It's now Hull's cultural quarter, but does the Fruit Market's revival impress its former traders?

Early one slightly wintry spring morning, Hull’s Fruit Market is just waking up. The metal shutters are still down on most of the restaurants in Humber Street, but one building in particular is attracting the attention of two old friends, Phil Hough and Dennis Butler.

“Look at that,” says Phil pointing to a newly slated roof. “I wonder how much that cost them? When I left, there were more holes than roof and more pigeons than lettuces.”

Phil and Dennis were two of dozens of fruit and veg wholesalers who once plied their trade on Humber Street. Just a short hop from the centre of Hull, it had been a trading post for 200 years, but in 2009, after years of wrangling with the city council, the end finally came.

“The truth is they had wanted us out for years. We’d become an eyesore,” says Phil, who started working at the Fruit Market in 1960s after dabbling in the second hand car market. Dennis calls him the Max Bygraves of the fruit and veg world because of his ability to spin a yarn. “When it became clear that the end was nigh, we told them that we would move if the new site and the money was right. There was one meeting when they tried to threaten us with a compulsory purchase order, but I’d done my research. I knew they couldn’t do that. We got up and walked out. I don’t think they were expecting that.”

However, this was the early noughties when pots of Government cash were still swilling round the coffers of the now defunct Regional Development Agencies. Standing their ground, the wholesalers eventually secured a generous deal to move and a brand new site a couple of miles out of town.

Originally the plan had been to demolish most of the old warehouses and build a new £100m residential and retail development. However, by the time Phil, Dennis and the rest of the traders moved out, the recession had well and truly bitten and those ambitious plans were put on hold. Hull wasn’t alone. Building sites across the country were mothballed, but with the Fruit Market fast turning into a ghost town, a few of Hull’s creative types decided they could make use of the empty buildings.

The arts and music venue Fruit was the first to open followed by a number of galleries and craft businesses. They have since been joined by bars and restaurants, which give a nod to the area’s previous life, including Butler Whites, which takes it’s name from Dennis’ old place and the wholesalers next door.

“We’ve eaten there haven’t we Phil? And very nice it was too. Nothing to do with me mind, but it’s good to see the old buildings actually being used. Despite all that had happened we didn’t just want the place to crumble into history.

“The people of Hull have always had an entrepreneurial spirit and when everything ground to a halt it gave the place a new direction. If the recession hadn’t happened we probably wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”

Where we’re sitting is Thieving Harry’s, a cafe which has been set up in the old Gibson Bishop premises by the grandson of one of the Fruit Market’s most colourful characters.

“He wasn’t a thief as such, more what you’d call a wheeler dealer,” says Phil, who over the years has also emerged as the Fruit Market’s unofficial historian. “He would try to sell you apples for £12 when they were really worth £6. You knew whenever you were dealing with Harry that he’d try to get one over on you. It kept you sharp.”

As the wholesalers prepared to move out, Hull’s Freedom Festival moved in. The weekend-long music and performance arts event, named in honour of the slave trade abolitionist and son of Hull, William Wilberforce, took over the streets of the Fruit Market. It was a sign of things to come.

With most of the old premises now open again, the Fruit Market has emerged as the natural hub for Hull City of Culture 2017. It provided the backdrop for the New’s Year Day firework display, the Humber Street Gallery recently celebrated the work of the anarchic art collective Coum Transmission and in the coming months there will be exhibitions called The Raft of Medusa and the Worm Festival.

“We were watching fireworks at New Year too, only ours were out in Tenerife,” says Dennis. He and Phil have apartments on the island and holiday with their wives four times a year. Neither have been to any City of Culture events, but when you get up at 3am and are in bed by 9pm six nights a week it doesn’t leave much room for art. “I think it will be a good thing for Hull though. You get the sense that people are really behind it, but it’s really for the younger ones.”

Well maybe, but returning to the Fruit Market after all these years has at least caused them to reminisce about an important chapter in Hull’s history.

“It wasn’t a life for everyone,” says Phil, who still runs Associated Growers. “There aren’t a lot of young lads prepared to get up before sunrise six days a week, but it gave Dennis and I and a few others a good income. Humber Street was the fruit and veg equivalent of the stock exchange. There were little wooden huts right there where the deals were done.

“At its height we were sending lorry loads of veg right across the country and would easily shift 20,000 lettuces a week. Those days are gone, but it’s not the things you miss so much as the banter, that’s what you can’t replace.”

There was a good life to be had, although the bookmakers at the end of the street and the boozers, which opened early doors, meant some of the wholesalers ended up taking home a lot less than they earned.

“The truth was that by the end there wasn’t much left for us other than nostalgia,” says Phil. “Any sadness we might have felt at having to leave had gone a long time before we actually packed up. Because we’d known we were going we’d all stopped spending money on our buildings and if I’m honest it was pretty grim. Nothing like it is now.”

Walking back to the car park, past some street furniture which has been designed to represent fruit and veg pallets, although not any Phil and Dennis recognise the pair aren’t sure when they will next wander down Humber Street.

“It would have been cheaper for them to pull it all down you know,” says Phil, pointing out the old trades club where many an hour was lost to a game of snooker. “It’s nice they have kept the buildings, but lord knows what they must have spent on rescuing the place.

“It’s good to have been part of its history, but the Fruit Market lives on. The business isn’t what it was. It all changed with the arrival of the big supermarkets and discount stores like Aldi and Lidl which use fruit and veg as loss leaders. We’re both of the 1948 vintage, but we are still going and we won’t retire will we Dennis? This business is in our blood. Besides, what else would we do, watch Jeremy Kyle?”