LARKIN'S HERE
CITY CENTRE
This particular part of the journey leads you to places frequented by Larkin, both when he was alone and when in the company of others. It guides you to pubs where he enjoyed a pint (or something a little stronger on-the-rocks), pauses at places where he indulged his passion for jazz and takes you to the point from which he could look back at this ‘isolate city spread alongside water’ as he took the ferry over to Lincolnshire and back.
As with any city centre, some parts have changed radically over the years. Other streets look almost the same as they did decades ago. Hull’s fascinating Old Town, with its cobbles, porticos and intriguing staiths, is one such area. Tracing his footsteps across the city, you feel that wherever he was, Larkin was simply ‘here.’
Royal Hotel
Welcome to The Larkin Trail
Royal Hotel
Welcome to The Larkin Trail
Larkin on Hull:
“I like it because its so far from everywhere else. On the way to nowhere, as somebody put it. Its in the middle of the lonely country, and beyond the lonely country there is only the sea. I like that.”
(From Required Writing – interview with the Observer)
Leading directly onto the station concourse, this Italian Renaissance style building was completed in 1849. It began life as the Station Hotel, but was allowed to change its name to the Royal Station Hotel following Queen Victoria’s stay here five years later. Larkin enjoyed many a visit and would often lunch in its subterranean restaurant, The Brigantine (no longer here), or call in for drinks after he had attended a city centre function. He also used the hotel’s spacious lounge as a place in which to meet and talk to visitors.
Watch Classlane Media’s short film ‘Here’, featuring Sir Tom Courtenay
About the poem, Here:
“I mean it just as a celebration of here, Hull. It’s a fascinating area, not quite like anywhere else. So busy, yet so lonely”
(From Further Requirements – interview with John Haffenden)
Behind the scenes at the filming of the iconic BBC Monitor Film in which Betjeman interviewed Larkin. Image taken by Philip Larkin during the filming of the documentary – Betjeman is writing out the words to the poem Here.
Listen to the Larkin Trail podcasts
Location
Royal Hotel
170 Ferensway, Hull HU1 3UF
The sign can be found in the Hotel lounge.
Royal Hotel
Royal Hotel
Larkin’s poem ‘Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel’ shows its quieter times, with ‘silence laid like carpet’ and ‘all the salesmen […] gone back to Leeds’. The poem was first published by the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, and later included in his 1974 collection High Windows.
The hotel as Larkin knew it suffered a major fire five years after his death and was re-opened after extensive refurbishment in September 1993. The more recent refurbishment of the lounge (2010) respects Larkin’s description of the ‘high clusters of lights’ and the chairs ‘coloured differently’.
The view from the Royal as Larkin would have known it, heading into town.
Royal Hotel entrance
Original manuscript of Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel
Location
Royal Hotel
170 Ferensway, Hull HU1 3UF
The sign can be found at the front entrance of the hotel.
Paragon Interchange
Paragon Interchange
“The Whitsun Weddings..was just the transcription of a very happy afternoon”
(From Further Requirements – interview with John Haffenden)
Arriving in Hull from the Midlands for the first time in 1955, Larkin’s train, ‘Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows/ And traffic all night north..’ eventually brought him here, to this large cool station concourse. ‘When your train comes to rest in Paragon Station against a row of docile buffers,’ he observed, ‘you alight with an end-of-the-line sense of freedom’.
Although the Royal Hotel has changed its outward appearance little since Larkin used to enjoy lunch and drinks there, Paragon Station is very different indeed. Today the station forms part of the new transport Interchange, which was officially opened by HM The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh in March 2009.
Until Larkin passed his driving test (at the first attempt) in 1963, he spent much of his time travelling by train from Paragon Station. He captured one of his more memorable departures in his celebrated 1958 poem, ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, an extract of which is inscribed on the base of the nearby statue of Larkin, unveiled on 2 December 2010.
Larkin’s 1961 poem ‘Here’ encapsulates his memory of his first train journey from the Midlands to Hull and the subsequent impression that the city, its residents and the Holderness Plain made on him. Train travel continued to fuel his poetry, whether ‘waking at the fumes and furnace-glares of Sheffield’ where he changed and ‘ate an awful pie’, or returning to Coventry where his ‘childhood was unspent’.
