Nottingham

Fifty years ago, at the age of eighteen, leaving the city of my birth and I went to live and work in Vancouver. From the town of Mr. Snot and Robin Hood in England’s East Midlands to Flower Power in the Pacific North West for me the transition was huge. In 1967 the phrase ‘Gap Year’ had not been coined. On university campuses around the western world, including at Nottingham, enfranchised students were too busy to travel abroad, they were protesting at anything from the Viet Nam war to standards of lecturers. Not wishing to join the protest but see something of the world I took a year out – and coined a phrase.

Fifty years on an idea struck me of walking through the Nottingham landscape of a younger life. The plan was to walk the roads, streets and alleys that formed a backcloth to those first eighteen years. In 2017 I wanted to see how my city had changed, how the urban landscape had withstood the half-century. I wanted to discover how the people looked and hear how they talked. Some surprises lay ahead.

The route started at the house where I was born, then took in the principle places of those early years: - primary school, church, next house, next school, college, place of work and concluding at a football ground where many a dream was usually shattered on damp, foggy Saturday afternoons.

Fifty years ago Nottingham was a vigorous and pulsating commercial, cultural, and sporting city. Commercially it was a city that had, in the words of my proud bookbinder father, been manufacturing stuff or “making things” since the expanding British Empire in the early nineteenth century. The empire provided Nottingham’s lace industry with worldwide customers. Later that century Nottingham nurtured three of the biggest brands of today with the founding of Boots the Chemist (1849), John Player and Sons (1877) and Raleigh Cycle Company (1885). By the 1960s these were global brands, employing thousands of well-paid (for then) young women. From this economic feature came the city’s famed reputation for producing ranks of good-looking women; they earned good money in the factories so they could look after them selves, dress well and feel confident when out and about. It is said that there were two girls to every boy; an unlikely fact but it certainly put Nottingham on the map.

Culturally the new Nottingham Playhouse, launched in 1963 by the brilliant actor manager John Neville placed Nottingham firmly centre stage of experimental, post-war repertory theatre in Britain. Neville breathed excitement and novelty into drama including two of the most tedious of Shakespeare plays – Coriolanus and King John; productions still revered fifty years on. Nearby The Theatre Royal was where, as a family, we were transported to a magical world with the annual pantomime when panto equalled wonder - and not some awful variety show built around a spent comedian. The dowdy Odeon cinema on Angel Row was converted into one of the first multiscreen picture houses in the country. Old (and I mean old; many pubs vied to be the oldest public house in England, and many a town boasts one of those) drinking haunts such as Ye Old Trip to Jerusalem, The Salutation (where Saturday lunch for a novice bookseller was three pints of Shipstones followed by a tube of Polo mints), The Bell Inn, The Royal Children, The Talbot and The Flying Horse were in the sixties sought by the city’s demi-monde, me included.

Plaque at the City Ground

In the 1950s and 1960s attending games at the City Ground (home of Nottingham Forest) and Meadow Lane (Notts County, the oldest football league club in England) took us down Woodborough Road, Mansfield Road and London Road. Black faces on leaden shoulders lined the streets. Being middle class Mapperley residents we found this strange and other world. I had only met one West Indian and one posh Nigerian family up in the Park. Then too Nottingham Forest was coming to the boil (always delusional when it comes to The Reds), winning the FA Cup in 1959 just ahead of the glory years of Brian Clough.

So in 2017, with wife (proof of the beauty of Nottingham women) in tow, I wanted to see how our city had endured. What of the buildings that sustained generations of Nottingham families? Were they still in the same use as I remembered them? Were they even still standing? What of the people now living in and using them? Architecturally the 1960s was a time of devastation with the demolition of many fine buildings, not least of which was The Black Boy.

Mapperley Crescent, Nottingham

I was born at 2 Mapperley Crescent where our walk commenced. Built in 1910 this prim and immaculate Edwardian ‘semi’ has been lovingly cherished since 1977 by Deanna. Amazed, yet delighted, that someone actually born in her house should knock on her door unannounced, she proudly showed me into the rooms of my first years. Remembering only the old bakelite telephone and table in the hall where mother would seemingly stand for hours talking, for I was only three when we moved house, we left the Crescent and Deanna - with a tear in her eye over more than her photographs of her recently departed husband - and marched along Mapperley Plains to see if the first school, Walter Halls Primary, was still standing. Not only is it standing but expanded and grand. The old entrance through which I was reluctantly dragged at five years of age is now padlocked. (The first recalled smell of the day was the putrid odour inside that entrance of stewing cabbages, floor polish and lavatories). Now there is a larger entrance off the Wells Road to allow the massively increased pupil roll gain entrance. Significant is this; the old entrance was off Mapperley, the newer entrance off St Ann’s – a portent of what I would find at our church.

