About

Blaydes House was built around 1740 as the home and business premises of the Blaydes family. The family included shipbuilders, shipowners, merchants and local political figures who played a leading part in the commercial and civic life of eighteenth-century Hull. The house, with its elegant panelled rooms and sweeping carved staircase, demonstrates the prosperity and self-confidence of the town’s mercantile elite. It is a typical Georgian merchant’s house, among the most impressive of several such buildings that have survived on the High Street. The house has been sympathetically restored, with period colour schemes. Since 2001 Blaydes House has been the home of the University of Hull’s Maritime Historical Studies Centre.