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.”
