Cecile Oxall
On Wednesday 8th November 1932, Alderman John Malcolm Dossor JP and his wife Edith Kate Dossor (née Brittain) of 135 Westbourne Avenue attended The Guildhall for what was to be the culmination of his career in civic life: his installation as Lord Mayor of Hull for 1932 and hers as Lady Mayoress.
They had been living at 135 Westbourne Avenue for twenty-seven years. Also on that avenue were some houses that were reminders of another career of the new Lord Mayor; as a professional architect and surveyor, he had designed those houses and others in The Avenues. Although he had not designed the house in which he was living, it had 'many internal features of his design.") He was also the architect and renovator of many buildings in other parts of the East Riding of Yorkshire and in Grimsby and Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire.
Sebastian Neal
James Neal was an avenues resident for over fifty years. He moved to Hull from north London in 1958 to take up a post at the Regional College of Art as Lecturer in Painting and Drawing. ‘You’ll enjoy Hull – the docks and the shipping’, one of his former teachers at the Royal College of Art, the Yorkshireman R.V. Pitchforth told him.
Martyn Chalk
John Leslie Martin lived at 8 Pearson Park from 1934-1937 while he was Head of the Hull School of Architecture. He was a significant architect who went on to head the design team for the Royal Festival Hall, was chief architect for London County Council, and master planner for Leicester University among many other achievements. He was made Professor of Architecture at Cambridge University where the Martin Institute at Cambridge is still active. He was knighted in 1957. In Hull he is represented by the grade two listed Middleton Hall at the University of Hull.
Pauline Coyle
John Clappison was born on 27 June 1937 in a room above the family butcher’s shop on Anlaby Road, (the shop was demolished when the Great Thornton Estate was built). He was an only child and he remembers playing with other children in the area during the Blitz. At 13 he attended Hull High School for Arts and Crafts (now the Avenues Adult Education Centre). This was built in 1888 and designed by John Bilson, a prominent local architect, in the Flemish Renaissance style. John started school there on 26 April 1950. His family had moved to Hornsea when he was twelve so attending school involved a long journey. He travelled along the old Hull to Hornsea railway line to the Botanic Gardens station. There were some rules at the Art School. "When I decided to adopt a rather Bohemian style of dress and went to school in shorts, yellow socks and brothel-creepers, the headmaster noticed. After looking me up and down he said, ‘Don’t come to school in these again Clappison.’ I may have gone a little too far that time.'”
