Nottingham's "Pea-soupers"

[teebee 8]

We also had many a journey back from Claremont School to Valley Road, when the bus conductor (or conductress) walked at the side of the bus, holding on to the front mudguard to guide the driver along the route by following the kerb.

Not too bad until we topped the hill where Hucknall Road crossed Perry Road. A wide crossing - and no kerb, which made things very difficult. Sometimes we abandoned the bus at that point as it was quicker to navigate on foot, but once managed to get hopelessly lost!.

But the buses did keep running for as long as possible. Even the trains didn't stop for leaves on the lines!

[MartynE 2]

I remember in the early 60's trying to get home from work one night.

I worked at Oscrofts on Castle Boulevard and travelled to and from on my motor bike.

I eventually managed to get home to Valley Road and as I drove into our drive, I was followed in by a car that had been tailing me!

We lived between Ventnor Rise and the High School playing field, the River Leen ran along and under the back gardens and was a magnet to the smog.

[teebee 8]

Ideal days for sorting out a blocked chimney too. Mum couldn't afford the luxury of a chimney sweep, so what better time to pile old newspapers in the grate, get the flame roaring up the chimney, and set light to the mass of soot that lined and blocked it. Clouds of black smoke to add to the yellow Smog - but who was any the wiser?

(Falling soot and sparks sometimes made a bit of a mess of the hearth rug though, and cleaning up -without a vacuum cleaner- was a bit of a chore!).

[Ayupmeducks 1,730]

Here's story based on a Monty Python sketch, it was posted on my mining forum as we were on about the 60's peasouper smogs. Daz one of my moderators posted it.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Fog, call that a fog?

We had proper fog in Yorkshire in them days, none of yer mamby pamby River Trent morning mist fogs here, our fogs were so full of coal dust and bit of iron, we used to burn it on t’fire, the iron in it melted an stuck to fire grate, and made sure they never burnt away.

Yorkshire fog hung over top of our towns all year round, so solid it were that we could run cars and lorries on top of it.

We used to cut it up into blocks using a saw and then build houses with it, until we had that big accident. The council decided to build us a new Town Hall with these fog blocks but the council workers were cutting fog from under the motorway that went over top of the River Dearne, course it wasn’t their fault they just couldn’t see through the fog, anyway when it collapsed and a bus full of nuns fell through it into the pit baths at Barnsley Main all future fog quarrying was stopped.

Narr that’s what we called proper fog !

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Read it with a "Barnsley accent"

[Farquharson 0]

Early 60's, when I moved to Nottingham. I remember the 'Pea Souper' smogs we

used to have. Walking down Arkwright Street at night. Fog that thick that you

could only just see the street lights. The light from the shop windows cast

rectangular shapes across the pavement and road. Hunched figures in long coats

would pass you like ghosts. There was very little traffic on the roads. Just the odd

43 trolly bus looming almost silently, and eerily out of the of the gloom.

Much of the smog was caused by the fact that most people had coal

fires in those days. The smoke trapped in a layer of air combined with the fog.

You could smell the smoke. There was a wierd atmosphere on those winter nights

back then. I sometimes wish I could experience those nights again!

What are your memories of those cold foggy nights?

It was the morning pea soupers i remember. loved your discription. brought back memories.

Nottingham clifton in 70's. love this site.

[Charlie 11]

Admin definitely has a way with words - not only brings back memories, but I'm sitting here wishing for a good old-fashioned fog! Most we get round her is a heavy mist.

[zab 47]

I remember a few bad ones and the walk back from school along Haydn Road - we used to get sent home if it was really bad. I definitely remember people with torches guiding cars past Meridian; in fact I remember being confronted by a car driving very slowly along the pavement - the driver had no idea where the road was.

[mick2me 3,033]

The Description is from around 1963.

I remember the power station at Wilford building a very tall chimney a few years later.

I remember watching it going up from the Trent Bridge playground.

Maybe it was to blame for much of the smog. Now gone of course replaced by

offices and a retail park off "Electric Avenue"

[Fynger 841]

I remember a heavy fog going home to broxtowe....i was on my trike and i could just about see my front wheel and could see lights following me....i knew the road quite well so i knew to expect a bollard in the middle of the road coming up soon....there it was ...but on my left..( good job no traffic was coming the other way )....watching the lights behind me they all followed me...wonder how many of them saw that bollard on their left and thought ...that cant be right.

[Diana 1]

I was about 10 living in West Bridgford and my dad worked at the power station in Wilford. He finished his shift about 5.00pm and the smog came down and he tried to drive home. A colleague was also trying to get home on foot. He decided to help my dad and walked in front of his car with a torch all the way from Wilford to Edward Road in West Bridgford arriving hours later at night. He declined the offer of a bed for the night and decided he wanted to continue walking home and disappeared into the fog. My father was eternally grateful to him.

[Diana 1]

I remember a few bad ones and the walk back from school along Haydn Road - we used to get sent home if it was really bad. I definitely remember people with torches guiding cars past Meridian; in fact I remember being confronted by a car driving very slowly along the pavement - the driver had no idea where the road was.

Was that the primary school on Haydn Road? My brother went there.

[OLDACE 196]

I remember one night in the 60's I was riding my motorbike down Trent Boulevard, it would be about 2 or 3 in the morning. The fog was really thick, so I had turned my lights off in order to see better. I was in first gear making lots of noise, I was doing less thah 10 mph when I saw a light, it was a copper waving me down.

