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Our people / Hessle Road, Hull
The Women of Hessle Road
Everyday strength. Extraordinary community.A community that stood togetherWorking lives worth recordingWomen behind the counterThe names in family albums
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An imagined heritage illustration · Read the history and share your own story below.
Your part of the story
Which memorycomes to mind?
Choose a starting point. A few sentences are enough.
A community that stood together ↗Working lives worth recording ↗Women behind the counter ↗The names in family albums ↗
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Opens your email app. Add photographs and send to info@hessleroad.com, including names, approximate dates and permission to publish.
A growing community archive · New content every week
Celebrate the women of Hessle Road, from the 1968 safety campaign to shopkeeping, family life and community support. Help preserve their names and stories.
01
A community that stood together
In 1968, women from the Hessle Road fishing community campaigned for safer conditions at sea after the loss of three Hull trawlers. Lillian Bilocca, Yvonne Blenkinsop, Mary Denness and Christine Smallbone, later Christine Jensen, are remembered as the four leaders of the Headscarf Revolutionaries.Read the full Headscarf Revolutionaries story →A memory to share
Does your family have a memory or document connected to the campaign?Email this memory →
02
Working lives worth recording
Hull History Centre’s account records that Lillian Bilocca worked as a cod skinner after leaving school. Her story connects the famous campaign with an ordinary working life. We want to preserve more women’s own accounts of their jobs, skills and working days.A memory to share
What work did the women in your family do, and where?Email this memory →
03
Women behind the counter
Henry Hird’s business history records Yvonne Smith taking over the shop in 1997, having also worked as a midwife and district nurse. One life can connect several kinds of service. Who else should the archive remember?A memory to share
Tell us about a woman who ran, worked in or helped a local business.Email this memory →
04
The names in family albums
Not every important life appears in a newspaper. A family photograph can preserve a neighbour, friend, relative or volunteer whose story deserves to be told. We are inviting names, dates and memories so that people are remembered as individuals.A memory to share
Who would you like us to remember, and why?Email this memory →Sources & illustration notes
The women in the new illustration are imagined people, not portraits of the four campaign leaders or of Yvonne Smith. Symbolic scenes introduce memory themes; they do not document a particular event.
Hull History Centre: Remembering Lillian Bilocca, by Brian W. Lavery ↗
Henry Hird Jewellers: business and family history ↗
Follow another thread
More people. More stories.
New illustrated story
Shops & people
Behind the Shop Counter
The people behind the familiar names.Explore & remember →
New illustrated story
Skills & creativity
Made on Hessle Road
Skilled hands. Local stories. A creative future.Explore & remember →Explore all 18 illustrated stories →
Our community. Our story.
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