When Philip Larkin first left this station concourse, he was greeted by a very different city from the one you see today. Like Coventry, much of Hull’s city centre had been bombed massively during World War II and when Larkin arrived, Hull was undergoing an extensive rebuilding programme. The fish docks in the west and the cargo docks to the east were booming, all supported by a huge rail network carrying endless goods wagons. Larkin made reference to the Hull air on many occasions, commenting that the city was ‘… a little chilly and smells of fish’.
Leaving the station and crossing busy Ferensway, Larkin’s ‘large town’ begins to open up.
Larkin’s bicycle in Paragon Station by Joe Johnson.
Sculpture of Philip Larkin by Martin Jennings, unveiled at Paragon Station in December, 2010, the 25th anniversary of the writer’s death.
Location
Paragon Interchange
Ferensway, Hull HU1 3QX
The sign can be found at the end of the station concourse beyond the Larkin statue.
City Hall
City Hall
At the far end of Paragon Street you enter Queen Victoria Square, which is bordered by several fine pieces of architecture, including the Hull Maritime Museum, the Ferens Art Gallery and, closest to you, with shops at ground floor level, the City Hall. These days the Square is criss-crossed by pedestrians coming and going in all directions, whereas in the 1960s and ‘70s, the stepped area supporting Queen Victoria’s statue was an island, surrounded by busy traffic flowing between all these arterial streets. Until 1964, this traffic included the ‘flat-faced trolleys’ that were phased out to make way for buses.
Hull’s port activity became increasingly focused away from the historic city core in the last century – spreading east and west along the Humber shore. You will see very few cranes evident in today’s city centre, although the many domes, statues and spires that made such an impression on Larkin are still very visible.
The Maritime Museum, built as the Dock Offices in the late 1860s, is easily identified by its three domes. Across the road from the City Hall stands the 1920s Ferens Art Gallery, home of many important pieces, including work by Hals, Ribera, Stanley Spencer, Wyndham Lewis, David Hockney. Mark Wallinger, Gillian Wearing and Nan Goldin.
The City Hall, a purpose built concert hall from the early 1900s, held very varied memories for Larkin. Here, under its green copper dome, he could indulge his passion for jazz, as the venue played host to many of the greats, including Count Basie, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk. It was also fruitful for his poetry, evoking once more that feeling of isolation, as in ‘Broadcast’ when he listens on his radio to a classical concert from the City Hall. Sitting alone in his attic flat, looking out at the ‘still and withering/Leaves on half-emptied trees’, he imagines his loved one in the audience; ‘Your hands, tiny in all that air, applauding’.
Some of Larkin’s own work was performed here, as he was commissioned to write the words of a cantata composed by Anthony Hedges to celebrate the opening of the Humber Bridge. Whilst Larkin was not enamoured with the task (‘… this haunts the troubled midnight and the noon’s repose’), the result was ‘Bridge for the Living’, first performed here at the City Hall on 11 April 1981, and then enjoyed once more in 2010 at the University of Hull as part of the Larkin25 commemorations.
Larkin’s visits to the City Hall were not all based around music: he occasionally attended boxing bouts here too, as the venue was home territory for local heroes such as Ricky Beaumont. On one occasion, Larkin was heard to mumble ‘only connect’.
Traditionally, the City Hall hosts the University of Hull’s degree ceremonies, and when John Betjeman was awarded an Honorary Degree in 1973 it was Philip Larkin who gave the citation. Betjeman and Larkin were close friends, Betjeman having interviewed his fellow-poet for the 1964 BBC documentary, Monitor.
Today the City Hall continues to be a popular venue for a wide range of events, including concerts of every musical genre.
Leaving the City Hall behind and exiting Queen Victoria Square by the further pelican crossing, you will quickly ‘cross’ Monument Bridge, which leads into Whitefriargate. During Larkin’s time in Hull, this waterfront looked considerably different, as it was formerly the Princes Dock, disused by the late 1960s. Monument Bridge itself was removed in 1932.
Traditionally, the City Hall hosts the University of Hull’s degree ceremonies, and when John Betjeman was awarded an Honorary Degree in 1973 it was Philip Larkin who gave the citation.
Queen Victoria statue and the City Hall.
Location
Queen Victoria Square
Carr Lane
Hull
HU1 3RQ
The sign can be found at the front entrance of the City Hall.
