Recommended Posts

  • Replies 89
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Posts

Thank You Cliff Ton for the Meadow Lane photo, it shows the houses & houses mean people. What memories these revive! Gants, the sheet metal works was started by a bloke named Quinn, across the oth

You confused me for a few minutes there BilboroughShirley, because I couldn't find the place. Until I discovered it's spelt Moreland Street, and then it all made sense. This map shows what the housing

A friend was speaking about the bombing of the CO-OP bakery in 1941 and when I looked it up I came across this article. BY a cruel stroke, the last three bombs to fall during Nottingham’s deadliest

Posted Images

Michael, you're absolutely right about that. There's a Search facility but it doesn't always bring up what you were looking for.

Also, a photo you are referring to might come under a topic which has no obvious connection; For instance when I posted that railway picture I titled it "Lady Bay" whereas you'd called it Meadow Lane. Same thing. We were both right, but it can be confusing

Link to post
Share on other sites

AND ANY WAY REPOSTING A PHOTO OR A THREAD OFTEN REFRESHES MEMBERS MINDS DID YOU SEE THE PICTURE IN BYEGONES LAST NIGHTS EVENING POST LORRY TURNED OVER NEAR MEADOW LANE AND LOCAL KIDS AND A DOG LOOKING ON SOMETIME IN THE SIXTIES.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Re the last photo, there,s still the odd building as per the one extreme left with "vents" in the roof, (maybe that one?) there and I recall others in the meadows, I used to think they were either shunting steam engine sheds or contained stationary engines running generators or whatever but now understand they were stables, Something I never thought about was the importance of horses, the only ones I ever saw in use were shippo's and the odd rag and bones man's, but as late as 1939 The "big 4" railway companies owned 11,i63 horses and 24,832 Horse drawn road vehicles,

Link to post
Share on other sites

As I was growing up in Grainger Street, off Meadow Lane, one of the things I remember was the regular accidents that occured at the low bridge, just by the level crossing. Whether it was a lorry, bus or other, it always saw the local kids rushing to the bridge to see what was happening. The local number 8 bus that went along Meadow Lane was a single-decker so didn't have a problem. As a kid I wondered why the vehicles would smash into a low bridge and I'm still wondering why, as an adult, it still happens all over the planet today.

Link to post
Share on other sites

That I think is the bridge (tunnel almost?) I referred to earlier, if my memories are correct it was an all brick arch as opposed to 2 walls with spans across and carried GNR lines into their London Road station and in use from 1857, There were 2 further bridges one with 4 lines at least off the GNR built by The London North Western to their Manvers St Goods Station in 1879 and in between those 2 another of just 2 tracks built same time as Victoria station to take the GNR traffic to/from that via London Rd High Level and Weekday Cross, I remember the walls of the latter bridges post 1976 on regular visits to the plumbers merchants that was on Meadow Lane, considering there were those bridges and a level crossing surprised so little photos of the routes there.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I can remember as a kid seeing the sugarbeet tractors going up and down Meadow Lane. The tractors would pull trailers that were full of sugarbeet and as they passed us by Grainger Street my pals and I would try to knock some sugarbeets to the ground. We'd throw big stones or anything to get them off. We only did it when other vehicles weren't around, of course, but in those days the traffic was nothing like it is today. It was better when they had to slow down for one reason or another and then we'd jump onto the trailer and chuck some off. The reason we wanted the sugarbeet for was to make faces. We'd cut the inside out and then make two holes for the eyes, a longer hole for the nose and one for the mouth. Then we'd put a candle inside and at night we'd light it to make a scary face that would glow in the dark. It's a wonder none of us were killed with the things we used to get up to. I did have lots of scars around my body but we did have fun and were always doing something whether it be in Colwick Woods or the wasteland on both sides of Daleside Road. Nowaday's, the only thing you see kids doing is to stare at a mobile phone.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks, mick2me. I looked at the thread mentioned by Cliff Ton and was amazed at how things had changed. One of the photos showed the wasteland where the C0-OP laundry had been. I'm going to pay the area a visit to see it all for myself. I know that crumbling buildings and houses have to be replaced with new ones but you can't help looking on with a heavy heart when it's your building, home or the place you played at as a kid that's gone.

Link to post
Share on other sites

when we lived in netherfield we used to go to clarks corner to collect our sugar beats because being a tight corner they always fell off the lorries or trailers here so if you were quick enough comming out of school you could ussually find one or two about, we did the same thing with them always remember that smell when they got warm but like us in netherfield bet you got the smell from mile end rd sugar factory when the wind was blowing your way, whenever i go past newark sugar works if always reminds me of living in netherfield, and with the sewage works just over the bridge by the river thats about the same too. evokes so many memories.

