High Street follows the line of the River Hull through the Old Town and is the city's oldest commercial thoroughfare — used by merchants, shippers, and traders from the 13th century onwards. Many of the surviving buildings are Georgian rebuilds of older merchants' houses; the wartime bombing in 1941 destroyed others, leaving gaps that have only partly been filled.
The street is best known today as the location of the Museums Quarter: Wilberforce House, the Streetlife Museum, and the Hull and East Riding Museum all sit on the western side within a few hundred metres, with the Arctic Corsair moored just to the east on the river. Cobbled, atmospheric, and quiet on weekday mornings — one of the easiest places to feel the medieval shape of Hull beneath the modern city.