Newarker

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Posts posted by Newarker

  1. Thanks philmayfield for the tip. l also want checked shirts. I'll take a trip to Boundary Mills and EWM/Pitlochry in Lincoln. lf l find something satisfactory l can order online in the future.

     

    l forgot to mention Alkit on Castlegate. l suppose their market disappeared with the closing of most RAF stations in the area.

  2. l understand that Wyse Guys Menswear closed down before Christmas. As far as l know the only menswear shop left in Newark is Masdings. I can recall Randalls, Ernest Rick, Whitehouse, Greenwoods, Alexandre, Burtons, Michael Reed, Hamblings, not forgetting Marks & Spencer. There was also a boutique on Kirkgate where l bought an ill-advised tank top.

     

    They all seemed to have been there for ever (apart from the boutique) and we assumed they always would be. Where do blokes in Newark buy their clothes now?

  3. David Kynaston's book Family Britain 1951-57 lists some of the shops in Alfred Street South and adjoining streets in the 1950s: Farnsworth's Pork Butchers, Barnes Dales dairy (for Colwick cheese), Barber Len, Coupe's Furnishing, Plunkett's Gents Outfitters,Atkin's Wine shop, Winfield's the Butcher, Brown's the coal merchant , Carnill's Pork Butcher, Briley's Ladies' and Children's Wear, Westminster Bank, Cromwell pub, Co-op Butchery and Greengrocer, Morley's Cake shop, Dean's Ladies Fashions, Cavendish Cinema, Mr Ash the Fishmonger, Meakin's the cobbler, Marsdens, Mr Chettle dentist, Ridgards for cookers, Mr Clarke the Chemist, Hopewell Furnishers, Wayne's poodle parlour and pet shop.   

     

    With such a variety of shops there must have been little need to go into town.

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  4. l have been re-reading Jupiter's Travels by Ted Simon, an account of his journey by Triumph motorbike in 1973  over 63,000 miles through 54 countries, taking four years. The paperback was published in 1979 and l remember being fascinated by the romance of the idea. How could anybody put his life on hold and set off around the world carrrying only what he could carry on the bike?  lt turns out to be not quite as fascinating as l remembered as he spends a long time in some places, particularly California and lndia, describing his exploits in detail, whereas other bits of the trip get scant mention. Anyway if you like personal accounts of travel this is worth looking for.

  5. The proprietor of G H Porter was hoping to find someone to take over the business but he must be living in hope rather than expectation. With Waitrose, Morrisons, M & S Food and Asda all being in the town centre or periphery, all with on-site parking, shoppers have deserted the independent food shops.  There used to be free parking in the market place on non-market days which seems remarkable now.

     

    On the subject of Worksop, last week l paid my first visit for many years (on the Robin Hood line) and was shocked by the devastation of the town centre. Worksop makes Newark look prosperous. As a shopping centre it was hit badly by the opening of Meadowhall but that was in the 1980s and it has clearly been downhill from there with long-vacant shops and pubs decaying. Two bright spots were a traditional menswear shop, Waddingtons, which has somehow survived and the bus station which puts Newark's puny effort to shame.   

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  6. According to my Passenger Transport Year Book 1962 Camms had a garage and works at 60 Miall Street, Radford. The fleet at that time comprised 12 coaches and 3 single-deck buses. Chassis: 8 Bedford, 3 Leyland, 2 AEC, 2 Commer. Bodies: 13 Duple, 2 Harrington. Fleet livery cream/crimson which sounds more attractive than the orange/yellow stripes which were fashionable in the 80s. 

  7. l have more or less ignored Radio Nottm since they ended Jazz Incorporated on Thursdays and the Notts Nostalgia programme on Sundays. l am obviously not their "demographic" as I can't stand most of the music played on Radio Nottm and Radio 2 nowadays.

     

    l keep meaning to buy a digital radio so l can listen to Boom Radio and Greatest Hits Radio but not if they have the same amount of adverts as Smooth. What especially gets on my nerves is the gabbling of terms & conditions etc at the end of most adverts. 

     

    As mentioned by CT, Radio Trent and Gem used to be truly local and played music you could listen to continuously.