Link to post
Share on other sites

The only thing that we could smell was Bitterlings, the animal products company on Freeth Street. The stench in the summer could be terrible. I once went inside with a friend who wanted to get some maggots for his elder brother. Once inside I saw piles of chopped up cows and pigs etc. It was quite scary having a cows head looking at you as you moved around. We walked through to the back and went through this door that took you outside to the River Trent. We must have been about 40 feet up from the water where the barges were moored. There were no safety barriers and I can remember looking down at the water and starting to lose my balance. I seemed to sway back and forth for ages but luckily I managed to take a step backwards to safety. A few years later, as a young teenager, I would be diving off the barges and also jumping off the bridges into the River Trent. It's a wonder nobody was ever killed. Another thing that I can remember was the thousands of flies in the summer that came from Bitterlings. My mates and I would get rolled-up newspapers and go up and down Grainger Street killing the flies. Nobody ever complained about the banging on the side of their houses because they knew what we were doing. Bitterlings moved from Freeth Street around 1960/61.

Link to post
Share on other sites

i think that must have been when they moved to stoke next to the sewerage works it latter became chettles still there and still stinks

Link to post
Share on other sites

When I worked at the Coop, a workmates wife worked at Stoke Bardolph Sewage Works.

At that time the Sewage works reported Chettles to the Environmental Health.

Complained about the smell!

Link to post
Share on other sites

My mum used to work at bitterlings on Freeth street when we lived on Grainger St I remember it exactly as Michael describes it latterly it was owned by The Fat Marketing corporation ( FMC ). She used to spend all day at a long type of sink with cold running water testing and selecting skins for sausages.

Link to post
Share on other sites

I worked (contracting) at FMC one summer in the late 60's (?), it was hot & a pile of cow carcases were bloating up in the heat, so some FMC worker slit them all with a big knife......................now that was a stench to make your hair stand on end!!

Link to post
Share on other sites

A lodger of mine did building work there in the seventies.Nothing to do with the rotten crap but by God you knew when he came home...he showered every night for 15 minutes to shift the stink.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 1 month later...

A friend was speaking about the bombing of the CO-OP bakery in 1941 and when I looked it up I came across this article.

BY a cruel stroke, the last three bombs to fall during Nottingham’s deadliest air raid in 1941 brought the heaviest casualties.

They dropped at exactly 2am ... the precise time the clock stopped at the Co-op Bakery in Meadow Lane.

Two bombs hit the bread bakery and a third of the confectionery department.

Inside the three-storey buildings were the bakery’s night shift, firewatchers and a Home Guard unit.

By the time the all-clear sounded at 4.30am, 48 bakery employees and a member of the Home Guard were dead and another 20 injured.

I wondered if any Post readers recognise anyone in the picture on this page?

It shows the staff of the Nottingham Co-operative Bakery and was probably taken in the late 1920s.

It is likely that many of the workers pictured perished when the bakery was bombed in 1941.

Nottingham was not heavily bombed compared with some cities – surprisingly in view of the important arms and munitions factories here.

The raid in May 1941 was the worst blitz of the war. At Meadow Lane there used to a plaque commemorating the bakery workers who died.

The late Reverend Reg Hoye, former vicar of St Saviour’s Church in The Meadows, remembered conducting a yearly memorial service at the site up until the 1970s when the site was sold and the plaque moved to Wilford Hill Cemetery.

My father, Harold Rennie, worked at the Co-op Bakery from the 1920s until 1944. During the war he worked night shifts and was on duty on the night of the raid.

Most of the bakers used to go down to the basement when the shift finished at about 2am, and spend the rest of the night there.

My father had not been married long and preferred to cycle home through the blackout to Carlton.

It was this that saved him.

In the raid the large bakery was completely destroyed by a direct hit from a large bomb, which penetrated through three floors and exploded in the basement.

Even though he survived, it was a traumatic experience for father.

He did not speak about it much but once told me he helped efforts to reach the victims by boring through the rubble from a barge on the canal.

Some miners from Gedling Colliery were also brought in to help.

He told me there were only three of his mates left out of 34.

Bread making for Nottingham was moved to Ilkeston and for the rest of the war my dad had to work very long hours, making up for the shortage of skilled bakers.

  • Upvote 2
Link to post
Share on other sites

I worked at Meadow Lane Coop as an electrical apprentice from 1968.

I recall some kind of plaque but not any remembrance service.

Anyone passing Wilford Hill with a camera?

Link to post
Share on other sites

mick2me, I know that you worked at the Meadow Lane CO-OP and I was thinking of you when I put the post in. My friend said that he could remember seeing the plaque at the CO-OP but wondered what had happened to it. Now he knows.

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...

Be nice to see a pic of it too eh Michael :)

There is a photo of the plaque in "Nottingham at War" published by the Evening Post in 1986

Geoff Blore's book shop may have a copy (I got mine from there).

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...