Our club took the name City of Hull Athletic Club when Hull Harriers and Hull Achilles Club amalgamated in 1970. Take a read through our history by clicking the links below, starting with the origins of our sport.
Though it is generally accepted that the foundations of modern athletics were laid in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the sport can in fact be traced back to the earliest times. The first athletes of whom we have accurate details were the Greeks who, of course, created the original Olympic Games in 776 BC.
In the nineteenth century, athletics, like many sports, developed amateur and professional codes. The origins of professional athletics or pedestrianism are obscure. The Harleian MSS mentions an early 16th century foot-race at Chester for a prize of "six glayves of silver".
In the later nineteenth century, the immediate Hull area presented a markedly different picture to the one we are familiar with today. The town - for it did not achieve city status until 1897 - was much smaller. Its population in 1881 being just over 165,000 compared with 295,000 by 1966.
In 1879 Hull Athletic Club was formed and, after originally holding meetings on its own ground in Coltman Street, a new cinder track of approximately 350 yards was laid out in 1881. The entrance to the ground was by a track from Spring Lane - now known as Spring Bank West.
Hull athletes did not limit themselves to local events for in May 1887 a contingent of them met with "gratifying success" in the sports of Cureghen United A.C. in Brussels. J.S. Leeming of Hull A.C. took the 120 yards handicap whilst his club-mate, A. Close, claimed first position in the quarter mile bicycle race.
Prominent amongst Hull Athletic Club members were George Lidiard and Charles Campion Merrikin. Lidiard owned a considerable reputation as an amateur track athlete: in 1885 - when the average wage was little more than £1 per week - he was to win £40 worth of prizes over the summer.
The newly formed club appointed George Lidiard as captain and held their first run on Saturday 4th November 1882 from the Duke of Cumberland in North Ferriby (the old Duke stood just in front of the present building and was demolished when its replacement was built in the 1920s). The members turned out for this first of countless runs, starting up the hill to Swanland.
With the onset of spring the harrier season ended and many of the members returned to the track or the bike for the summer but over the following two winter seasons the club widened its activities and took part in several inter-club runs, most notably with Huddersfield and Leeds Harehills Harriers.
At the opening of the 1885/6 season Hull Harriers appeared to be in good health. The September AGM recorded a balance of £2/1/11d and Mr W.H. Pearson was elected President whilst George Lidiard was confirmed as Captain.
Attempts were soon made to establish formal inter-club runs with C.D. Hiscocks (Nightingales) and C. Pearson (Collegiate) taking the lead.
The following seasons saw the Nightingales consolidate their position. Its members - notably John Baker, Alf Adams and secretary C.D. Hiscocks - are credited with organising the first Monstre meet of local clubs.
Between the end of the season in March 1887 and the start of the next the following autumn, arrangements were made to unite Hull Harriers and the Nightingales.
By the 1889/90 season several other harrier clubs had sprung into existence. These include St Marks, St Phillips, Melwood and Boulevard Harriers.
In January 1889 Hull Harriers earned themselves a niche in history by joining with a small group of other clubs to form the Yorkshire Cross-Country Association and they took part in the first championships held at Pudsey.
Two Hull Harriers dominated the local running scene at the end of the 1880s. John Baker, was one of the prime movers in the organisation of both the Monstre Meet and the Hull and District Cross-Country Association.
During the 1890s Hull Harriers also took more interest in the track. During the 1880s most Hull Harriers who ran on the track during the summer did so as members of Hull Athletic Club but from the middle of the 1890s they increasingly competed as members of Hull Harriers.
These performances were all the more outstanding because they seem to have been secured without the services of Jacky Graham, one of the club's most outstanding runners of all time. However, the following year he was back in action and top form when he took the Northern Junior individual title.
Until 1908 the club continued to run from a different pub most Saturday afternoons during the season but that January it acquired its own pavilion.
Walter Barnes probably joined the club about 1904 and may well have initially been a summer track athlete. Although he was given a handicap for the three mile event held in November 1904, he does not seem to have actually raced.
The club was guided through many of these years by Will Hodgkinson who was Hon Secretary from 1899 to 1929. In 1924 the club were obliged to move from their base on the land adjacent to Blenkin's Farm to the White City grounds.
Whilst competition within the club was vigorous in the 1920s, members did not do so well in wider competition.
In early 1931 the Hull Harriers team, captained by Alec Johnson, won the Hull and District and Beverley and District in successive weekends.
