Off Topic Hull City Centre Public Realm Strategy

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Interesting read


The plan to form a new club to rival Hull City with a super-stadium on Sutton Park
Harold Needler’s dream of top-flight football inspired radical plans
Paul Johnson

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An aerial view of Sutton Park (bottom left) and Bransholme in the 1970s. The area could have been home to a new super-stadium.
He was the man who more than any other built Hull City. Harold Needler guided the club from post-war obscurity to the brink of the top flight and built what was, at the time, one of the best football grounds in the country.

But it could all have been so very different. Because Needler didn't want to own the Tigers at all. At least, not at first.

The truth is, the entrepreneur wanted to establish a new club and have them play at a super-stadium on Sutton Park. And in the heady days of 1945, with the war over and people desperate for a brighter future, he could well have got his way.

READ MORE: Unassuming Hull building is birthplace of Hull City and site of perplexing mystery

With swathes of Hull’s tightly packed residential streets destroyed or damaged during the Blitz, there was a widespread desire to demolish the pre-war slums and build new homes fit for heroes. The land around Sutton, where Needler planned to build a “model garden city”, was ripe for development.

Needler, a builder by trade, was a man who thought big. Among his schemes was a plan for a gigantic skyscraper in Alfred Gelder Street that would have dominated the Old Town.

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Harold Needler's investments paid for the impressive South Stand at Boothferry Park, though plans for an 80,000-capacity stadium never came off.
But it was his idea to set up a new football club, a potential rival to Hull City, that got people talking. His plan was to base the club at a super-stadium where the Ennerdale sports centre now stands, at the heart of his new housing estate.

Tigers in trouble
The Tigers had been plagued by money problems. Work on their new ground, Boothferry Park, had been dragging on for years.

Plans had been drawn up as early as 1929 and the land was bought from a golf club thanks to a £3,000 loan from the Football Association. But when war broke out in 1939, the stadium was still not ready and the Army took it over.

At the end of the 1940-41 season, City's financial situation was so bad that the club had to withdraw from the War League. But by 1946 things were looking up and Boothferry Park was finally ready to host its first match.

Meanwhile, Needler had been trying to establish his new club, with the dream of bringing top-flight football to Hull. But he soon came up against a brick wall in the shape of the Football League.

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Simply put, by the 1940s it was very rare for a new club to be admitted to the league. Needler had a choice: give up on his plans altogether, or make an obvious pivot. In December 1945, he took over Hull City.

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Harold Needler with the revered Raich Carter, who managed and played for Hull City between 1948-1952.
'A new team'
Needler told the story in a column in the programme for City's first home match of the 1946-47 season. “Saturday, 1st August, 1946, will always be a red letter day in my life as it is the culmination of an idea that originated in my mind some years ago,” he wrote.

“My original intention was to build a model garden city in the Sutton area and to provide a sports stadium as a prominent amenity of this new development, to form a new Association Football Club and to apply to the Football League for League membership.

“Unfortunately, however, this scheme has had to be abandoned; one of the chief obstacles was the difficulty of obtaining League membership. The only alternative appeared to be to take over the existing Hull City Association Football Club, which was not then playing football owing to lack of suitable ground accommodation, and to build up a new club and a new team with League membership already secured.”

So began one of the most feverish periods in the Tigers’ history. Having persuaded the directors of the “old” Hull City AFC to put their company into voluntary liquidation, Needler set up a new firm under the same name and appealed to members of the public to buy shares in the club.

He had hoped to raise £35,000 – but in fact received £60,000. Nevertheless, despite the cash windfall he faced a race against time to get Boothferry Park ready for the start of the 1946-47 season.

Years later, builder Tim Vincent told the Hull Daily Mail how he had been given the seemingly impossible task of completing the stadium in just five months. He described taking a phone call one morning. “It was Harold Needler. He said: ‘I have just bought Hull City – I want a stadium building’.”

A 30-strong team started work on the stadium immediately, but materials were in short supply due to rationing. “So, wherever possible, we tended to use hardwood, corrugated iron sheeting and reinforced concrete,” Mr Vincent said.

Boothferry Park was the first stadium to be completed after the Second World War. It cost about £80,000 to construct and the opening match, a 0-0 draw with Lincoln City, was played on August 31, 1946.

Stadium for 80,000
Having saved Hull City, Needler was not about to leave it there. He dreamed of building a stadium that could hold 80,000 people. In the 1946 programme, he wrote: “Boothferry Park has unlimited possibilities as a football ground and it could be made the best in the country.

“A super-stand is planned for erection along the east side. The accommodation of the ground can be increased to hold 80,000 people or more, all under cover; car park facilities can be extended and there is every possibility of being able to arrange secondary access through to Hessle Road, and ultimately a railway station to the ground.“

“The playing area is large enough for international matches and semi-final cup ties. With the number of international matches with continental sides tending to increase annually, the directors hope to make Hull a suitable centre for such events.”

By the time Manchester United arrived for an FA Cup tie in 1949, the stadium was able to accommodate more than 55,000 fans. In the early Fifties, the Kempton stand was built, along with the railway station. The journey from Paragon Station took eight minutes.

Floodlights, in the shape of 96 lamps in gantries along the east and west stands, arrived in January 1953, before money problems put further development on hold. But Needler dug deep and donated £260,000 to the club in the early Sixties. This investment allowed the purchase of the six huge floodlight pylons that towered over the area until the early noughties.