Whitefriargate & Marks & Spencer
Whitefriargate & Marks & Spencer
The Princes Quay Shopping Centre, rising from the water on stilts, did not open until 1991. Its three decks of retail outlets maintain the area’s maritime theme. Although the estates are no longer ‘raw’ and ‘grim head-scarved wives’ are almost impossible to find, you can still see a steady stream of shoppers flowing in and out.
Running along Princes Dockside are several café bars and restaurants. Sitting amid them is the entrance to Trinity House, whose nautical school opened in 1786 and still thrives today, although not in this location.
Immediately before entering Whitefriargate, you will pass the Beverley Gate excavations. Most Hull residents now walk by with barely a second glance, yet when it stood tall this medieval structure played an extremely important role in the city’s – and indeed England’s – history. It formed part of the defensive walls that once surrounded the Old Town and it was here in 1642 that Hull’s Governor denied King Charles I entry to the city: this was a contributory factor in the start of the English Civil War.
On entering Whitefriargate, you step into the area immediately inside those ancient city walls. This much-loved thoroughfare links the popularly labelled ‘new town’ with the ‘old town’ and takes its name from the Carmelite monks who lived close by until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s.
A little way down, on your left, you reach the now redeveloped Marks & Spencer – Larkin’s ‘Large Cool Store’. Its Greek Revival stone façade, by Jones and Rigby, dates from 1931. Although the exterior has changed little since those days, when Larkin wrote about this store in 1961, Marks & Spencer was less upmarket than the familiar ‘M&S’ we know today.
Most of Larkin’s library staff were female and, intrigued by the purchases with which they returned to work after lunchtime trips to town, he decided to pay the store a visit. There he encountered the ‘..cheap clothes/ Set out in simple sizes plainly’ and wandered past the ‘..heaps of shirts and trousers’, pondering on the vaguely exotic ‘Modes for Night’.
Shoppers on Whitefriargate
Photograph of women shoppers taken by Larkin.
View towards Whitefriargate as it was in Larkin’s time.
Location
Whitefriargate
Hull
HU1 2HW
The sign can be found in store by the ground floor lift.
Land of Green Ginger
Land of Green Ginger
In the 1960s and 70s, comparatively few people ventured beyond the far end of Whitefriargate, unless it was to shop at the open-air market in Trinity Square.
The origins of several street names in this area remain a mystery: ‘Land of Green Ginger’ is one of the most unusual street names in the country and ‘Bowlalley Lane’ is equally intriguing. For writers, the Old Town names are a gift; both Winifred Holtby and Alan Plater used ‘Land of Green Ginger’ as titles (Holtby for her novel and Plater for his 1973 ‘Play for Today’).
Plater and Larkin became friends, brought together by their love of jazz music. Larkin was in the audience for Plater’s jazz opera ‘Prez’ about Lester Young, the American jazz saxophonist. In 1990, Larkin was to ‘appear’ as a ghostly character in Sweet Sorrow, a play written by Plater about a group of friends holding an annual get-together in Larkin’s honour.
By day these streets on the fringe of Hull’s cultural quarter are busy with shoppers, visitors, solicitors and office workers. At night, the Old Town is the place to be, as the many pubs, café bars and restaurants really come alive. In the days when Larkin frequented this area, however, it was a very different story. Most pubs closed at 10.30pm and streetlights in some parts of the city centre were then switched off; by 10.45pm. Whitefriargate could be in complete darkness.
At the bottom of Whitefriargate the pedestrianised area gives way to the traffic of Silver Street, with its fine arcade. Before turning the corner to enter Trinity Square, you might like to take a closer look at The George pub in Land of Green Ginger – have you seen England’s smallest window? Or, a little further down Silver Street through an archway to the left, look for Ye Olde White Harte – an evocative, woodpanelled sixteenth-century pub where, in 1642, the Governor met his advisors and took the decision to refuse Charles I entrance to Hull.
Land of Green Ginger
Location
Land of Green Ginger
Hull
HU1 1RR
The sign can be found on the frontage of Shackle Chambers, 7 Land of Green Ginger.
Trinity Square
Trinity Square
Passing the entrance to the covered market, you quickly arrive in this small but imposing Square, bordered on three sides by some magnificent buildings. Between them, they reflect centuries of the city’s rich history, which is told on the contemporary artwork on the corner.
In the middle of the Square you will notice the statue of Andrew Marvell. He was born in nearby Winestead-in-Holderness and moved with his family to Hull at the age of three. Marvell was educated at the old Hull Grammar School (now the Hands On History Museum), which you can see just behind his statue, and went on to become MP for Hull from 1658 to 1678 as well as one of the bestknown metaphysical poets.
