"Nottingham, Then & Now "
July 2007 Meeting Report
Guest Speaker - Bill Clarke
The July 2007 meeting of the Keyworth & District Local History Society was held in The Centenary Lounge of the Village Hall on 6th July. The guest speaker for the evening was Bill Clarke whose subject fro the evening was ‘Nottingham Now & Then’. The presentation was in the form of a slide show with Bill providing a running commentary.
The presentation began with a slide showing Burton’s the Grocers, situated under the Council House, the best shop that Nottingham ever had in Bill’s opinion. Bill remembers visiting the shop with an aunt, who would go to each department, place her order and then take Bill to the restaurant at Griffin & Spalding for a cup of tea and a cake. That finished they would catch the bus home and the groceries would already have been delivered!
Another slide that Bill showed depicted the Black Boy Hotel, one of Nottingham’s most famous hotels. The building was designed by Fothergill Watson and was in his own inimitable style. Sadly the building was demolished in the 1960’s, despite considerable opposition to the move by members of the Nottingham public. The hotel was replaced by a shop in a building that was typical of the soulless entities that were being foisted on the public in the name of ‘progress’. Bill recollects a relative of his telling him how, whenever a visiting Australian cricket team stayed at the hotel ‘Little John’, the bell on the Council House clock, rang the quarters all through the night. However, if the England cricket team were staying at the hotel it was turned off at 11.00pm each night!
The next slide to be shown featured the department store Griffin & Spalding. Bill commented on the fact that you could enter the store by the front entrance, walk up three flights of stairs visiting various departments and leave the store on Market Street, still on the ground floor! A slide of particular interest was the one which depicted the furnishing store of Henry, Barker, Smart & Brown, situated on the site where the Central Library now stands. The reason for the interest was the singular curved windows that were used to glaze the shop front. Looking through the windows at the displays inside the shop was a very strange experience due to the distorting effect produced by the curved glass, the made you feel as if you were falling into the shop!
The Talbot, or Yates’ Wine Lodge, as it is more commonly called, was next on the list. The frontage was very elaborate and the photograph of the building must have been taken at the time of Queen Victoria’s jubilee as a large sign on the front of the building proclaimed ‘A Queenly Woman, and a Womanly Queen’. Bill went on to relate how his wife had an insatiable desire to see what the inside of the building. Consequently, one day he took her inside to satisfy her curiosity. The establishment was much frequented by Polish persons at the time, possibly attracted by the lure of the cheap sherry that Yates was famous for. It didn’t take Bill’s wife long to decide that the place wasn’t at all to her liking and Bill was entreated to take her out of the place.
A variety of slides were then shown showing such diverse subjects as the old Town Hall, situated at the top of High Pavement, the old Moot Hall, the County Hotel, next door to the Theatre Royal, the Empire Music Hall, (where Bill could only afford to go in the ‘Gods’), and the Gaumont Cinema. The Gaumont Cinema, or the Hippodrome as it was previously known, began life as a lace factory before being converted to a cinema. One of the things that Bill remembers most about the cinema were the supporting pillars that were situated throughout the auditorium and made viewing the film extremely difficult if you were unfortunate enough to be sitting behind one!
A view of the old Nottingham Playhouse was then shown, and mention made of John Neville, the Playhouse director, who was instrumental in making the playhouse nationally famous with the excellence of his productions. A photograph of the old Exchange building in the Market Square was shown. The building was demolished to make way for the new Council House but the clock survived, nowadays to be found on a factory on Alfreton Road. A view of Beecrofts’ toyshop on Market Street was then shown. Bill recollected the advertising ditty;
‘When we were boys, we bought all our toys,
From Beecrofts.
Now we are men, we’ll go back again’.
There then followed a very varied collection of views from all over the city centre ranging from Bridlesmith Gate to Trinity Square, The Flying Horse to The Palais de Dance, the Nottingham House of Correction to The Great East Midlands Exhibition Centre on Trent Bridge.
The following series of slides portrayed Jessamine Cottages, close to Nottingham Castle. The cottages were build on the side of a sandstone cliff which was removed to make way for a new development. The cottages looked very picturesque but, in fact, were very primitive inside with beaten earth floors. The cottages could be seen from the Castle grounds and were another victim of the headlong rush to ‘modernise’ Nottingham.
Views of the Alms Houses at Canning Circus, The Grand Cinema on Radford Road, Staddons Furnishers, also on Radford Road, the entrance to the Jewish Cemetery on Sherwood Street, Highfields Lido, (which was reputed to be one of the coldest in England owing to the fact that the water came from an underground spring), and Clifton Colliery followed, to name but a few. The presentation wound up with a few views of one of Nottingham’s most famous and most missed thoroughfares, namely Drury Hill, the demolition of which, for the new Broadmarsh Centre, was nothing short of scandalous.
All in all the presentation was very varied and interesting, coupled with Bill’s inimitable commentary, and made for a highly entertaining and nostalgic look at the Nottingham of yesterday. Sadly the views that were show on the Nottingham of today only served to remind us of what a great loss Nottingham has suffered at the hands of the town planners with the demise of so many old and interesting buildings.