Cliff Ton

When I started this topic I mentioned Cripps on Clifton Boulevard in the 50s/60s I knew I'd seen a couple of photos of that place (and for once they aren't on Picture the Past) Cripps1 Cripps2

No, the Merc dealers now are over towards the NG2 Business Park near Queen's Drive, and they are just called Mercedes Benz Nottingham. It may be B&K Thomas underneath, but they don't operate under that name. I think a few years ago Merc wanted all their dealers to become part of a national thing, and they dropped all the individual personal names. The site where they used to be on Loughborough road is now a Sandicliffe with Ford and Mazda

The thread about car mechanics who could actually fix cars made me think about car dealers (main dealers and second-hand) who used to be around in the 70s/80s and who have now disappeared. Some of them were well-known landmarks for years. In no particular order.... Hooleys - that art deco place on Derby Road, and another on Loughborough Road, West Bridgford. Used to advertise "Ford since 1927". Bought my first ever car - Vauxhall Viva - from them on Derby Road. Oscrofts - Vauxhall dealers, on Castle Boulevard, and later on Lenton Lane as well. Had a big advert on the railway bridge o

I know it's a couple of years old, but I hadn't seen this thread before. I presume this refers to John Thomas Snr, because he had a son also called John, who I know. John Jnr didn't work in the garage, but is still in the area and for many years has been a drummer in various local rock bands. In my early days of car ownership, my independent garage was a guy called Jim Davies who operated out of a hole-in-the-wall on Hermon Street, top of Derby road near Canning Circus. I often used to turn up there in an evening on my way home from work to ask if he could "just have a look at......" He mus

Take a look at this link on Street view. Beeston What are those raised features on either side of the road? They've been there for as long as I can remember - eg at least early 60s - but apart from kids riding their bikes up and down them, I've never seen them used for anything. Were they connected with the former Barton depot which was immediately to the right of this image.

One thing hits you when reading this thread - we all have memories of going off for several hours away from home, and our parents didn't bother or worry about where we were. I remember when I was around 10/11 years old and I was beginning to discover girls, and during the long summer holidays one year, I used to spend most of the day hanging around the house of a particular set of twins. It was a five minute bike ride away for me, and I don't think anybody on our road knew where I got to - but nobody cared. My mum wasn't going frantic, even though I was only coming home for my dinner then g

Christmas Eve was the most boring day of the year. Nothing happened and there was nothing to do. I just wanted the day to finish so that the next day would come along which I knew was going to be much better Then you had to try to get to sleep on Christmas eve. You went to bed at your normal time, but you were lying awake for hours, and even if you did get to sleep you'd be waking up again every few minutes. I dreaded that coming. When I reached the age where I started hunting round the house with my sister to find where my parents hid all the presents before Christmas day. Eventually discover

Daydreaming over the weekend and this occurred to me Thinking about being a youngster in the early 60s on Clifton. It was a council estate so everybody rented, nobody actually owned any property there. So every week the rent lady came round to collect the money. As predictable as anything, she'd be at the same place on the same street on a certain day of the week. Several of them all over Clifton at any one time. Single female walking the streets with a shoulder bag full of money - in those days many hundreds of pounds; the equivalent today would be multi-thousands of pounds. No loc

This may be gong off topic a bit, but on the subject of riverside amusements I remember when I was young on a few occasions we went to Gunthorpe where there was some kind of pleasure park. Maybe I'm mixing that up with Colwick, but I definitely remember being at Gunthorpe Lock and I reckon there was some kind of area for kids to play around. In those days I had no idea where Gunthorpe was relative to the rest of the world, and I've never been back there since the early 60s. Was itt an alternative Colwick?

Looks like one of those tricks where you try to use every letter of the alphabet in one sentence

Also, towards the bottom end of Sherwood Rise (between Beech Avenue and Falcon Street) there is a nursing home run by Anchor Trust which is called The Gables. It's a modern building, but often in those cases the old name is carried over from a previous building.