After the outbreak of war in September 1939 a large number of club members joined the armed forces. The three, five and eight mile handicaps were all run during the 1939/1940 season but the numbers of competitors were naturally down on the usual turnout.
A team mate of the Johnsons who joined the club in the 1930s was Frank Staniforth. He really established the club on the road-running scene. Frank was Club Champion in the late 1930s but during the Second World War experienced great hardship as a prisoner of war, along with two other club members, Stan Martin and W. Smelt.
Ted was another of the club’s outstanding runners and made his mark in the later 1940s and early 1950s. In 1946/7, after finishing second to Frank Staniforth in the Club Championship, he went on to win the Hull and District Cross-Country Championships with a brilliant dsplay of running. Emulating Stani’s tactics he tore away from the start and led all the way home.
Frank Staniforth's road running legacy endured and within a few years Hull Harriers had the largest Road Section in the country, fielding fifteen competitors in the 1954 Doncaster to Sheffield Marathon. The club was guided through the 1950s by Arthur Nendick who - apart from being Hon Secretary throughout most of the decade - made a speciality out of longer distance racing as a veteran.
Hearing of the Hull runners’ increasing interest in road racing, the Bridlington Coronation Festivities Committee approached Hull Harriers to see if they would organise a twenty-mile road race which would finish in Bridlington and coincide with the planned festivities there. The club were delighted to have an extra race sponsored locally and gladly agreed to organise it.
Many of those interested in road running were particularly keen on the marathon and other long-distance events and were behind moves to start their own club marathon in 1952.
With runners now regularly competing in different events throughout the year they had to compete with considerable variations in the weather. The 1959 Wakefield 20 Mile Road Race, for example, was run in a temperature of 85 degrees farenheit and, as tar bubbled up in the road, one-third of the runners failed to finish and only the winner managed less than 2 hours
Hull has long had a strong fraternity of cycle clubs and an annual fixture which provided much fun for many years was the Cyclists Versus Harriers Five Mile Cross-Country Race which was held each autumn between Hull Harriers and their good friends, Hull Thursday Road Club. The first such race had been organised between the two clubs in 1927 and proved so enjoyable that, with the exception of the war years, it remained an annual event until the 1960s.
The sometimes conflicting interests of track and field, road and country in the 1950s was sometimes the cause of tensions within the club. After some years a number of the keenest road runners, tired of the ramifications of the track and its users, broke away to form the Haltemprice Road Runners Club and for a number of years enjoyed considerable success.
When the club sold its land and moved on to the Costello Stadium site with the encouragement of Hull Corporation, it believed it was moving on as the managing club.
As road running grew in importance so runners began to travel further on a more regular basis during the later 1950s and early 1960s. Initially, few members had cars or motorbikes but as the working week shortened and more came to own vehicles it was that bit easier to travel to out of town races.
The club has organised a road race named after North Ferriby every winter since the early 1950s.
In 1970 Hull Harriers joined forces with Hull Achilles and took on the name of City of Hull Athletic Club. The club gained the membership of Bob and Pam Piercy, English international 800 metre runners who gave a terrific boost to the track athletics. After amalgamation the club had a substantial Ladies Section. In some respects the choosing of the new name meant that the wheel had turned full circle, for many of the club's founding fathers had been members of the long defunct Hull Athletic Club.
The Champagne League originated in the first half of the 1970s.
The plan to organise a club relay along the eighty-two mile footpath which meanders its way from Filey Brigg to Hessle Foreshore was conceived by Dave Ainsworth in 1983.
Over the long years since Hull Harriers first ran on the country a number of other clubs have come and gone. Others have stayed and flourished.
Despite the club's long and illustrious history, one thing it certainly managed to lose – or more accurately miss – was it centenary.
During the early 1990s the club was involved in as wider range of athletic competitions as it had ever been. Apart from the track and field, cross-country, Champagne League and club races a large number of external road races were available each year, both locally and across the country. In order to try and concentrate efforts for the road and country section a Pounds for Points system was introduced in 1992 under the captaincy of Mike Lake.
Early in the new millennium proposals were mooted to form a new large club out of all the existing clubs. The idea was to focus talent within one organisation. However, as plans progressed it became evident that a number of Hull clubs, including East Hull Harriers and Hull Achilles were unlikely to join. The issue proved particularly traumatic for City of Hull members.