Old Nottingham Police Stations


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Must mention Walsall police station......  I caught a bloke nick a 'Jumper'' at Debenhams way back in about 94.........the Police took him away and i had to attend their Station to do a statement

Hi. I'm new to the forum so hope I have placed this in the right place.    I am a Photographic Historian and have been photographing Nottingham for nearly 50 years. I have written several ar

I guess the guy lingered, Ben. because he never expected to see Alf Garnett in a police lineup.

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Thanks for that Mick. I never realised that it was a 'main' Police Station for Boowul. It doesn't seem big enough.  My only real involvement with it was when the lads from there came flying up to the 360 Club.. not far for them.. on the odd occasion when idiots from out of area came around causing trouble.That was way back around 1968-71.

 

On further reflection it will have been open mid 60s.. because I recall them coming down to Boowul Market when a couple of lads made a very big mess of a BSA Super Road Rocket and couple of crossing bollards, just opposite Boowul Bogs around 1965.  By the time they got there..all traces of the bike were hidden up an alley at the side of the Penguin Cafe..and two rather dazed lads were just sitting on the pavement denying all knowledge. :)

 

P.S.  Hope you are well.

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@Cliff Ton

 

The post I was thinking of contained a link to a lengthy article about the building of the Stockhill Lane houses and those on Bobbers Mill Road which, I believe it said, were constructed by a private contractor and subsequently sold to the City Council.

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Hi everyone. Thanks for all the comments re the police station article. I'll change the typos - the spell checker misses words spelt correctly but which are wrong in context. On the Sherwood stations, space in the article limits covering all the locations, so I'll amend the page to show that these 'phony' stations were at numerous sites. Thanks again.

 

Engineer - I've corrected the typos. Ransome and Bridgeford always get past me - you often read what you want to read not what it should read!  The brickwork came up in my 'how to date your house' book but I'll bow to an expert. I haven't mentioned Bridewell yet mainly because I can't get any decent pictures of it and I wasn't sure that it was a police station as such, more a custody suite for the magistrates court. A new custody suite is to be built at New Basford on the old gasworks site - cost £17m at the last estimate!

 

Thanks again. 

 

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Hi everyone - thanks for all the comments and help. 

 

Engineer - typos changed, thanks Ransome & Bridgeford always catch me out. Well spotted. My 'How to date your house' book showed the brickwork as Cross Bond, but I'll bow to an expert. Thanks. As for Bridewell, I wasn't sure it was a police station as such, more a custody suite for the Magistrate's Court. That's one reason I asked for comments as I am no expert on the Police. It is hard to get a decent photo but as i have included the old House of Correction and the Guildhall 'prisons' I'll probably add it to the article. A new suite is planned for the old gasworks site at New Basford - cost £1.7m! Stuart C - Space in the article makes adding too many Sherwood sites a problem, but I'll give it some thought. I knew about the bank site and should really include that - it was referred to as a Police Contact Point. DJ360 - The police box on Angel Row/ Long Row was the only one I photographed. I've never seen a Tardis in Nottingham. As for the Luddite riots - all the history docs refer to them as riots. Over 50% of all frames in Nottingham were destroyed in a five year period. Perhaps 'Riot' isn't the right word - I'll dig out the thesaurus and see what it comes up with - Uprising perhaps? 

 

Thanks again everyone and sorry if I have added this reply twice - I can't seem to get rid of my first draft. 

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The Bulwell Church Lane premises (which became computer shop) is covered by Graham; there is a photo.  I remember it being built but can't put a date to that.

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I passed the Melbourne Road police station regularly from 1950's until 1965. I don't recall it having a pitched roof. The image must have been in the a 1930's as the Aspley housing estate (the circular road in the image is apparently Bodmin Drive) appears quite newly constructed. 

I remember the police station minus windows, with the entrance door facing Bar Lane. The aerial image as illustrated with the main door and windows facing east down Nuthall Road).

More history on this would be helpful.

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2 hours ago, Graham woodward said:

 DJ360 - The police box on Angel Row/ Long Row was the only one I photographed. I've never seen a Tardis in Nottingham. As for the Luddite riots - all the history docs refer to them as riots. Over 50% of all frames in Nottingham were destroyed in a five year period. Perhaps 'Riot' isn't the right word - I'll dig out the thesaurus and see what it comes up with - Uprising perhaps? 

 

My apologies Graham.  I do some of my best posting late at night.. but sadly I also do some of my worst posting late at night.  I clearly didn't 'scan' your document closely enough and missed any reference to Church Lane.  Once again.. apologies and once again congratulations on a very thorough and informative piece of work.

 

As for Luddites. My reticence in accepting the general modern image of Luddites as 'baying mobs of hammer weilding murderous thugs', is partly founded in a book I read around 1971. It was simply titled 'The Luddites', and gave a much more considered view of Luddite origins, motivation and activities.  As I indicated, it does depend rather a lot upon what you read, but also I think on what phase of the Luddite movement you look at. For e.g., it does seem to have acquired much of its  more unsavoury reputation once it reached the cotton mills of the north and west, though it appears to have started in the midlands frame knitting industry.  Either way I do not want to derail your thread, so I will do a bit more research and then start a Luddite thread.

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Slightly outside the city boundary area, in recent times there have been a couple of cases of closing down relatively new police stations.

 

There were two built in the 1980s; one at Rectory Road, West Bridgford  https://goo.gl/maps/iGPTRPYXK3dcTskd6  and a similar building at Cavendish Road, Carlton  https://goo.gl/maps/yRw7NY6SZmitqfS6A.

