Streetlife Museum

Streetlife Museum is located in Hull’s Museums Quarter and is the most popular of Hull’s free museums. It’s not difficult to see why as Streetlife tells the fascinating story of 200 years of transport in Hull. Children will love boarding the old trams, getting their bones shaken on the simulated mail coach ride and be surprised at the sights, sounds and even smells of an old coaching yard. There’s plenty for adults as well with extensive displays of early motorcars, bicycles and a pre war replica street scene.

Upon entering, the visitor is met with two original trams, one being the last surviving tram in Hull colours. Visitors then make their way through an original bicycle workshop, complete with tools and cycles before reaching the Motor Car Gallery. This features a corridor full of both petrol and steam cars from the earliest days of motoring. Following the museum around one reaches a reconstructed streetscene from the 1930s, featuring a bicycle shop, a chemists filled with drugs and ointments and a cooperative store which is based on one originally opened in 1914.

Whilst on the ground floor, don’t miss Priestman’s Engine, located underneath a stairwell. It was built in the 1880s by Hull’s own William Priestman, a man whose technical skill was matched by his tenacity to achieve where others had failed. The engine he built was the first in the world to successfully run on paraffin, a heavy fraction of oil. This technological breakthrough was several years before Germany’s Otto Diesel invented a similar engine, one with which we are so familiar today.

Going up to the first floor of the museum, you will find an interesting gallery which looks at the history and development of the bicycle. It even features a Hobby Horse cycle from 1818, one of the very earliest precursors to modern bicycles. The exhibition also shows how Hull became known as ‘Bicycle City’, a label which due to its flatness remains as relevant today as ever. Indeed, in the 2001 census, nearly 12% of people in the city said they cycled to work.  This compared to the UK average of just 2.8%. The poet Philip Larkin summed up the ambivalence he felt towards his adopted city when he said:

The carriage gallery, also on the first floor, is reputed to be one of the best public collections of carriages in the country and is the most recent exhibit in the Museum. It cleverly uses sounds, smells and movement to give an insight into how horses and carriages used to operate. Make sure the children don’t miss the simulated Hull-York mail coach ride, bumps, neighs and drivers shouts included!

Back down on the ground floor, take a look at an original railway signal box complete with levers and buttons. It was uprooted in its entirety from its original location just outside Hull before being installed in the Museum. This is complemented by a reconstructed scene from a goods loading yard based on the Victorian Hull and Barnsley Railway. This line was built amidst some controversy in 1885 largely to bring coal to Hull from the South Yorkshire collieries. The coal was then exported through Alexandra Dock which was built at the same time specifically for this purpose. The Hull and Barnsley line was to prove the last substantial new railway to be built in Britain and was built as a high level line running around the town. Tracing the course of the remaining raised embankments through the city is a fascinating reminder of this period.