City’s history and culture is celebrated by Heritage Open Days event
A free glossy brochure will help guide people to Hull’s fascinating history during the annual Heritage Open Days festival(Image: heritageopendays.org.uk)
Heritage Open Days (HODS), a festival that sees tours, walks and talks about unusual and historic locations around Hull, makes its return in September. The programme for 2026 includes over 100 guided walks, open buildings and more to help connect people to the past.
HODS is Europe’s major heritage project celebrating history and culture and was launched over 30 years ago. In the Hull area, the project has grown steadily over the past 12 years and is recognised by the co-ordinators, the National Trust, as offering one of the “biggest and best” programmes in the country.
Locally, John Netherwood and his wife, Christine, continue to derive pleasure from sharing what Hull has to offer to residents and visitors to the area alike. John said: “It is still a privilege to be able to promote our beautiful city, which has undergone such a massive change over the past few years.
“Many major projects have been completed this year, including the recent reopening of the Maritime Museum after a six-year restoration project, and the restoration of the Arctic Corsair, about to return to its permanent new berth. Not to mention the huge redevelopment of our spacious and beautiful Queens Gardens – once Britain’s largest enclosed dock – an oasis of calm, in our bustling city, and very recently reopened to the public.
“Hull can now be proud to be seen as a major tourist destination, taking up its recent accolade as one of the 25 best places in the world to visit, according to National Geographic Magazine.” John said the HODS festival in Hull this year would be offering a programme of over 100 guided walks, open buildings and historical talks, all being staged by “an army of over 100 dedicated volunteers”.
All these are showcased in the award-winning annual HODS brochure, a glossy magazine of over 70 pages and available across the city’s museums, libraries and tourist information offices, and free to pick up. John said 5,000 copies had been printed and made available for HODS, which runs from September 11 to 20.
“It continues to be an enjoyable year-round project for us, collating and publicising the work of all these people, many of whom have become friends over the years,” said John. All of the brochure entries are fascinating to the Netherwoods and destined to be so to all of the people who digest the contents and seek out some of their own favourites during HODS.
For John this year, a highlight for him is Zoo Keepers Yard, a stonemasons in Hutt Street, off Spring Bank. The entry says: “The Zoo Keepers Yard is a working fireplace factory, stonemasons yard and sculpture studio owned and operated by the Gomersall Partnership, historic building restoration specialists based in Hull.”
The award-winning stone specialists have worked on many of the Grade I-listed buildings in the region, including Hull Minster, Lincoln Cathedral and Beverley Minster. The recently restored workshops and yard are located opposite the site of the former Zoological Gardens and Keepers House (1840-61) and were brought back from dereliction in 2022 by the Gomersall Partnership.
“The rebirth of the yard as a commercial and creative premises has developed to become a celebration of Hull’s old Zoological Gardens and includes several displays of old posters and maps from the former zoo as well as a few quirky features to enjoy,” the description says. “However, the yard was originally built as a cow keepers yard and dairy to the rear of 45 & 46 Hutt Street (now both separate properties) sometime after the Zoological Gardens closed, possibly in the 1880s.
“They went on to become early taxi garages up to the 1920s and latterly a builders yard for three generations of the Dalby family.” More top picks for John are the St Charles Borromeo Catholic Church with its “wonderfully decorated interior”; HMP Hull, in Hedon Road, with its “interesting, if gruesome” museum, and a planned talk at the Ferens Art Gallery about the building of the Humber Bridge by the man who led the project, a “rare opportunity to hear straight from the horse’s mouth of the challenges and triumphs”.
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