The presence of Marvell’s statue is symbolic of the city’s rich literary heritage. Hull is the birthplace of Steve Smith, was the adoptive home of Alan Plater and the University home of many poets, including Andrew Motion, Douglas Dunn and Roger McGough. Carol Rumens was also once a resident of Hull and co-edited the anthology Old City, New Rumours, the 2010 sequel to the influential 1982 collection A Rumoured City, for which Larkin wrote the foreword.
Marvell’s statue has not always been in this spot. After numerous moves over the years, it was finally placed in Trinity Square in 1999 and unveiled by Andrew Motion. If you take a look at the plinth, you will find it contains a verse from one of Marvell’s most famous poems, To His Coy Mistress.
His father, the Rev. Andrew Marvell, was a lecturer at Holy Trinity, the magnificent 14th century Anglican parish church to your left, where William Wilberforce was baptised. Wilberforce had been passionate about the abolition of slavery in the British Colonies and, as MP for Hull, fought strongly for the cause in Parliament.
Directly opposite Holy Trinity Church, next to the Merchants Warehouse (now smart apartments) you will notice a small archway. Through this archway, curving its narrow way out of the Square, is Prince Street, the city’s elegant arc of Georgian houses. As you would imagine, this street, which led towards the site of the old town walls, has seen countless residents come and go over the past couple of centuries. The Masonic Lodge on the corner was once a chapel.
Prince Street sweeps round to give you a superb vista from the wonderfully named Dagger Lane across Castle Street to the masts and flags of the Marina. Once home to a synagogue and to numerous Christian denominations, Dagger Lane earned itself the nickname ‘Nine Faith Lane.’ It proper name is simply derived from the fact that daggers were once made here.
Castle Street, the final section of the A63, is the main route for the busy docks to the east of the city. This stretch of road and, rising to your left, Myton Bridge were not developed until the late twentieth century. Until then, the nearest point to cross the River Hull was Drypool Bridge, but this is an area that Larkin was very familiar with, as he regularly travelled across the Humber from the nearby pier. Crossing Castle Street’s busy flow of traffic to walk along Humber Dock Street you enter the much more peaceful world of the waterfront. The Marina, developed from the former Humber and Railway Docks, was opened in 1983 and leads into Hull’s emerging cultural quarter.
As you walk along the quayside, you will notice that some of the paving is picked out in red brick. These red lines mark the ruins of Hull’s medieval city walls, which were buried as part of the marina development work. Further along, close to Humber Street, the red brick contains a large circle. This denotes the original bank of the estuary: in the days before the docks were developed, the River Humber flowed past this point. Beyond is reclaimed land.
Until 2010, Humber Street itself was home to the city’s vibrant Fruit Market. Here men heaved hundreds of boxes, crates and sacks of fresh produce onto waiting lorries each day well before dawn. As with the docks, this activity has now moved away from the city centre.
Continuing along Humber Dock Street, keeping Humber Street to your left and the Marina on your right, you pass the more contemporary architecture of Henry Vernone Court. As you can see, the streets here are wider, as they are no longer medieval, and have been given heroic names. Rounding the corner, past the Minerva pub, you will find yourself at the Humber waterfront. Often the river is brown and ruffled, at times it can be a rippling silver-blue, but the view remains constantly as wide and wonderful as it was in Larkin’s day.
Trinity Square and its environs as Larkin would have known it.
South Church Side.
Trinity House Lane.
Location
Trinity Square
Hull
HU1 1RR
The sign can be found on the front of the Woollen Warehouse where KallKwik is located.
The Pier & Waiting Room
The Pier & Waiting Room
(From Required Writing – interview with the Observer)
“…the first part describes Hull’s essential loneliness, and is descriptive and slow moving, the second tries to feel cheerful about the ending of this loneliness through the agency of the bridge, and I suppose could be called celebratory”
Making your way along Nelson Street you find what remains of Hull Corporation Pier. This was the departure and arrival point for the various ferries that carried people across the estuary for seven centuries.
The former ticket office (opposite the pier and now converted into apartments) was actually a British Rail station, being one of the few in the country with no trains.
Larkin’s trips would have been on one of the three paddle steamers that went back and forth to New Holland in Lincolnshire from the 1930s and 40s until the opening of the Humber Bridge in 1981. Today, the old waiting room serves as a small café.
