Revival - Back to Life

The Heritage Fund supports Hull Minster’s new project

Hull Minster has been granted £248K by the Heritage Fund to build our team of volunteers and bring stories of Holy Trinity’s past back to life. We’ll be recruiting a Volunteering Manager, reporting to Reverend Rob Suekarran, to oversee all the volunteer activity including recruitment, training and day to day management. 

During lockdown a team of volunteers worked together with Jane Owen researching themes and stories which would be interesting for the public and help the Minster get back on its feet after the pandemic. They put together talks, resources and trails which you can enjoy on the website. Next, using finds from the excavated burial ground at Castle Street and artefacts from Hull Minster’s own collection, they will develop their ideas into visitor resources with stories, audio and digital exhibits and hands on activities. These will be supported by material from the archives and library books. We hope this will bring visitors back us and give them an insight to church life in years gone by. 

The project will also pay to restore eight of the Minster’s historic monuments and the biographies of those commemorated will be told. Famous Hull citizens such as Nicoluiz Anderson, Vicar of Holy Trinity in 1661, John Alderson, the surgeon general of Hull who opened a medical school in the 1800’s and Anthony Somerscales, the church warden who carried out building restoration in the early 1800’s and found the Unknown Lady effigy; they will all be restored to glory. 

The rare medieval glass in the vicar’s vestry will be restored and moved to a new public setting with digital interpretation. Working with Dr Louise Hampson from the University of York’s Department for Christianity and Culture to design the visitor resources, the volunteers will learn how to do audio description, record oral histories, and write and research articles and trails. There will also be training in being a tour guide for those who want to take that step and training in heritage care and cleaning. We hope to recruit lots of new volunteers to the Minster through this work over the coming year. 

Paid internships for students will be available as part of the project and the University of Hull Department of Education Teaching and Childhood studies will be using Hull Minster as a teaching resource, making sure that the young teachers know how to use the rich and varied resources a church has to offer. 

Canon Dominic Black said “This project will help us get back to life as normal at the Minster. A new Volunteering Manager will help to recruit and train people so it's an exciting time to be developing the visitor activities. The history of Hull is reflected everywhere in the Minster and now we are going to tell those stories far and wide.” 

To find out more about the heritage of Hull Minster and explore some of the existing projects and online resources click at the top of the page - history and heritage , or you can ask one of our heritage volunteers about it. John Lawson, Michael Free, Lesley Longworth, Pat Nendick, Jean Fenwick, Sue Mc Gaw, Phillipa Wray, Barry Oakley, Margaret Nicholson and Joan Lee, Don and Olwen Knibb have all helped out with research, focus groups and putting the project together, along with Dr Marianne Gilchrist a local researcher and Dr Louise Hampson at the University of York.  

Jane Owen jane@hullminster.org