Hard graft and ghost stories: Running Hull’s ‘forgotten’ pub

LONELY ICON: Work going on around the Whittington & Cat

Chewing the Fat, a column by Phil Ascough

This week’s venue: Whittington & Cat

It’s far from being the only pub in Hull to have its fair share of ghost stories, but Gill Ralph is more fearful of the pantomime which has dogged the Whittington & Cat for the last six years.

She’s looking forward to the day later this year when the curtain finally comes down on the Castle Street roadworks which have caused so much disruption to businesses in the city centre and traffic movements across the country.

After a false start in 2025 she is hopeful of putting those panto villains behind her, but also nervous of them announcing yet more delays.

“I set out my plans to survive the five years and we did that,” said Gill.

“But towards the end they said it would be another year. My heart sank and I just felt panic about whether we could last another year.”

It was December 2024 that National Highways admitted the works, scheduled for completion in spring 2025, would continue for another year because of “extremely challenging ground conditions”.

Gill was distraught, and fearful that her pub would succumb to extremely challenging trading conditions, diversions, noise and physical impact on a building believed to date back to the 1830s. As we chat in the restaurant we have to pause occasionally, our conversation drowned out by a combination of drilling, hammering and digging in Commercial Road outside.

I ask Gill what they’re doing. She replies: “No idea. I gave up asking a long time ago.”

‘MY HEART SANK WHEN THEY SAID IT WOULD TAKE ANOTHER YEAR’: Gill Ralph, right, with Tia and some of their team at the Whittington & Cat

That the business survives at all is down to the hard work of Gill and her team in running the bar, restaurant and rooms to the high standards which attract guests who book in for Hull mini-breaks, shows at Connexin Live, visits to boat owners at the marina, and business meetings at Arco, Smith & Nephew and other companies.

But Gill is quick to add that the Whittington & Cat is nowhere near as profitable as it should be – lest National Highways try to use her relative success as an excuse to avoid paying a few quid to soften the impact of nearly six years of disruption.

Gill fell into the pub by accident, calling in when she was fundraising for the ice hockey juniors to try and get support from the previous owner, Sue Perkins, and agreeing to work two nights a week.

When the tidal surge of 2013 forced the pub to close, Sue became disillusioned, decided to focus on her other businesses and leased the Whittington & Cat to Gill, who bought it in 2020.

For eight years Gill ran the pub alongside her day job of learning development manager at Hull City Council. In August 2023 she put all her effort into keeping her own business afloat.

‘WE USED TO BE CONNECTED’: The roadworks that have cut the pub off for six years

“I have put a lot into it,” she said.

“My own money. It would have made me ill if I’d just sat here waiting for compensation. It would be nice to get something because the roadworks have nearly finished us and caused a lot of damage to the building but I don’t think we’ll get anything.”

Some of my fondest food and drink memories are rooted in the Whittington & Cat. Fish and chips and a pint before catching a train to London in 2014 on the eve of Hul City’s FA Cup Final. But the roadworks have put paid to any notions of a quick dash to Paragon Station.

And the weekend of Freedom Festival and the Clipper Race in 2009. We took the kids to watch Alesha Dixon and Pixie Lott, binned Peter Andre for a lovely late lunch at the Whittington & Cat, and then headed back to the marina to catch a cracking show by Paul Carrack and his band. Could be wrong but, as I recall, the day was made all the more special by Castle Street being closed – not for roadworks but so people could walk across or along it, sit on it, lie on it, dance on it.

TROUBLED HISTORY: A man called Wood, the original owner of the pub, who hanged himself on the premises

“We’re expecting a big difference when Sesh and Freedom come around,” said Gill.

“We used to get very busy with those before the roadworks. We’re still close enough but many people have forgotten we’re here. Others try to work out how they can get here but many give up. The full road closure meant we lost all our clientele from the city centre.”

It’s a smart pub. Modern café bar furnishings in one room, more traditional pub restaurant style in the other, and the nine plush rooms upstairs – two singles, one twin, one apartment and five doubles. A team of eight staff plus Tia, an ever curious Lhasa Apso named after Gill’s favourite tipple.

The menu is interesting and varied enough to have secured a booking for our next business supper club. Classic pub food but up a few notches, with plenty of vegetarian, vegan and GF options. The coffee alone makes it worth a visit, and there’s stacks of parking just yards away.

There’s also a long and occasionally grisly history. Gill can tell you about the original owner, a man called Wood, who apparently hanged himself on the premises. His daughter died when she fell down the steps into the cellar.

ROOM WITHOUT A VIEW: Gill in one of the guest rooms

As part of the preparations for the roadworks, archaeologists sensitively excavated nearly 10,000 bodies from Trinity Burial Ground across the road from the pub. All were subsequently re-buried within the grounds, but when Gill tells stories of a ghost in the cellar who keeps turning the gas off, and her staff seeing people who disappear, there’ll be a long list of suspects.

Originally known as the Whittington Inn, and with the original tiles still outside to prove it, the Whittington & Cat has been used as a coroner’s court and once had a slaughterhouse for a neighbour.

But over the last six years it’s become a forgotten pub. Gill said: “The work dates back before Covid. They built the bridge and then started on the road, but then it stopped because of Covid. They resumed, but only in small groups. We were closed anyway but when we were able to open all the piling started and that’s where we still are now.

“We send all our guests emails informing them that they have to use a different postcode to find us because of the diversions. We used to get people in who were staying at the Ibis but the roadworks have left us isolated from everything. It will make a big difference when they’re finished and we’re linked up again. It will be phenomenal.

“The management from Balfour Beatty, who are working on the road, stay here as well. I want them to keep coming when it’s finished so they can see the difference it makes.”