From what remains of the pier top you can still enjoy spectacular views across to Lincolnshire. To your left, Hull’s striking submarium The Deep (designed by Sir Terry Farrell) juts over the river. Beyond, following the sweep of the estuary as the city’s ‘working skyline wanders to the sea’ it is often possible to spot the vast white P&O North Sea ferries berthed at King George Dock, preparing to make their overnight sailings to Holland and Belgium.
Looking to the west, suspended high above the estuary, is the Humber Bridge, ‘A giant step for ever to include/ All our dear landscape in a new design’. Today the bridge carries more than 100,000 vehicles each week, linking the two counties in a journey that takes a matter of minutes. For most of Larkin’s time here, however, the pace was much more leisurely, as the ferry journey took at least 20 minutes each way. But what a journey it was. Weather and tides inevitably played their major part – and occasionally the ferry became lodged on a sandbank.
Like many residents of Hull, Larkin often used the ferry purely for the pleasure of this round trip, without bothering to take the onward train from New Holland. In 1964 he enjoyed a windy crossing in the company of John Betjeman, captured by the BBC as part of the memorable and celebrated Monitor film. Almost two decades later, Larkin was to write the words of Anthony Hedges’ cantata ‘Bridge for the Living’, first performed at Hull City Hall.
Assistant Director Anne James took this image during the filming of the 1964 Monitor documentary. Larkin wrote to the film’s director, Patrick Garland: ‘The feeling of ships coming in and going out is exciting; of the door being open…’.
Location
The Pier & Waiting Room, Hull HU1 1XE
The sign can be found on the sea defence wall approaching Victoria Pier adjacent to the former ferry waiting room (now cafe).
High Street &
Ye Old Black Boy
High Street &
Ye Old Black Boy
Larkin, writing to Steve Voce-3 September 1985
“one of the music staff knew me as a jazz enthusiast and put my name forward. Of course the job should have gone to somebody of greater competence…”
Leaving the pier behind and heading towards High Street, the monumental tidal surge barrier soon comes into view. It opened in 1980 at the point where the two rivers meet and is lowered to prevent the spring tides entering the rest of the city.
Just before the Myton Bridge flyover, Rotenhering Staith brings you close to the River Hull’s edge. This stretch of river is where the Port of Hull was situated, from the 1100s to the 1800s. The iconic Scale Lane footbridge a little way along here (due to be opened in 2011) takes you across to The Deep, while turning left away from the river again brings you into High Street.
Medieval High Street is Hull’s oldest and historically most important street and one that Larkin often walked along. It once served as base for the merchant families, such as Maister, Pease and Wilberforce, whose ships imported iron ore from Sweden and flax, grain and timber from the Baltic. Their fine houses, still here today, connected to the large riverside warehouses by a network of narrow staiths and alleyways.
On your left, not far from the junction with Scale Lane, sits Ye Olde Black Boy, one of Larkin’s favourite pubs in the Old Town. It was here in 1977 that he gave a talk on clarinettist Pee Wee Russell and played a selection of his records to the Hull Jazz Record Society.
Jazz was one of Larkin’s great passions – indeed, he once claimed on Desert Island Discs that he ‘couldn’t live without it’. He had over a thousand records in his collection and the quality of his reviews was testament to his extensive knowledge.
A little further along from Ye Olde Black Boy you will pass Maister House. Built in 1743, the house is now a National Trust property and its exquisite staircase is accessible during office hours.
Continuing along High Street you shortly reach the Museums Quarter. This cluster of fascinating museums set around peaceful gardens offers free entry to an entertaining and stimulating insight into Hull’s history. The Hull and East Riding Museum shows you the area’s rich archaeological background, while at the adjacent Streetlife Museum you can steal an imaginary ride on a ‘flat-faced trolley’, peer in a replica Cooperative store where the ‘unspeakable wives … skinny as whippets’ might later have bought their tinned sardines, and watch archive footage of Hull’s docks animated by constant action from the era before port-business shifted away from the city’s iconic old maritime trades. The museum’s short black and white films reflect the days of Larkin’s ‘barge-crowded water’, the time when the air was a heady mix of wet fish and cocoa beans.