Fifty yards away from Walter Halls was the St Jude’s church hall. Not now, this red brick construction is the garishly signed headquarters of Johns Wallpaper & Paints! Oh well, the building is put to good use. Retracing our steps along The Plains toward the city, at the top of Private Road we glimpsed a house in which my maternal grandmother and grandfather lived, which I dimly remember. Then to my cousins’ house down the hill. And then along the Twitchell*, a word long lost in my vocabulary that I am delighted to regain, especially after a noble Times reader wrote recently a letter laying claim to this word for Nottingham.

The Twitchell leads to St. Jude’s church, where our family worshipped irregularly. In a sign of the times with churches today it was locked. Gaining entry we discovered Margaret - immaculately dressed, perfectly coiffured and with fresh make up on a beautiful, wan face. Margaret, age 83, was vacuuming the carpets. “Mapperley Park. It’s changed,” she said. “It has many more professionals than in your day. They don’t see to have the time to attend church regularly. They don’t even seem to stay very long. They are more transient; they move on to better jobs, more money, more thrills.” In my day, as she called it, Mapperley Park was populated predominantly by business folk. These were second or even third generation families owning and managing companies (now mostly disappeared) such as Griffin and Spalding, Jessops, Burtons, Sisson & Parker, F.F. Allsopp & Co. (still operating), Pearson's, John Player, Blackburn & Starling, Hicking Pentecost, Briddock's, Dixon & Parker, Redmayne & Todd and many more. These solid Nottingham business owning folk were proud of their city and put back plenty in support of the arts, sports and charitable work. Most of these families moved out of the city to the country in the seventies. Yet their legacy lives on as the buildings survive. This is good to see.

Visiting the house my parents built in 1952, and where I lived until I left in 1967, was a sad experience. Ringed by unpruned shrubs and moss two inches thick on the driveway, we hurried on. I was keen to see my second school, the magnificent Nottingham Girls’ High School. With urban living the old saying ‘what goes around comes around’ is frequently true. In 1955 I attended the Girls’ High as it admitted boys to the age of eight. In 2013 the neighbouring Boys’ High School started admitting girls. We met and spoke with Peter, a caretaker at the Girls’ school, who said, “I think the Boys’ school regrets it now. The relationship between the two schools used to be good but it’s not so good now”. Whatever; the Girls’ school looks prosperous now. It has just opened a new arts building. The girls on the playing field appear admirably drawn from multiple cultures and backgrounds.

Moving down the hill past The Arboretum (which. my wife reminded me, was home to flashers in gabardine macs – and little else - when she was at the school), I was reminded of an irony. When laid out and opened in 1852 it was declared a no-smoking area - this in a city heavily reliant a few years later on the wares and profits of Mr John Player.

The landscape of Nottingham city has benefited hugely from the largesse of Jesse Boot. Providing the capital to build one of the best British university campuses at Highfields (1922-8), Nottingham University is world-renowned. Sadly, this was achieved without my input (although I did work at its campus bookshop in 1966 prior to the students’ above mentioned revolutionary antics of ’67). It was The Trent Polytechnic that was to benefit from my attendance for three years. I took lectures in the rooms frequented by a student named D.H.Lawrence when the building housed what was, in 1906, University College. Today the buildings on the expanded site of Nottingham Trent University gleam in their new cleanliness. The librarians, herein, are amongst the most professional and forward thinking I met in a bookselling career. (If they knew me, and my view of academic librarians, they should be highly flattered).

University College, Nottingham

On we walked to Theatre Square via a quick stop at Langtrys, another notable watering hole. Then we nodded briefly at the Theatre Royal, now doubling as an opera house, and swept down Market Street. What a surprise to see one trader still operating from pre ’67 – SuperFi, where I bought my first HiFi set. This was very heart-warming.

Market Street (so named as it led to The Square where the market and Goose fair was held in the ‘olden days’ as my mother remembered) provided us with a tram confrontation. It was electric trolley buses in my time. Prior to that there were trams. Now it is trams again. What next, electric buses? At the bottom of the hill I looked up to see the reassuring sight of The Council House (completed in 1929 with the same Portland stone as St Paul’s Cathedral) and waited for the sonorous sound of Little John, but no roars from the lions‡, before continuing on to Wheeler Gate. 

Sisson & Parker on Wheeler Gate, a family (father’s mother was a Sisson) bookselling business since 1854, provided an exciting and turbulent stage of my life for eighteen years until I was ousted in 1982. The business was sadly closed a decade later, the building’s ground floor now houses a grotesque Sainsbury’s Local. What lay in store for our current visit was a great surprise. The upper floors, grandly renamed Wheelergate House, have become luxury apartments. We met, Richard, one of the owners of the property development company behind the scheme. Asian, young, courteous, Forest supporter (good man) and interested to know my company once owned the building – Richard is a commendable successor to Jesse Boot, John Player and Frank Bowden. He and his fellow directors are types that will make Nottingham prosper in the decade ahead.