He wanted to know why I was riding with no lights, so I switched on the headlight and the visibility dropped to nil. He was quite surprised and let me go without even a warning.

In those days some coppers had some common sense, and more importantly were allowed to use it.

[dgbrit 258]

Riding my Motorcycle trying to keep a street light directly above, Thats all i could see , Didnt realise the road ended in a T with a lamp post at the end , I ended up down someones driveway

Do you remember the Colds you would get back then & the nasty sh1p you used to cough up

[Ashley 288]

My uncle (the ex bomb disposal/chemist) once followed another car into a house drive way! and another time heading from Ericssons Beeston to Ravenshead finished up northbound on the M1

[Tim in the North East 200]

I used to walk home from school along Forest Road towards the Mansfield Road/Mapperley Road junction. In one mega pea souper in November 1962 (just before the heavy snow)you could only see a few feet in front so it was safer to walk on the Rock cemetry side of Forest Road as you could navigate by the railings and there were no roads to cross. But the sight of those Victorian tombstones and angels rearing out of the fog was really spooky to an 8 year old boy!

Tim

[Mess 616]

In the late 50's I used to attend Lifeboys (junior BB) at The Albert Hall on Derby Rd on a weekday evening.It was run by Mrs Emberton and her husband used to lead the 3rd Company BB at the same venue.

Me and my pal Stephen Chapman used to catch the bus from Elstree Drive where we lived and return home on the same bus service.

One night when we came out to go home. It was cold and dark and the fog had come down. All the buses had stopped running so we started walking home.

When we got to a phone box we tried to ring my mum and dad (Beechdale 363) but couldn't work out the press button A or B business and lost our 4d without making contact.

We carried on walking up Derby Road and eventually came to a chip shop where Steven and I were sharing a 4d bag of chips when his dad pulled up in his car and took us home.

I was 8 or 9 and Stephen was a couple of years older but we didn't feel the slightest bit put out. It was a great adventure to us and we were both quite miffed when his dad turned up.

I think it was the first time I'd had chips from a chip shop. The nearest one to us in Elstree Drive was either Radford Bridge Rd or Bracebridge Drive and my dad never had a car during all his 88 years

Happy days

[Compo 10,328]

During the 1950s and 60s I was a school child in Nottingham. During autumn there was a weather phenomenon known as a "Pea-souper". This was common in all large cities and Nottingham was no exception. Most of you will remember the

pea-soupers but for the benefit of the younger amongst us it is a dense, choking, yellow fog laced with sulphurous fumes and soot from countless chimneys, railway engines and airborne industrial waste. When a pea souper descended everything ground to a halt. you could see little further than the end of your nose and any form of road transport was practically impossible.

The result of all this was that we school kids were allowed out of school early and left to find our way home as best we could. Many a happy hour was spent groping our way through the streets, peering into the thick yellow gloom looking for familiar landmarks such as street names, phone boxes and other street hardware. Great fun may have been had by kids but many people died during such episodes, especially the elderly and asthmatics who simply couldn't breathe the polluted air.

[.... 23]

The last time I can remember fog to that degree in Nottingham was around the early eighties.

[Ashley 288]

2 memories and a related one, was at a Notts match, maybe 10 years old, before floodlights they kicked off early in winter, think it stated at usual 3pm sept, etc then gradually earlier? anyway this day a big snow cloud came over and all the smoke of the city etc got "trapped" under it, they had to stop the match for awhile till it cleared, another (one of many) was being out at night similar age or a bit older and having great fun in the fog, recall standing under one main rd sodium light and counting how many others you could see, when it got to none then it was great! the related tale was from my mum, swore blind that during one pea souper in the black out she went to the phone box corner of Nottingham Rd and Haydn Rd but couldn't find the door, then realised she was feeling one of the petrol pumps outside Roper's Garage! sounds OTT but having been in wilds of Derbyshire on starless nights, once not seeing my car when about 3 ft away and another time nearly walking over a cliff face tend to believe it

[Beefsteak 305]

Speaking of Notts County and fog, I was at night match only about 15/20 years ago , IMMSC it was a cup match , (I can't for the life of me remember who the opposition were) any way sufice to say, we'd just scored and as the players celebrated this great belt of fog rolled in off of the Trent ! Causing the match to be abandoned after a 20 minute stoppage. If I dig through my archives I'm sure to come across the records somewhere

[.... 23]

I remember being at a Forest game in 1977, their promotion season up to the old First Division before the great era, when they were pretty relieved to see the 'old mist rolling in from the Trent'. Short changed on the admission fee that night.

http://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/southampton/fb_news.php?storyid=15535&title=the_fog_on_the_trent_was_heaven_sent_!

[mudgie49 401]

Mid 60s,coming back from Mansfield at 15mph,and cars appearing in front doing 5-10mph tricky getting past them, that was the last one I remember. But as a kid in the 50s it was just as Compo said.

[jackson 301]

Spot On Compo with your description of fog during the 50's.

It was exciting being let out of school early because of the descending fog; if the buses had stopped running it didn't bother us as the pea soupers had an air of mystery to them - we might even catch sight of a ghost or another supernatural entity if we were lucky - our imaginations ran wild.

At a young and tender age, little regard did we give to those people (whom Compo mentions) who feared such weather conditions.

[katyjay 5,090]

Don't we have another Pea Souper topic somewhere else?

[jackson 301]

Yes we do Katyjay, where you write about 'Pea Soupers' brilliantly.