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Humber Dock was built along the lines of Hull’s medieval town walls.

The city’s town walls were built in the 1300s to protect Hull from invasion and attack. At the time, Hull was one of the most important ports in the country. 

This photograph from the Hull Museums Collections shows two people standing in front of ‘the Watergate’ on Humber Street, once the entrance to Hull through the city’s southern Town Wall.

The walls surrounded the Old Town to the north, west and south, with the River Hull providing protection from the east. Around five million bricks are thought to have been used in their construction, making this one of the largest brickwork structures in medieval England.

Hollar’s 1642 map of Hull, from the Hull Museum’s Collection, shows the old Town Walls surrounding the city.

When Hull’s ‘Town Docks’ were built in the late 1700s and early 1800s, they followed the lines of the city’s historic Town Walls. The walls themselves were reduced in height and buried by material leftover from the building works,

This photo from the Hull Museums Collections was taken in 1941, and shows damage caused by Second World War bombing raids.