The building that is now The New Clarence has been at the heart of Hull community life for over a century. It opened as a Hull Co-operative Society grocery store in 1918, and for decades served the local community before becoming co-operative meeting and teaching rooms in the 1960s. When the co-operative movement eventually sold the building in the 1980s — a period in which it can briefly be glimpsed in the background of the Only Fools and Horses special To Hull and Back — it was eventually reborn as The New Clarence pub, named after a much-loved predecessor that had stood across the road before being demolished. When the pub closed in 2023 and faced an uncertain future, the community stepped in to buy it back — and in doing so, continued a story of community ownership that stretches back more than a hundred years.