Tour Audio a Kingston upon Hull

Hull was founded in the 12th century as Wyke, a wool port established by monks, and King Edward I acquired it in 1293 and renamed it King's Town upon Hull, establishing the pattern of royal involvement that would define the city's history. During the English Civil War, Hull's Parliament-controlled arsenal made it strategically critical, and the King was famously turned away from its gates in 1642. The city became Britain's third-largest port by the 19th century, its trawling fleet ranging as far as Iceland and Greenland, and the fish docks at St Andrew's Quay were the most productive in Europe.

William Wilberforce was born in 1759 in a merchant's house on High Street, which is now a museum.

He became MP for Hull at 21 and spent the next 46 years arguing in Parliament against the slave trade, eventually seeing the Slave Trade Act pass in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833, three days before he died. The city holds Wilberforce with a reverence that has occasionally verged on the possessive, but his actual birthplace museum on High Street and the Wilberforce Way long-distance trail from Hull to Brough are genuinely thoughtful engagements with his legacy.