Beacon of light for city’s homeless

OUR page 2 Then & Now feature today takes in a rarely used thoroughfare of the city, Great Passage Street. This once busy street formed part of the original roadway which is now occupied by the northern section of the busy Ferensway, Hessle Road and Mytongate junction.

It housed Hull’s original William Booth House (referred to on old OS maps as Victoria Mansions) operated by the Salvation Army to help, in an era before social welfare, the homeless and the less fortunate in our society.

I have no date for its construction but the 1883 OS map shows the site occupied by housing, replaced by Victoria Mansions (no doubt named after Queen Victoria) by the time the OS map for 1908 was published. The building looked to be very grand, austere looking with a rear aspect of wings not dissimilar to Hull Prison.

The building was replaced by the current William Booth House, at number 2, Hessle Road, which was officially opened in March, 1984, on a site next door to the Victoria Mansions building. Once the transition of services had been made, the older building was demolished.

The remaining section Great Passage Street (leading from Adelaide Street and Cogan Street to Upper Union Street) must in my view be Hull’s shortest named street. Most of the Great Passage Street was lost under the large intersection junction with most of the last remaining section later being renamed to Amy Johnson Court when new housing was built in that area.

The original site of the hostel was later styled in an open green space after demolition, pictured below, which, when the current image was taken, sadly showed significant signs of rough sleeping.

As the current ‘now’ image is quite under whelming, we’ve included a few other images of this impressive, old building to give you an idea of its size and purpose.