ROYAL VISIT HULL (1957) film no: 3212
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On 18th May, 1957, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip made a visit to Hull. During their visit, the Royals toured many different areas of the city, including the Sailors' Children's Society, St Andrew’s Docks, a council estate, the University, Kingston General Hospital and the King George Dock. This film is part of the Humberside Police collection, and members of this force were responsible for security during the Queen’s visit.
The film opens outside of Hammonds store and the Magistrates Court, both draped in red flags with ‘E.R.’ on them. Some workmen use ladders to put up decorations on the Docks Offices (now the Maritime Museum) in Queen Victoria Square. Pedestrians and traffic pass by in front of Hammonds store on Prospect Street and Jameson Street.
A train then arrives at the railway station, and the Queen and Prince Philip disembark. They are greeted by Lord Middleton, Lord Lieutenant of the East Riding, and Lady Middleton, and the Lord Mayor Alderman Kneeshaw. There are photographers who have turned up to document the event and who can be seen in the background. The Queen and Prince Philip then greet more civic dignitaries, including Herbert Morrison, and Mr Brocklehurst, the Sheriff, before making their way off the platform. They are escorted by men in traditional costume who carry a sword and a mace.
A large crowd has gathered in front of the Royal Station Hotel. As the Queen emerges, she inspects lines of uniform soldiers in Paragon Square. After the inspection, the parade makes its way through the streets of Hull. Flag-waving crowds line the pavements, and some stand on lorries of ‘Lead Pipe and Sheet Makers.’ The Queen’s car finally arrives at the back entrance of St Andrew’s Docks, and a crowd looks on. Here the Queen and Prince Philip greet more officers and other dignitaries representative of the fishing industry. The Queen is shown the ship ‘H238 Princess Elizabeth’, and Prince Philip meets some fishermen as they unload their catch on board. He speaks to one of the fish traders in St Andrew’s Docks. The Mayor and other dignitaries escort the Queen through the Iceland Fish Quay to re-join Prince Philip, and together from the Fishermen Medical Centre, they wave to a trawler as it departs.
The car carrying the Queen and Prince Philip makes its way through the streets which are lined with children and adults waving Union Jacks as the car passes. It is then onto the University where all the staff, students and onlookers are lined up outside waiting for the Queen’s arrival. Some African students are in traditional costume. The Queen’s car arrives with a police motorbike escort. The Queen is again welcomed by Lord Middleton, this time as Chancellor of the University. More people wait to see the Queen, including a number of Commonwealth students, as she re-emerges from the University building and walks past them with her entourage. A large group in wheelchairs wait at the entrance of one of the University’s buildings.
The Queen then moves further along Cottingham Road to the Sailor’s Children Society. Here she is greeted by large welcoming banners. A crowd wait, and a there is a procession by a group of sailors. One of the boys, who is wearing a pirate’s outfit, poses for the camera. Children sit holding Union Jacks, and several of the children are in wheelchairs. The Queen’s car passes by while onlookers wave, and when it comes to a stop, the boy in a pirate’s outfit greets the Queen and Prince Philip with gifts. The Royals remain seated in the car. They then continue on past the sailors who stand in line and at attention.
The Royal tour continues along Cottingham Road and down Beverley Road to the city centre. It passes by nurses and patients from Kingston General Hospital who watch from the kerbside. They pass through Prospect Street on the way to the Royal Infirmary. Outside the Hospital, nurses and other staff line up in readiness. On arrival the Queen and Prince Philip greet the staff, and the Queen walks around the wards meeting patients. They leave the Hospital and return to their car parked opposite Noël Kay shop.
They then continue along King Edward Street, through Queen Victoria Square past Queen’s Gardens and onto the Guildhall for lunch. The Queen arrives to a large crowd of onlookers waving. Inside the Guildhall a flower display has been put on for the occasion. The Queen and Prince Philip sign the Visitor’s Book with the date May 18th 1957. Outside a brass band plays as the Queen and Prince Philip emerge from the balcony and wave to the crowd.
After leaving the Guildhall, the Queen and Prince Philip next visit a Hostel for aged people on Holderness Road. They are accompanied by Alderman John Dunbar, Chairman of the Welfare Services Committee. They then make their way, past the empty freight wagons by the side of the road, to the newly constructed King George Dock. Again crowds wait behind barriers and opposite the large cranes. The long entourage of cars leaves the docks continues onto the Bilton Grange Council Housing Estate. The Queen pays a surprise visit to one of its residents. From there the Queen and Prince Philip go to East Park where they were greeted by 15,000 children from various uniformed organisations. First the Queen greets the leaders of the organisations before she receives a bouquet from a Girl Guide. The Queen and Prince Philip then get into the Royal Land Rover to inspect those gathered. The Royals stand up in the car as they are driven around, and the children wave their hats in the air.
The last stop on the tour is the Corporation Pier from where the Queen receives a Naval Guard of Honour. The Queen bids farewell to the Lord Mayor and Mayoress before boarding the Royal Barge to take her and Prince Philip to the Royal Yacht, Britannia. From the shore, the Yacht can be seen as it turns and heads off for the North Sea and to a State Visit to Denmark.
