Sitting proudly on the River Humber Hull is one of the UK’s oldest cities. Well-known for its rich maritime history, The Hull Blitz of World War 2 and most recently as UK City of Culture 2017, outsiders could be forgiven for thinking that’s where the interesting facts end.
But it’s not! Here’s five things that you probably didn’t know.
We’ve invented famous every day items
Liquid crystal displays (LCD), Lemsip and boiled sweets were all created in our fair city.
Our telephone boxes are cream
That’s right. Even the local telecoms dance to the beat of their own drum. Hull’s phone network was never run by the Post Office who were originally responsible for supplying the red phone boxes that are synonymous with traditional British culture. Instead the network was run independently by Hull City Council for many years who installed the cream phone boxes. In recent years some few alternative colours have popped up around the city – gold for local Olympic champion Luke Campbell, rainbow for Pride and black and yellow in tribute to local fundraising legend Jean Bishop aka Bee Lady.
We’re the home of American Chip Spice
Not only are we the home, we invented it. American Chip Spice was created more than 25years ago and has been something of a cult classic ever since – from sprinkling it on to fresh cooked chips, flavouring meat, stirring into creamy mash potato or garnishing a pizza, it’s a store cupboard staple for every home and takeaway in the local area.
We have our own local lingo
This one is probably what we’re most well-known for outside of the city. Not only is the Hull accent very distinctive from the accents of our other Yorkshire neighbours, but we have some of our own unique words too. Some of our favourites are “maftin” (warm/hot), croggy (lift on a bicyle) and the classic “er ner its sner” (look, it’s snowing).
We house the world’s largest Yorkshire pudding factory
Starting out as a local company in the mid-1970s, frozen food manufacturer Aunt Bessie’s have stayed true to their roots and kept production in the heart of the city. Today the factory produces an incredible 900 million Yorkshire puddings each and can produce a single bag in just 1.2 seconds, and even been the starred in ITV show Mad in Britain back in 2019.
As the saying goes, it’s never dull in Hull!!
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