I next met Steve, another property developer, whilst having his Mercedes washed on London Road. He too is grasping the changing business, geopolitical and economic landscape, converting redundant factories in the Lace Market to apartments and studios. His view on why there are so many bars, cafes and restaurants on the city’s streets is prosaic; “You can’t get the experience of eating out and drinking with friends on the internet. Everything else you can”.

Our walk finally ended at Trent Bridge. To the left lies the ‘Theatre of Miserable Afternoons’ (the City Ground) and to the right the magnificent cricket ground (more on that in a later blog). Near Forest’s Trent End I met the taciturn Roy, twenty years on the security team at the ground. What, I asked him, was the state now of the city that had attracted the unwelcome reputation of ‘the murder capital’ of England in the ‘90s? “Nottingham’s changed a lot since your time here. There’s more trouble now in the so-called villages outside the city than in ‘t town. Them apartments and flats are so expensive, the druggies can’t afford to be in the city”.

Through the 1990s and early noughties my irregular visits to the city showed that shops were disappearing from the city. The locals looked dowdy, unhappy and mournful. Slab Square, to my horror, was occupied with cheap food stalls and amusement stands. Some council committee of philistines had even allowed large posters to be mounted on the beautiful Portland stone of the Council House. (In 2017 this eyesore prevails. No, I do not want book now for The Kaiser Chiefs!).

Deanna, Margaret, Peter, Richard and Steve all appear proud of their city. It is still a changing city. Since I left in ’67 there have been three attempts at growth yet prosperity stalled.  At last, in 2017, the magnet of investment capital and jobs in London and the southeast appears to be being resisted. The original Boots the Chemist store on High Street is a thriving boutique. Hicking (UK) Ltd.’s factory (1873) is a dubiously named but obviously successful “sports bar & grill chain famous for chicken wings served by waitresses in short shorts”. Hmm. My old Midland Bank branch on Victoria Street, a magnificent Victorian building, is another restaurant. The beautiful Willoughby House (1743) on Low Pavement is now the headquarters of another world-renowned Nottingham entrepreneur, the fashion designer Paul Smith. This is apt because much of the Willoughby family’s fortune was made through wool.

Nottingham’s landscape, and consequential fortune, has not been assaulted by tempest or earthquake (see upcoming blog on Christchurch N.Z.). Men and women, through honest labour, have made the Nottingham landscape since Mr Snot arrived in the eighth century. I am descended from good Nottingham merchant stock. When first my mother died and then my father my thoughts each time were for the city as well as my family. I had an overwhelming sense that when they died a part of the city died with them. I was sad for my family but also sad for Mapperley, Lucknow Drive and Magdala Tennis Club, because all these places had been invested in by fine folk. Yet, returning on a spring day in 2017 I was reassured. The city structure, human and built, is till there and thriving. The houses, the church and the trees all seemed to shout out to me; we remember your kinfolk, we remember you. You are part of us and we are not going away. We’ll tell those that follow all about you”. In 2017 I am encouraged by a return of hope to the city; people on the street are smiling again.

* a narrow passage or alley.
‡ the local legend says that the stone lions guarding the council house will roar if a virgin walks past.

If you would like to share your experiences of the places discussed in this blog please record them in the Comments section.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Publications: -

Non Fiction.

1.     Portrait of Nottingham; Emrys Bryson; 1974 (I am particularly indebted to this Emrys for jolting memories of my city)

2.     Nottingham Settlement to City; Duncan Gray; 1953

3.     St Ann’s: Poverty, deprivation and morale in a Nottingham community; Ken Coates & Richard Silburn; 1968

4.     Nottingham A Century of Change; Douglas Whitworth; 1997

5.     The Book of Nottingham; conference souvenir; 1938

6.     Nottinghamshire in the Civil War; Alfred C. Wood; 1937
7.     Nottinghamshire; Roy Christian
8.     Nottingham, a biography; Geoffrey Trease; 1970

Fiction in which Nottingham plays a central role:

1.     Sons and Lovers; D.H. Lawrence; 1913

2.     Women in Love; D.H. Lawrence; 1920

3.     The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner; Alan Sillitoe; 1959

4.     Saturday Night and Sunday Morning; Alan Sillitoe; 1958

5.     The Green Leaves of Nottingham; Pat McGrath; 1970

6.     Penny Lace; Hilda Lewis, 1957

7.     Many works by Stanley Middleton (1919-2009)

Books by the authors referenced can be bought at: https://bookshop.blackwell.co.uk