The End
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This film is one of a large number of films donated to the YFA by Humberside Police. Many of these were made by Humberside Police themselves, although it isn’t sure if this is one of them as there are no credits. There is however another film of the same visit, on 18 May 1957, more focused on the Queen’s visit to the Newland Estate, which was held by the Sailors’ Families’ Society based there. This latter film was definitely made by Humberside Police, specifically by Det. Sgt. W E Jacketts who made many films for Humberside Police in the 1950s – see Tomorrow is too Late (1952). There is another film of a visit by the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh21 years later, with almost the same title, Royal Visits Hull, only this includes a second visit by Prince Charles. There are also films of earlier visits to Hull by a reigning monarch, when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen mother visited in 1937, and again, in very different circumstances, in August 1941 to inspect the devastation caused by German bombing.
By this time the Queen had been on the throne for four years and the Royal couple had become accomplished in their role touring in Britain and abroad. Although referred to here as Prince, Philip had in fact renounced being a Prince at the time of his marriage to Princess Elizabeth in 1947, and the Queen only bestowed this title back the same year as this visit to Hull, in 1957. The film shows many defining places in Hull at that time, and is usefully compared with The East Riding made two years later in 1959, and which shows many of the same places. Perhaps an even more illuminating contrast though is with Hull Street Scenes made later that same year by Hull University studentJohn Turner, which portrays quite a different side of Hull at that time.
In fact many of the places that the Queen and Prince Philip visit appear in other films on YFA Online: see, for example,St Andrews Fish Dock (1962), Humber Highway (1956) and the films of the Sailor’s Children Society, and the Contexts for these films for background information.
One place that doesn’t feature anywhere else is Bilton Grange Council Housing Estate. This was clearly a time when it was thought a good idea for the Queen to visit ordinary council estates: she visited one at Speke, in Liverpool, around the same time as this. One of those there at the time, Danny Windever, gives an account of how the Queen visited the home of his school mate, Jimmy Fitzo, who, having had plenty of advance warning, had the house done out with new furniture for the occasion. One imagines something similar for this occasion too: Royal visits leave nothing much to chance and are planned well in advance (there are also plenty of stories of how council’s have spent large sums of money revamping places only for the Queen to drive past hardly noticing).
Bilton Grange Estate, in East Hull, had been a rural area until into the twentieth century – Bilton means ‘Billa’s farmstead (Billa ton). It divides into an old and a new part, with the new estate one of several built during the late 1950s and 1960s. It is certainly not one of the more run down housing estates, being near East Park and the Garden Village. It may simply have been chosen simply because it was in the area that the Queen was touring, which is mostly in East Hull – including the £1m George V docks opened by the Queen’s grandfather. Two years before this visit the film It’s a Great Day (1955), featuring the TV Grove family, has them visited by Princess Margaret having just built a new housing estate. (Sue Townsend has a funny take on this in her novel, The Queen and I (1992), which imagines a republican government forcing the Queen to live in a housing estate on benefits).
What is certain though is that the Queen would have received a warm response. Since opinion polls were started in the early 1950s there has never been less than 70% of the public in favour of retaining the monarchy. It might be thought that inequality, and the kind of poverty revealed in John Turner’s film, would breed resentment towards the Royal family. A significant minority no doubt do feel something like this, but that this is not greater has been the subject of much analysis. One such explanation is provided by Andrzej Olechnowicz, who argues that: “People have a compelling psychological need to think and feel in an unequal society money does not buy freedom and happiness, and that those without money can be freer and happier than those with it, and the public face of royal life allows them to do just that. In short, ordinary people have supported the Royal Family because they have been able to sympathise with it.” (Olechnowicz, p 285)
Whatever the merits of this argument as at least part of the explanation, what Olechnowicz’s paper does show is the enormous influence the media can have in shaping people’s perceptions of the Royal Family. Ever since the advent of cine film the Royal Family have been filmed, have become accustomed to this, and have used it to their advantage – Jeffrey Richard’s provides an account of how the Royal Family were persistently followed by the newsreels, such as Pathé and Movietone, from the First World War through to the 1960s. This film adds to this collection, although without the same distorting editing and commentary that accompanies these newsreels, specifically designed for showing in cinemas.
References
Andrzej Olechnowicz (ed.), The Monarchy and British Nation, 1780 to the Present, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Andrzej Olechnowicz, ‘‘A Jealous Hatred’: royal popularity and social inequality’, Ibid.
Jeffrey Richard, ‘The monarchy and film 1900-2006’, Ibid.
John Markham, Streets of Hull: a history of their names, Highgate, Beverley, 1998.
Duration:
41 mins 13 secs |
 16mm |
 Combined Magnetic |
 Colour |
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1 Comment
My mum is on this video . 16 mins and 24 seconds in . Curtsying to the queen as a nurse . Amazing . We have always had still photos of this moment , but never seen a clip . Sadly , she is dead now , but would have been tickled pink ! Thank you Duncan Hayes .
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