Permanently moored alongside the rear of the Streetlife Museum, the Arctic Corsair, long since retired as Hull’s last side-winder trawler, serves as a tribute to the years when Hull’s enormous deep-water fishing fleet carried its trawlermen far off ‘on a sea that tilts and sighs’. Next door, Wilberforce House, ‘the slave museum’, incorporating the Georgian Houses, provides a sobering link back to Ye Olde Black Boy pub.
Drinkers in a traditional Hull bar.
Ye Olde Black Boy, High Street.
Larkin and friend, listening to music.
Location
High Street & Ye Olde Black Boy, Hull HU1 1PS
The sign can be found on the gable end wall of the pub.
The White Hart
The White Hart
Crossing from Wilberforce House, the short walk along Gandhi Way brings you onto Alfred Gelder Street.
Over the road is The White Hart, another of the Old Town pubs favoured by Larkin. Built in 1904, it has a listed interior, including its Royal Doulton, curved bar. Its upstairs restaurant is a relatively recent addition.
It was at The White Hart, in 1977, that Larkin gave an informative and amusing talk to the Jazz Record Society entitled “My Life and Death as a Record Reviewer”.
Heading away from the direction of Drypool Bridge and towards the traffic lights, you will reach the statue of Charles Henry Wilson (1833-1907), shipowner and local benefactor. Beyond the statue stands The Guildhall, designed in the early 20th century by Edwin Cooper. During Larkin”s years in Hull, the large white building on the other side of Alfred Gelder Street, now apartments above a pub, was the city”s General Post Office, built in 1908-09.
From this junction, you can take in the architectural splendour of The Church of St Mary the Virgin and muse on what Larkin might have made of the shining dome above the adjacent Crown Court.
With St Mary”s Church behind you and The Guildhall to your left, continue along Wilberforce Drive. Its mighty monument soon rises into view and Wilberforce gazes along the length of Queen”s Gardens, a popular spot for students from the adjacent college and the venue for many events and festivals in the city.
It might seem hard to believe that these delightful Gardens occupy the site of Hull”s first dock, which was opened in 1778 and renamed Queen”s Dock following the royal visit of 1854. When Larkin arrived in the city, the ships were long gone, as the dock was filled in during the 1930s.
Larkin”s Jazz
“It was one of Larkin’s gifts to perceive and reveal humour in unlikely situations – at the same time, leaving one in no doubt as to his real feelings. Persuaded to address the Hull Jazz Record Society on “My Life and Death as a Record Reviewer”, he played a characteristically jagged and angular piano solo by Thelonious Monk. He then suggested mischievously that listening to Monk was like walking down a street, passing an open window, and hearing someone’s sister practicing scales”
Jazzing with Larkin, John White
Larkin’s Jazz sleevenotes, Larkin”s Jazz, Proper Records
The White Hart
A selection of Larkin”s huge collection of LPs, archived at the Hull History Centre.
Hull History Centre
Hull History Centre
When getting my nose in a book / Cured most things short of school / It was worth ruining my eyes
Keeping Queen’s Gardens to your left and the college buildings on your right, continue along Wilberforce Drive to reach its junction with George Street. The balconied building on the corner, currently a popular nightclub, was the Queen’s Hotel for most of Larkin’s years in the city. Beyond this, North Bridge offers another key route for crossing the River Hull.
(From here it is possible to make a short diversion to your left along George Street, to visit Browns Books, the main local booksellers when Larkin came to Hull. A little further along, in Jameson Street opposite Starbucks, was once the city’s first Chinese restaurant, where Larkin often ate with friends.)
Immediately before the traffic lights (that would take you towards North Bridge) turn left into the cobbled Charlotte Street Mews. Here you will see the striking Hull History Centre, which opened in 2010. As well as containing the archives of the City Council, it also houses archives from the University of Hull. Within these sits an extensive personal collection relating to Larkin, including everything from his poetry workbooks and photographs to his enormous library of books and records.
Hull History Centre offers a wonderful opportunity to discover more about Larkin’s life, as well as other poets with a Hull connection, and about the rich heritage of the city in which they lived.
Hull History Centre holds an archive of Larkin’s belongings, photographs, letters and manuscripts.
A collection of Philip Larkins belongings
Original manuscript of Whitsun Weddings
Location
Hull History Centre
Worship Street
Hull HU2 8BG
The sign can be found on the public open space in front of the History Centre.
Hull History Centre holds an archive of Larkin’s belongings, photographs, letters and manuscripts.
