime function although some shipbuilding did take place there.This was the first of Hull's many docks to be built outside of the traditional city centre docks complex and the first of four east Hull docks.

When I started work in Hull in 1973, the dock had already closed some three years earlier and remained derelict for many years before Victoria Dock Village started its construction in the late 1980s. The entrance basin into the dock from the Humber has been preserved, the lock gates sealed and is now a pleasant water feature among the housing, a picture of it is above.

The last remaining evidence of the citadel - a watchtower

Today, a watchtower stands guard over the entrance to the Victoria Dock Village from Citadel Road, the last remaining piece of the original citadel carefully preserved and returned to the dock in 1990.

I thought you might be interested in how a Victorian working dock gets turned into a green and pleasant environment leaving industrial work to its bigger more modern brothers to the east.

Chat soon

Ta-ra