3. Paragon Interchange

Arriving in Hull for the first time, Larkin's train, 'Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows/ And traffic all night north..' eventually brought him here. 'When your train comes to rest in Paragon Station against a row of docile buffers,' he observed, 'you alight with an end-of-the-line sense of freedom'. He captured one of his more memorable departures from Hull in his celebrated 1958 poem, 'The Whitsun Weddings', an extract of which is inscribed on the base of the nearby statue of Larkin. When he first left this station, he was greeted by a very different city from the one you see today, as Hull had been massively bombed in World War II and was undergoing an extensive rebuilding programme The fish docks in the west and the cargo docks to the east were booming, all supported by a huge rail network. Larkin commented that the city was '… a little chilly and smells of fish'. Leaving the station and crossing busy Ferensway, Larkin's 'large town' begins to open up. Postcode: HU1 3UF Geocodes: GPS (WGS84) Co-ordinates Latitude: 53° 44.6209 Longitude: 0° 20.7510 OS Co-ordinates Easting: 509195 Northing: 509195 Image © Joe Johnson

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