LOW NOON

	The Homethorpe cluster of tower blocks on Hull’s Orchard Park Estate, a few seconds before noon on Sunday 14th July, 2002. From left to right are Bridgeman House, Vernon House, and Drake House. Drake, at 167ft (51m), is the smallest unit. It is bound with what looks like giant black tape.
	A siren sounds and, on the dot of the hour, a muffled explosion is heard. Immediately, the building crumbles at its base.
	Faster than this amateur snapper was prepared for, the 17-floor structure is reduced to a cloud of dust.
	The billow rises up the side of the adjacent blocks but, remarkably quickly, even the dust surge is gone – though the car parked in the middle ground probably needed a wash!

As Drake House tumbled, two blocks of the estate’s Milldane cluster were also demolished. These received the main focus of local and media attention, not least because a popular public house nestled in the shadow of one of the units. The pub escaped with hardly a scratch.

Drake House was generally liked by its residents. Conveniently placed for shops and public transport, the building was in good condition and only halfway through its practical life. At the invitation of a group challenging the proposal to demolish, some students at the city’s School of Architecture drew up innovative plans to reconfigure Drake’s floor layouts for improved accommodation and mixed use.

However, this was a time when the Hull City Council was under increasing pressure from Central Government to reduce its social housing stock. A citizens’ jury was set up to debate the issue of demolition (mainly of Drake House), but the decision had already been made. At noon that July day, a lot of addresses were removed forever.

Vernon House was originally to be demolished together with Drake House and the two Milldane blocks in 2002. As residents were being rehoused, and with D-Day approaching, it was realised that no arrangements had been made for resiting the complex of communications antennae that covered the roof of the building and which provided lease income. As a result of this expensive oversight, the tower block was not demolished until Sunday 27th June, 2004.

Completed in the late 1960s, the Homethorpe blocks were given names during a refurbishment programme around the early 1990s. Also, controlled entry and a 24-hour concierge service were introduced. Vernon acquired a concentration of tenants, many of them young, who were barely or inadequately prepared for accepting social responsibilities. The Council’s housing allocations policy must be regarded as a factor, but the reputation of Vernon House was perhaps sealed by the local media’s regular and unhelpful attachment of the adjective ‘notorious’ to the name whenever an incident was reported.


	There was only the one attraction that day [Picture 2]. A pupil from the nearby primary school pushed the plunger. His action detonated some 1200 charges to release 30 kilos of carefully placed explosive, reducing the 210ft (64m) high 22-storey tower block (the joint tallest residential building in the city) to a 15,000 tonnes pile of rubble deposited within its own curtilage [Pictures 3 to 9]. Diggers were soon picking away at the heap [Picture 10]. The concrete debris was crushed to a manageable size and removed by lorries using a temporary access road [Picture 11].




	An attempt was made to retain a mememto of the felled edifice - a name board. Unfortunately, only the right half of one board survived preparations for demolition. It spelled ‘NON USE’, and was discarded. But a descriptive memory of Vernon House lives on, as the model for Hopewell House in Iain Brimswall’s novel The Zoo Keeper.

November 2008. The demolition of Orchard Park’s remaining four high-rise and three midi blocks now appears certain. According to the Council, it is cheaper to demolish these buildings than to refurbish them to the Government’s Decent Homes Standard. A small number of tower blocks elsewhere in the city, improved under past programmes, will remain. For better or worse, Orchard Park looks set to lose completely its defining skyline.