Another £50,000 paid for a cutting-edge gymnasium, which opened in 1964. The following year, the towering South Stand opened, at a cost of £130,000.

New model city
And what of Needler’s grand plan for homes fit for heroes? In a column for the Mail, long-time councillor Harry Woodford once recalled how Needler had insisted on lofty aspirations for the new houses he was building in Sutton Park.

Woodford wrote: “Harold Needler asked his architects to be sure of three things: one, the houses should be for sale at around £3,250 so that most could afford them; two, maximise on the mature trees in the area; and three, make the kitchens as labour-saving as possible. I only wish each of the three could be part of our thinking today.”

 

In 1950 the average price of a new house was £1891 and the average salary was £10 a week. As that was the national average and house prices and wages in Hull will both have been lower who would have been buying these £3,250 houses?

 

Great article by Richard Gardham

 

https://socialcare.today/2023/02/14/hull-hospitals-ranked-the-worst-for-ae-wait-times/

Not good!!!!... do we have to feel for the management...?>.... or...

Professor Makani Purva, Deputy Chief Medical Officer at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust stated every day this winter there has been the equivalent of eight hospital wards full of patients who no longer needed to be there but could not be discharged until community support was in place.

 

the ****?

 

The trust in Northumbria which came off best in that table says one of the reasons is because the trust manages both the hospitals and the community support services so they can coordinate discharges etc more efficiently. Doesn't work that way in Hull.

 

As someone who is dealing with Haematology as well as other stuff I concur your problems. Last time I was in A and E be it Sheffield I was told that the long wait in the queue was due to those who could not see a doctor so tipped up at a and E instead. All so frustrating.

 

so what happened to levelling up

 

We levelled down...

 

Tan Kessler article in the Mail about development at the ground . Proposing the inclusion of a smaller 12k stadium -hmmmm wonder who that could be for ???

 

Not just incompetence though. It's mainly a systems thing.
Almost everyone has tales of staying in longer than needed, even if its just for an hour or so. (a report last year said some people were still in for 9 months after being declared medically fit to leave!)
There is definitely an issue with not being able to discharge due to a lack of social care provision, which is hardly unexpected given the reasons for pressures in social care, but there are some things that could be reviewed in hospitals in general and the delay in prescriptions or signing off for discharge are certainly two of them. Even a small reduction in time waiting to get out, particularly for those like you that can just go home, would have a big impact on the whole system.
There must be a better way than relying on someone to pick a phone up for example, even a simple ICT solution should remove that need.

 

Agree on the inefficiencies and miscommunications impacting capacity. My anecdote: my mam was in hospital for three weeks over Christmas and New Year (not Hull). She could have gone home 10 days earlier but the adult social care office for her local council shut entirely from 23 Dec - 3 Jan, so it was impossible to arrange her care package, and she was not safe to go home without it. Her care package was in place within 24 hours of them returning to work, so can't fault their efficiency when the office was open! On the other hand, the council department that sorted out her home equipment was working Boxing Day (I took the call to arrange delivery while I was walking to the match). So her local authority departments do not all work to the same expectations.

Trouble is, people already think there are too many administrators in the NHS as it is, not sure that a solution of "more/better administration" would be well received by people who don't have recent direct experience of things. Other recent experience also makes me wonder if there were more clerical staff available to the consultants and also contactable by patients then their appointments could be better managed and the numbers of "no shows" reduced. Thus increasing the number of patients getting seen per clinic session.

 

I went to the walk in at Story Street recently on an evening. Brilliant example of an efficient system.
Turned up with no appointment, saw a Doctor within 2 mins, got a prescription (which was electronically sent to the pharmacy opposite) and some advice about a less pressing matter, picked the prescription up with no real wait, and was away easily less than 30 mins from arriving.

Only thing I'd say from experience is I wouldn't ring them to ask. I'd just turn up. We did ring previously to ask when they closed and were told not to come at half 7 because they closed at 8 (?) and then when Mrs Tash explained we'd be there in ten minutes was told the waiting room was full so she might not be seen. We got there 10 mins later and the waiting room had miraculously cleared and was left completely empty...maybe they had been uber efficient just before we arrived.

That aside I'd use it for anything requiring immediate treatment/prescription rather than A&E or Doctors. Very impressed.

 

It's not always like that my missus went and they said it's a 4 hour wait so it's probably just timing .

 

Ah
Fluked it then, but was twice.
They were both evenings though

 

Sounds like we need more of these. A and E,s really need help..I’ll bare it in mind.

 

Sadly the funding for East Yorkshire is not as good as Hulls (currently) various small 'None Urgent Care Centres' (minor injuries) have been closed, e.g Hornsea / Driffield or effectively so useless they might as well be (Withernsea) leaving Beverley or Bridlington hospital being overused (Not sure what Goole is like) or people going straight to Hull A&E adding to the problems
CHCP which runs both sets of Minor injuries in Hull And ER is not part of the NHS ( modern version of a QUANGO) and with the next funding system may not be able to run these services or at least for ER may not want to (low funding /minimum profit - break even or losses) Add to the mess in social care, difficulty of recruiting medical and social care staff locally it's not surprising the NHS trust that run HRI and Castle Hill is in a mess...

 

Went to Goole UTC last week - very efficient, in and out within an hour