Cliff Ton

Bored at work so I did this. Where's this?. An extract from a 1950s map of central Nottingham. Half the road layout has changed, but half is still the same today. I've blanked out some road and place names which would give it away to easily, but it is definitely city centre

Is it just my imagination or incompetance, or has it been off and on again intermittently during this morning?

You're right and I'm stupid. :tongue: My typing is faster than my brain works

When buses looked like this........... And on another subject Are you sure? I was never aware of any Selectadisc on Derby Road. They were - at various times - on Arkwright Street, Clumber Street, Glasshouse Street and Market Street. I know because a helluvalot of my money went there as a teenager (and well into being an adult)

The sights and smells of Burtons arcade. They were ahead of their time. They were selling fresh, unusual, foreign food when the fashion was for instant pre-packaged plastic junk. If they'd managed to survive into the 90s, the rest of the world would've caught up with them and they'd now be the busiest place in town

Going back to the Guidebook to Nottingham, where I got the Bus Route map and the 1940s adverts, is this paragraph which gives a bit of relevant information

There's a map for everything......... I reckon the bit you see on the old photo is the entrance below the word "Station" on the map This shows it as "Disused" but Vic station is obviously built, so it's 1900-1920. The site of the prison was eventually cleared to build the Central Market

And look at the Nottingham pictures No. 21..... It's the THREE bridges from a few weeks ago

That bridge has a double catch which has probably caught a few people out. It's low, but it's also on an incline. So coming in from the Arnold Lane end you appproach a low bridge, but as go you under it, it gets even lower so even if you drive under one end there's no guarantee you'll get out at the other end. (Look at the line of the bricks under the bridge to see what I mean)

When I was a kid my grandparents lived in Lenton and we went past the Sherwin Road bridge on the bus. Always used to fascinate me. Even with horse-drawn carriages when it was built, I reckon the horses would've had to keep their heads down. And there are two more very low bridges near that on the Midland mainline in Dunkirk. You can see them both on Streetview; Dunkirk Road/Gibbons Street (which you could just get a car under - but not a lorry) and Montpelier Road/Cavendish Street which you can hardly walk under without bending down. Maybe everybody was a midget around 1860s

If time machines existed now they'd solve a lot of problems on this forum. Nobody would need to ask any question about anything - you'd just go there and have a look for yourself. No need to worry about your memory getting bad as you get older, it would all be happening today as you speak. All those things you half remember as a kid would be sorted out straight away. And the people who work on Picture the Past would all be out of a job

I don't know Arnold very well, but with nothing better to do today, I've been having a look around. This original photo above is on Picture the Past, bigger and in colour. They say it's Front Street..... Looking at other Front Street photos brings up this Front Street1 which could be the same view from the other way (look at the three dormer windows on the right, and the first floor windows, they match the ones in the original) And this one Front Street 2 I reckon the white building sticking out fourth along is the Blankley building (you can just see the three dormers again beyond

Here's the same place from the 1950s. It's now obviously an embankment going over the roads - totally the opposite to what they were showing 20 years earlier. And there's no actual line marked - must've been lifted by then. Only the Midland still has tracks shown.

True. And I've just looked at maps of other dates on the Old Maps site. Every one shows the railway going over Hempshill Lane (like you'd expect). I'll post one of them later. The one I posted earlier (1930s) is the only one which shows the line under the roads; which goes to show that even OS maps can be wrong.

I've dived into Old Maps again, and found this from the 1930s. I've kept this detailed enough to show the line appears to go under Hempshill Lane and Bradford Street. I don't know the area very well so maybe today you can still see that the line was in some kind of cutting

So it was basically a staff canteen? That's what you were paying for when you bought Co-op bread and cakes

Is this the kind of thing you were thinking of? It's late 50s/early 60s I assume the school you are referring to is the one very close to China Street

Depends what you might be looking for. Don't go expecting to see any balloons.......in fact you'll hardly see any woods either. Just a few trees left over from the original woods. And quite a bit of fairly recent housing, which was built after the disaster which was the infamous Balloon Woods Flats You won't find these........ which were know as the Balloon Houses and were at the end of Nottingham Road looking west towards Trowell You can see them marked on this map from the 1920s The road layout back then is surprisingly similar to the way it is today

On Meadow Lane, just about opposite the Cattle Market, there's a building which looks like an average warehouse/industrial unit. A bit grubby and run-down. Like this..... It backs on to the river, and if you look at it from the other side (i.e. City Ground side) it looks like this...... A bit extravagant for a warehouse. Anybody know why is has such an exotic feature facing the river? Cinema? Restaurant?

You've probably looked at Picture the Past on this subject - if not, in the "Search" box put "Valley Road". You'll get quite a few irrelevant pictures, but a lot which show the old and new bridges at various stages of history. This Two bridges is a good example of the old and new at the same time (they seem to have built the new one on top of the old one, as some of the other photos also demonstrate)

Is that on the old Colwick road which comes to a stop at a dead end? For a while it runs parallel to the current Colwick Loop Road. I have a vague memory as a kid going along there and when the road used to continue, it went up over the (now non-existent) railway line This is as far as you can get now Bridge Weirdly spooky shot for me. On a totally different subject, I worked at Central TV on Lenton Lane for most of its existence, and I'm gobsmacked to see that old Central trailer parked here

I know where you mean, and that would fit Picture the Past's description. In other words, about here Colwick But wasn't that on the old Great Northern line? so they were wrong to say the photo is the suburban line

Another couple of cases which I can remember and I never knew the outcome of........ One was the murder of a lady called Joan Maschek (maybe not the exact spelling) around mid 1970s Circumstances were something like, she owned a flat at the top end of Derby Road near the Park, and the theory was that she was murdered by a disgruntled tenant who had an argument with her Also, the case of Sheila Egner, shop assistant at Yeoman's Army Stores on Mansfield Road in 1991. She was working in the shop, someone came in to try and rob the till, and she was killed in the process. The theory on that on

That's a blast from the past! I haven't heard it since the early 1960s. Completely forgotten it; I'd hear it from my parents and grandparents I suppose back then boys were likely to be wearing short trousers, so sleeping socks were more noticeable

Agreed. In my earlier post I mentioned it was the end of local commercial radio but that doesn't mean I'll miss it. I stopped liking it around 30 years ago. It was good when it started as Radio Trent because it was slightly different and unusual compared to what we'd known before. Unfortunately that didn't last long. It soon became identikit SmoothBlandCorporate FM