Meet The Makers: The amazing Hull compass manufacturer that's like a living museum from last stories web series Watch Video

⏲ Duration: 5:27
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✓ Published: 21-Jun-2024

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There’s an unassuming shopfront on Market Place in Hull’s Old Town where, underneath the 1950s-style signs, behind the brass-bound clocks, compasses, barometers and telescopes which jostle for space in the windows, the business of B. Cooke and Son quietly takes place.<br/>Cooke’s has the feeling of a living museum, one of the last vestiges of the city’s nautical past, but while the maritime fortunes of Hull may have changed greatly over<br/>years, there’s a feeling that somehow time stands still at Cooke’s.<br/>That’s Cooke with an ‘e’ - unlike the more famous explorer, Captain James Cook,<br/>also born in Yorkshire - but the name also comes with quite a story…<br/>Barnard Cooke – an optician by trade - clearly had an eye for opportunity. Back in<br/>the 1840s and 50s he’d learned his craft alongside his brother, the renowned clock<br/>maker Thomas Cooke of York. Thomas was a bit of a star – son of a Pocklington<br/>shoemaker, he was a self-taught mathematician and physicist who carved out a<br/>reputation building telescopes, later opening a shop in York, then a factory, as his<br/>reputation as a manufacturer of excellent optical instruments spread around the<br/>world.<br/>Thomas’s younger brother Barnard had been his right-hand man as the business<br/>grew, but by the early 1860s Barnard was ready to strike out on his own.<br/>The first rail links between York and Hull had been established in the 1840s, new<br/>fishing grounds had just been discovered, this is the peak of Victorian prosperity, Hull<br/>was a major trading port with Europe and the city was booming.<br/>Barnard set up shop bang in the centre of town, close to the busy Queens Dock,<br/>where he began to supply the nautical trade with compasses, sextants, barometers,<br/>clocks and telescopes.<br/>B Cooke and Son grew with the city’s fortunes. Solid and reliable, a Cooke compass<br/>became the captain’s choice, synonymous with quality.<br/>Over the years, the business changed hands and moved premises, finally coming to<br/>rest in the mid-1950s in its current location.<br/>Brian Walker is 71 - and still making compasses – but he was just 15 years old in<br/>1968 when he became an apprentice compass maker at Cooke’s.<br/>“Back then the docks were filled with boats.” remembers Brian, “We had a van that<br/>used to go there twice a day and each time he’d come back with a tea chest full of<br/><br/>gauges, sextants, compasses, chronometers, barometers for fixing – we had to sort<br/>them before the ship sailed.<br/>“We had 25 staff – you had the office staff, then the chart department, the gauge<br/>department, the sextant department, then on top of the building was the compass<br/>department.<br/>“You could walk out the door and get anything you needed to do the job – all the<br/>suppliers where there - Humber Rubber, Humber Electricals - there were ship’s<br/>agents, chandlers, shipyards that you were supplying, all that expertise – there was<br/>always somebody behind a counter that would help you.”