God, I could go on for a long time about the place We lived at the bottom end of Clifton, and we'd walk up through the Grove to the village. I can even remember having picnics in the Grove on a Sunday afternoon. On a few occasions we'd go the opposite direction down towards Fairham Brook and the newly-built Clifton Bridge, but that was boring because it was just a few open fields, and those fields partly disappeared with the building of the Clifton Grove housing estate in the early 1970s. Before that estate was built there was a path which went from Clifton Lane (near the traffic lights at t

Not exactly a lot of new information, but an interesting version of the history of the Suburban Railway And when you've read it, the rest of the site has some fascinating photos and stories of all kinds of Victoriana Suburban

In the early 1980s I was working in Long Eaton and every day I used to drive past what remained of the depot (it was half closed down and half surviving). For several months there were a pile of anti-nuclear demonstrators camping outside the entrance on Nottingham Road. I think they were there in sympathy with the Greenham Common lot who were upset about Cruise missiles.

I didn't work there 'cause I think it closed before I reached working age, and I've never known anybody who worked there, but I have one memory of the place. When you went along Nottingham Road past the depot, you crossed a bridge which went over the railway line connecting the depot to the outside world This is the view you got from the bridge chilwell and as a kid who was easily impressed, I always used to look to see if there were any tanks hanging around.

And to my knowledge, there are at least a couple of them still remaining. One in the middle of Abbey Circus/Cambridge Road, which can still be clearly seen on Google/Bing maps And one at the junction of Rutland Road/Lady Bay Road (buried in trees on the maps, but still clear on the ground)

For a few facts and figures on the Meadow Lane bomb, start reading half way down this page......... Bomb

Bit quiet round here today, so here's a few images to look at From an old Guide to Nottinghamshire which I reckon was printed in the mid 1920s. The prices are interesting, especially to see how much it cost to stay in the Flying Horse. And curious to see the days when phone numbers could be two digits

And the bank looks like it's just been stuck on the end of those obviously very old houses which are going off down to the left at a right angle to the "main" road. That's what you can still see in villages. Farm-type houses which are end-on to the main road. So was the place once a village, rather than a modern suburb, and this was the road running through it I'd missed that, but I actually think it might say "Gentlemen"

I don't recognise it, but what immediately strikes me is the name above the store being .......N CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETY. Another half inch on the left edge would almost certainly solve the problem Obviously not the Nottingham, but how many other Co-ops round here end with an N? One which comes to mind, is there a Long Eaton Co-op? Or Alfreton? The Standard Vanguard has an old Nottingham registration, and the Ford Zephyr across the road has a TL reg which was Lincoln in the old system.

I've looked back through other posts on this subject and I haven't seen this photo used before, so apologies if it's a repeat. From a book I got several years ago. I've left the caption on to save me doing any explanation

The Playhouse bar around 1969/70. At school at the time the fashionable drink for the males (who talked it even if they didn't really drink it) was Guinness, so when I went into the Playhouse with some mates I had to have Guinness to make me look as though I knew what I was doing. But I thought it was revolting. Don't know how I got through one pint without totally throwing up. To this day I've never had another Guinness because of that first memory. Maybe if I had another today, I might find I like it now.

Was the one "near the Futurist" at the Valley Road/Nottingham Road junction, because I know there are/were a few shops there? (i.e. the next junction along from the Valley Road/Hucknall Road shop which is the one I remember) And most old shops on North Gate have probably disappeared now, so not much chance of working out which one it might've been

You're right about the one on the junction of Valley Road/Hucknall Road, that was definitely a Pear Chemist. The location of the Basford shop is what I've wondered about for years. The reason is my dad worked there for a long time. He was at the Valley Road shop for at least the late 1950s and first half of the 1960s and I went there quite a few times with him. I heard him talk about "the Basford shop" and I think maybe he worked there before he went to Valley Road, but I never knew where the Basford shop was. Amazing that I should get the answer to that after all these years.

Obviously quite a few people here have memories of various shops in the Basford area. Does anyone remember a chemist shop owned by E.R. Pear which was somewhere around Basford, but I don't know exactly where