SK53

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Everything posted by SK53

  1. Somewhere I have various bits & pieces about basket makers & osier growing across Notts. Rodney Cousins wrote a good book about the Basket Makers & Willow Growers (published by the library service in 2007). See for instance AbeBooks, but some local studies sections may have a copy. Basford was a major centre for basket making in the last half of the 19th century, with William Scaling being a central figure. He had osier beds on the Leen North of Davids Lane & a large mill-style factory employing around 500 (with a Royal Warrant for 10 years). Robert Mellor's account
  2. No, I wasn't. What a great project. Glad to see that the map confirms what I worked out from the stuff I knew was available on-line (position of the house numbers). The aerial photo is very interesting, as is the directory entry (I think the City Library & Bromley House both have these directories, but current circumstances mean I wont be in either for a while). @mary1947: I think the directory listing might be a bit confusing: the street names are crossing streets and should have their own entries of addresses elsewhere (like this one for Manning Grove). Also it g
  3. Thanks Jill, you've prompted a couple of thoughts: This is a link to the page with Manning Street in Wright's Directory of around 1910. This shows that house numbers started from Woodborough Road and that Manning Grove (gone) was at 20 Manning St & so on. Numbers from 55 to 95 were between Rosslyn Street & Whitehead Street. My guess would be that the greengrocer at 55 was a corner shop at the junction of Manning Street & Rosslyn Street, so quite likely your Grandmother lived next door. The NLS maps (and also those on Nottingham Insight Mapping) show this area q
  4. I have been asked about Manning Street, by a lady called Shirley, in comments on a blog post I wrote about the bombing of Nottingham in WWII. I wonder if anyone can provide more information (I know Manning St has been mentioned a bit in the past, so I'm sure someone knows more)? I have to moderate comments on the blog, so it's probably more useful to add any info in this thread, and I can then provide a link. Thanks all, Jerry
  5. Bit late to this, but I presume the OP was referring to the little park at the top of College Street, which I think is called "The Bay of Biscay", see the bottom of this page which is a 1928 article from the Thoroton Society transactions for use of the name. Botany Bay were allotments (probably Botany Bay Gardens originally, if they followed naming of others in the area) and are clearly shown on Sanderson's 1835 Map "20 Miles Around Mansfield " IIRC, which I think is the same period as the map that Cliff Ton posted. They were still present on the 1st editions 6 inch and 25 inch maps b
  6. Ben Bowers became 1877 and then had a brief existence as a bar, The Late Lounge. A girl I was at school with worked at Ben Bowers in the late '70s. Before then, until some time in the early 1970s, it was a hardware store. The firm is still in business, as Hall's Locksmiths at 92 Alfreton Road. They moved from Canning Circus to a larger shop on Derby Road near the Danish Homestore, perhaps as the locksmithing side of the business took off. Another school friend had a Saturday job there. I have no idea when they decamped to Alfreton Road. I checked 116 Talbot St, and it's
  7. Just noticed the other day that it looks as though the massive Bulwell Stone retaining wall on Wollaton Street has gone. I remember going looking at cars in the showroom there with Mum & Dad in 1973, a Saab would have been a better choice than the Ford Zephyr they opted for in the end. I took a couple of Mapillary sequences from the top deck of an Orange Line bus (unfortunately only before works started, and after it was completed, on Talbot Point): they may of (historical) interest: July 2014: https://www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=52.955957000000005&lng=-1.1611
  8. OSM-Nottingham shows the locations of the boundary posts of which we (local OpenStreetMappers) are aware: http://osm-nottingham.org.uk/?z=12&lon=-1.20918&lat=52.96580&bgl=OSM,1,15&l=markersposts. This should, in practice, be most of them because they are now generally listed by Historic England (which may be noted if you click on the dots on the map).
  9. Somewhere, but don't know where, I have a stash of programmes from Nottingham Playhouse roughly covering the period from 1967-1976. Off the top of my head & roughly in chronological order here are some of the ones I can remember: Treasure Island (1966-67 IIRC). The guns scared me, but terrified my younger brother so we had to leave. Jack & the Beanstalk, pantomime (either Xmas 1966 or 1967). This was IIRC the only panto the Playhouse put on during this period. Stop it Whoever You Are by Henry Livings (late '60s) Hedda Gabler (late '60s) The Workhouse Donkey (late '60s) Midsummer
  10. The only other thing I remember about Marsdens was a big bacon slicer. All 4 shops at Hillside are pretty small. The Tennis Club was the Co-op Western Club (later Hillside Club). I don't know when the tennis side was dropped, there were weekly coaching sessions for kids in the '70s. The club closed fairly recently (2009 I think) the premises being demolished only in the last couple of years. Various plans have been suggested for the land to be used for housing or as part of the whizzy biomedical campus, but recently it's just been overflow parking for QMC staff during the tram works. The Len
  11. I had no idea they were a chain! There was one at the Hillside shops on Derby Road (where Savera Tandoori is now). I hated running errands there when I was a kid, little old ladies would brazenly queue jump. It must have closed by the early '70s after which it was a chip shop owned by a Labour councillor (Bob Churchill?) becoming the Savera in 1984. Certainly it was gone by the mid-seventies because the off-licence next door became more of a convenience shop then.
  12. Thought folk might be interested in a view of the area created with modern(ish) Environment Agency Lidar (laser scanning) data; steet overlay from OpenStreetMap:
  13. The Daybrook emerges from a culvert under the Fox and then does a right-angle bend along the east side of the old sports ground. All easily visible from the overflow car park of the Fox. I think it then turns again to run along the north side. I presume one reason this hasn't been developed is that it's in the 10 or 25 year flood risk area for the Daybrook: there's an Env Agency paper about this which I read recently. SK53 PS. Another project is to work out where the Daybrook culvert goes between the Fox & the High School playing fields.
  14. Long time lurker, first post! I've been intrigued for ages by a patch of waste ground next to the Fox pub on Valley Road. Recently driving past I noticed that it seems to have a patch of reeds growing in the centre. So on Sunday I stopped there and took a couple of photos. My first though was that this might have been where the railway crossed Valley Road, but this was quickly disabused when I looked at the line of the railway. Checking old maps on the city council website shows this as tennis courts either side of WWII, so it was presumably an old recreation ground. The land backs on to