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  8. l am currently re-reading a couple of my favourites:

    Europe in the Looking Glass - Reflections of a Motor Drive frrom Grimsby to Athens.  In 1926 three young men drive across Europe in a large Sunbeam touring car and have various adventures. Cars then were of course much less reliable than today and they have many difficulties organising repairs (which are needed often). The author was Robert Byron who died aged 36 in 1941 when the ship on which he was travelling to Egypt was torpedoed by a German submarine.

     

    The other book l am re-reaing is Modernity Britain Book 2: A Shake of the Dice 1959-1962 by David Kynaston. l have just finished Book 1:Opening the Box. l am interested in modern history i.e.during my lifetime but which l am too young (!) to remember. You get an impression that it was an exciting time n many ways when Britain was changing from wartime utility to a modern country. He is very readable,not at all like an old-fashioned histroy book.

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  9. Part of the problem with the 11+ was that your chances of passing the exam depended on where you lived,depending on the availability of grammar school places. In the late 1950s those chances were as high as 35% in the south-west, 33.5% in Wales, down to 22.4% in the north-east and 18.9% in the south. The outlier was Nottingham City where you had only a 10.1% chance. Why was Nottingham so ill-favoured? Was there a shortage of grammar school places? If so,why didn't they build or convert more grammar schools?

  10. Just to update plantfit's posting on 8 April 2019, an extract from the Post website earlier this year:-

     

    Business owners are becoming frustrated with recent changes at a Nottinghamshire retail park which has seen their customers receiving fines. Visitors at Northgate Retail Park, off Lincoln Bridge Road, Newark, are no longer able to leave the site whilst parked there, which means they need to park elsewhere to visit nearby businesses.

     

    They mean Lincoln Road, there being no Lincoln Bridge Road in Newark. Typical Post.

  11. I'm sure this is not an original thought but whoever decided the entry charges seems to have looked at the cost of refurbishment and then worked out how much they needed to charge to recover the costs. This of course was the wrong way round. People will not pay over the odds to get the Trust/City Council out of a hole but will compare the cost with other attractions and decide whether it is value for money.

     

    Adrian Jones and Chris Matthews in their book Towns in Britain say the pre-refurbishment castle was the dreariest museum and art gallery you can imagine. From comments here and elsewhere it seems little has changed. The best city museums I know are the Museum of Liverpool, Hull Streetlife Museum and York Castle Museum. They have ditched the old pots and pictures idea in favour of displays people can relate to about industry, sport, entertainment etc and I had hoped Nottingham would produce something similar.

     

    I don't know how Nottingham's council tax compares but the city suffers from covering a very small area for a major city. Most British cities include the outer suburbs within the city boundary, so in Nottingham's case it should really include Arnold, Carlton, West Bridgford, Beeston etc.  The result is that the city has high maintenance (in the financial and literal sense) socio-economic  problems which have to be paid for by a relatively low population. A Greater Nottingham council area would spread the cost. I believe one reason this has not been done is to give each of the district councils roughly the same population.

     

    Brilliant postings by  Benjamin on the SN&SM theme!

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  12. The Post website has one of their compilations of nostalgia photos from the 1980s. There is a picture captioned "Paper Lace musician Mick Vaughan joins Cllr Dennis Birkinshaw to promote a record commissioned by the council - 'Nottingham' 

     

    There are copies available on line of a record called Nottingham written by Mick Vaughan and Phil Wright of Paper Lace and recorded by Sheriff, release on the A.OK label in 1983. 

     

    Can anybody provide a link to the song? If it was written by guys from PL you would think it might be reasonably commercial but l had never heard of it before.

     

     

     

  13. Small world. 40 years ago l was working in the same building at Stavertongirl. lt was called Pinfold House, approached from Talbot Street along a drive at the side of Lambert House which was where the vehicle tax office was situated. l worked for Great Universal Stores which was the parent company of Cavendish Woodhouse among many others. Willerby Tailoring and Times Furnishing had offices in the same building. l haven't been along there for years but l bet all those buildings are student flats.

     

    As SG says, it backed onto the cemetery and an owl used to sit in a tree and watch us. On the other side we could see into a dental technicians on Clarendon Street. Presumably they were making false teeth. l wonder if that is still there.

