It’s one of the city’s most recognisable structures.
And in a few months, the 19th century Pearson Park archway will return to Hull after being restored to its Victorian splendour.
The archway was temporarily removed from the park in December. It has since been receiving a makeover at a specialist restoration company near Wigan.
Lost Art, one of the few companies in the UK with the expertise to restore historic structures such as the archway, has been busy restoring features as well as working with designers to recreate elements that have been lost over time.
The Pearson Park Archway.
The completed archway is due to be returned to Pearson Park later this summer.
Dominic Liptrot, managing director at Lost Art, said: “The restoration is going really well. We’ve got a lot of things developed now, patterns made, castings produced and we’ve started assembling the gates so it’s nice to see things starting to come together.
“We are developing colours and we’ve done some test colouring that we have been showing to the team at the council, which is exciting because we are starting to see a picture of how it will all look when it’s finished.”
The colours are based on historic paint analysis so have been guided by how the archway looked originally.
One of the key resources in restoring the archway has been an original design of the structure.
A foundry worker makes castings for the Pearson Park archway.
Martyn Jolley, a pattern maker working on the project, said: “We managed to get hold of a fantastic image of the archway with all the embellishments on and luckily enough we’ve been able to take all the detail from that and rescale and redraw our impression of how the archway looked originally.
“From these images we can carve and remake patterns to produce castings that will go on the gates of the archway.”
Gill Osgerby, capital development manager at Hull City Council, said: “The work on the rest of the park will start in the early summer.
Some of the features of the archway, such as these panels. have already been restored.
“That will involve the restoration of buildings and the landscaping of the park, putting back lost features like the bridge and the bandstand and then restoring things like the conservatory and the ice cream kiosk.
“It’s a complete restoration and it will look fantastic once it is finished.”