 

Both are now closed down after a working life of only around 30 years. Carlton has been converted to apartments; the West Bridgford one is still pending.

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Lizzie. I can see where you see Information missing an A but the H is missing in Shire above it.  i think it looks like 2 halves of a picture have been spliced together making those letters disappear. The pic below all letters are there. 

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Kath, closer inspection of a blow up of that picture, I would agree with you. If you look above the letters along the edge of the sign you can see a break.

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Hi

 

DJ360 - no problem re Church Street. As for the Luddites, I looked up riot in the OX dictionary and it said, "A violent disturbance of the public peace by three or more persons assembled for a common purpose". I think that a large group of people hell bent on destroying stocking frames and setting fire to large buildings would fit this description. I have much sympathy for the Luddites - the bosses treated them with disdain and they did not have any say in the matter. The sad thing was that in the end they were shooting themselves in the foot. Rather than replace the frames that they all knew how to work, the bosses introduced powered large scale machines in huge factories that did the work quicker and cheaper, leaving many more weavers out of work - a Leavers lace machine could produce 1000 twists in the same time it took a frame worker to do 10.

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I remember Melbourne Road police station roof as being flat - 1960's.  In fact on that ariel view, the car parked at the side of the road just before the railway line is possibly my Uncle Alf's 

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If you zoom in on CT's aerial pic of the police station,  it is clearly a flat roof. The building almost matches the prefabs built post-war along Nuthall Rd. They were flat roofed too. Was the police station built post war too?

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Im sure the melbourne rd police station was originally an air raid shelter painted a light colour. (Edit, or decontamination building)

There was also a police station on Strelley Rd which was an ex air raid shelter or ex decontamination centre. It was on the north side of the rd A6004 opposite Melbury rd junction and 200 yards west of the present station.

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Graham. 
I am in touch via a private Facebook group with a number of retired officers. I will post a copy of the link to your article and let you know any comments they have. Some of them go a fair way back and will recall many of the stations long gone.

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7 hours ago, Cliff Ton said:

I assume this is the Bridewell referred to

The building on the left of that picture is the magistrates' court (now called the Nottingham Justice Centre as it hosts tribunals as well) and the one on the right is the courthouse for family proceedings.  The Bridewell is tucked away behind but its entrance is in the corner between the two court houses.

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DJ360.

Col

A Riot had a legal definition ie.

1714 Riot Act

The early 1700s was a time of unrest in Britain with riots occurring in 1710, 1714 and 1715. The preamble of the Riot Act refers to these ‘rebellious riots and tumults' and states that the existing laws were insufficient. The Act allowed local officials to read a proclamation ordering illegally assembled groups of more than twelve people to disperse. Refusal to disperse was a felony offence which carried the death penalty. It is from this we get the phrase ‘reading the Riot Act'. Contemporary accounts disagree as to whether the Riot Act was successfully read at the 1839 Newport Rising. Some claim that the mayor read the full proclamation, others claim that he was shot and injured while trying to read the Act from the window of the Westgate Hotel. Interestingly, the leaders of the Newport Rising were charged with treason rather than being charged  under the Riot Act. The Riot Act was repealed in 1973.


I agree that depending which side of the fence you sit on, accounts of the actions of the Luddites can vary greatly from sympathetic to exaggeration, the truth perhaps lies somewhere between the two. There can be little doubt that some serious public disorder did take place and serious damage to buildings and property did take place. The authorities often responded with extreme severity but these displays of civil disobedience were seen as extreme threats to the very fabric of society and we’re to be stopped by whatever means necessary. 
 

I’m sure you would find this paper interesting Col.

https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/files/84025014/FULL_TEXT.PDF

 

 

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@ Graham woodward and  Letsavagoo. (Not read your link yet Letsav.. but I will later.)

 

Thank you both. Of course I am well aware of the legal/formal definition of a Riot and would not seek to deny that much Luddite activity, especially in the latter stages of the 'movement' (maybe the word for your article Graham?) fell under the definition.

 

However, it seems to me that we should not lose sight of the old adage 'history is written by the victor'. In this case 'the victor', would doubtless include the vested interests who controlled not only the manufacturing activities which led to the rise of Luddism, but also the legal system to which Luddites were subject, and the  newspapers which reported events.  Those forces are unlikely to have painted a sympathetic picture of the Luddite cause. 

I think it's also important to see Luddism in the context of a more general period of social, political and economic upheaval and protest that resulted, in simple terms, from the Industrial Revolution and the rise of 'Capital', accompanied by Malthusian thinking and a deeply engrained class system. All of this of course when any kind of 'Poor Relief', if it existed at all, was limited and punitive.

 

In the final analysis, people were pushed into defending their livelihoods, by the only means they had at their disposal and even then there is strong evidence that they started out taking reasonable grievances to unreasonable 'masters', but were ignored.

 

There are of course numerous more recent examples of the same thing happening, with reporting and analysis being very much subject to the political motivations of Govts and the Media.  This has all become highly relevant again as our present Govt. quietly but determinedly pushes through anti-democratic, anti-protest and other regressive legislation which would not have seemed out of place in the early 19th C.  That, however is for the Politics thread.

 

 

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Without wishing to drift too far off topic, I’ve always thought that if the Luddites had had their way, we would all still be living in unhealthy slums and travelling around on foot or horseback, with a much shorter life-span, and no electricity or health facilities.

 

And we wouldn’t be having this discussion, because the Luddites would’ve protested about the internet putting messengers and town criers out of business. I sympathise that they would lose their existing way of living, but if we don't have that inconvenience there wouldn't be any progress.

 

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