  14. Lenton Times has a feature on Nottingham heliport which l had never heard of. British European Airways started a helicopter service connecting Nottingham and Leicester to Birmingham, intended to be a feeder service for its international services from Birmingham. The service started on 3 July 1956 to great fanfare but ceased in November 1956, BEA citing the need to save fuel due to the Suez crisis although the service had clocked up big losses. The site was used for a time by driving instructors and for go-karting but by 1960 the City Council had realised that the heliport was redundant and allowed the site to be incorporated in the new industrial estate planned for Lenton Lane.  The site is now occupied by the Willow Close portion of Lenton lndustrial Estate.

     

    Lenton Times reproduces a 1956 aerial view of the locality taken from www.ukairfieldguide.net and also superimposes the heliport on a present day photo of the same area which makes an interesting comparison. Presumably that was the only time a scheduled helicopter servive ran from Nottingham. 

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  15. Wasn't most of the site previously occupied by W J Simms, Sons & Cooke, the building contractor? I think their address was Spring Close. 

     

    It was mentioned under the Saturday Night & Sunday Morning thread that Simms' board was prominent towards the end of the film when Arthur and Doreen are discussing the future. She wants to live in a new house like the ones being built. l have always thought the estate you can see was Bestwood Park Estate under construction. Am l right? 

  16. Radio Nottingham has just broadcast a programme called For the Record: The Selectadisc Story (part 1). It's in a series called We Are Notts. Presumably part 2 will be next Sunday @ 1700 but part 1 is available on BBC Sounds. Well worth a listen if this was your era. 

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  17. You can certainly expect to be called Duck in Newark but perhaps by an older generation or within family. Philmayfield probably mixes with the higher strata of society!

     

    In reply to letsavagoo, isn't "Me old love" a Yorkshire saying? "Me old flower" was the catchphrase of Yorkshire comedian Charlie Williams.

  18. Some folk have mentioned mon't meaning must not but is it usual in Nottingham to say wain't for will not, or was that a Newark thing?  l don't think l have heard anybody say wappy for many years, meaning eleven pence to the shilling or not quite all there.

     

    My Mum used to describe some people as not having much of a come-from. l think this just meant the family was poor but l was never entirely sure whether it meant there was some illegitimacy involved.

     

    l have never heard anybody except my Grandma say they didn't own to somebody, so if she didn't recognise somebody you were describing she would say she didn't own to him or her.

  19. The Newark coach operator Travel Wright aka Wright & Sons is to cease operating in early April. Apparently the business is solvent but the family want to retire and have been unsuccessful in finding a buyer.  The firm is probably unknown to most Nottingham folk but was started in 1926 and has operated the Newark - Ollerton service since  then as well as tours, private hire etc. They also operate the Newark - Collingham service.  The demise of Wrights will leave Marshalls of Sutton-on-Trent as the only local operator apart from the one-coach Emjay Tours and Stagecoach but even they no longer have a depot in Newark.    

  20. A letter in the current issue of Classic Bus refers to NCT's 1963 batch of Fleetlines  (64-94) which were registered 64 RTO to 94 RTO except for 73 which had a 1964 B suffix - ATO 73B. l have checked my 1965 edition of Ian Allan ABC British Bus Fleets and that's quite correct.  I haven't seen any reference to this before. Was the bus delivered late perhaps due to an accident and had to be registered in 1964? Had 73 RTO already been reserved by somebody?

     

    My Ian Allan book lists the NCT depots as Parliament St, Trent Bridge, Sherwood, Bilborough and Bulwell but notes that Bulwell was to be replaced by a new depot at Western Boulevard. That never happened and it seems odd that NCT planned to replace Bulwell with a depot so close to Bilborough.  

  21. I think I read somewhere that the film was designed as an introduction to England for American servicemen. Due to wartime censorship Newark was not mentioned by name, nor were the local factories which of course were dedicated to munitions production. Ransome & Marles was bombed by the Luftwaffe in March 1941.  National reporting restrictions hampered any direct reporting of where the bombs fell so the Newark Advertiser had to headline its story Raid on Buildings in North Midlands Town.

     

    There is an interesting book called Newark in the Second World War published by Notts County Council and Newark & Sherwood D C in 1995.