Garden City: Aspley, Cinderhill & Broxtowe

1930s Council housing design in Aspley, Nottingham: "variation in a formal setting".
(Courtesy Picture the Past)

In the early spring of 1939... we joined the exodus of families, most of them from the old slum areas, to the new estates west of the city. Nottingham had an admirable record of slum clearance and re-housing from 1919 until well into the 20th Century. Broxtowe Estate was an expression of that pioneering energy. It was built of ugly red brick, but designed with good intent, plotted and planned for a new way of life.
Derrick Buttress, Broxtowe Boy, (2004)  

This area is home to Nottingham’s largest example of the Garden City, an urban planning concept that sought to bring together aspects of town, country and industry. Built during the 1920s and 30s, these council houses marked the biggest advance of living standards in Nottingham's history; all were supplied with running water, flushing toilet, gas, gardens and electric fittings - amenities which thousands had previously been deprived of. The fresh air from these hills must have appealed to the council house tenants as they left behind them not only the smokestacks of the city, but also the slums of Narrow Marsh. In the rush to make these improvements little thought was given to preserving evidence of the past, except for Thomas North's collieries and railway lines, many of which were still producing coal at that time.


Aspley Hall Cottages, Aspley Lane

The decline in coal mining during the final decades of the twentieth century has meant that today there are no immediate signs of pit heads, coal stacks or wagons. Yet if we look hard enough we can see the scars and relics that remain a distinctive part of a landscape marked by a complex network of former collieries with Cinderhill pit at the centre. There is little left of Broxtowe Hall or Aspley Hall, homes of the notable Helwys and Birkin families. At Broxtowe Hall Close there survives a perimeter wall, while the cottages which served Aspley Hall stand proud on Aspley Lane. Visible remains of ancient Broxtowe or Aspley, the Roman encampment and Anglo Saxon meeting place are long gone, however it is possible to imagine their ancient geographical importance from their elevated position.


1. Cinderhill Colliery


Cinderhill Colliery 1986 (courtesy Picture the Past)

Cinderhill pit was an enormous industrial complex and one of Nottinghamshire‘s first deep pits, pioneering powerful winding engines, ventilation and lighting. When it closed in 1986 it employed just under 1000 people, produced around ½ million tons of coal per year, and had an underground link to Hucknall colliery in order to reduce road traffic. The only visible reminder of this incredible undertaking is the man-made hill known as Stanton Tip, a slag heap of unwanted earth. Phoenix Park was built on the colliery site during the 90s and there is a plaque in a small roundabout commemorating the colliery.


Former site of Cinderhill Colliery, now Pheonix Park


Detail from the comemorative plaque

Confusingly, Cinderhill pit is also known as Babbington, which is a village of that name nearly 5 miles west of here. This is all down to the nineteenth century mining entrepreneur Thomas North who sank Cinderhill colliery in 1841. When he died his portfolio of collieries, which included Newcastle, Broxtowe, Strelley and Babbington were grouped together and known collectively as 'The Babbington Estate' - Babbington being one of his earliest. It is well known that North died in debt in 1868 as Collieries such as Cinderhill required large investments: engines, timber yards, repair work, brick yards, horses, ropes and drainage. But had he lived just another three years he would have seen the fruits of his labour. At his funeral crowds lined the streets to pay their respects and raise funds for a memorial which still stands in a graveyard off Church St in Basford. Many were thankful that he had provided employment and housing for people who had previously struggled as Framework Knitters.


2. Colliery Lines & Relics 


Site of Broxtowe Colliery - now Broxtowe Country Park


Victorian bridges over a former colliery line at Cinderhill - now a tram stop

If Babbington was one of Thomas North's earliest mines then Cinderhill was certainly his largest, sitting at the centre of a huge network of collieries. One of these collieries was Broxtowe Wood and today the pathways still roughly mark the route of a railway line running southward from Cinderhill and then westward to Babbington. The NET tram from Phoenix Park to Highbury Vale follows the original colliery line which formerly connected with the Nottingham to Mansfield line. The Victorian bridges crossing the line are still in use either side of the Cinderhill tram stop.


Car free route from Aspley Library - Keverne Close - another former colliery line


Former miners cottages from the nineteenth century


The Newcastle Arms pub

At the rear of Aspley Library is a car free route to Keverne Close, the legacy of another railway track from Cinderhill through the medieval Quarry Holes Plantation and then to Melbourne Park where there was a pit known as Newcastle colliery, so called because the Duke of Newcastle was formerly a major landowner here. Also, note the Newcastle Arms pub and miners' cottages nearby on Nuthall Road.


Christ Church Cinderhill, 1858 (courtesy Picture the Past)


Christ Church, Cinderhill, built 1856


Detail from Christ Church Cinderhill


Basford Miners Welfare and formerly Thomas North's house 'Basford Hall'


The Elms, Nuthall Road (a house which formally served Basford Hall)

North also provided housing for his workers along Cinderhill Road but sadly these cottages have all gone, but what does remain is the Grade II listed Christ Church, which was financed by North in 1856. Less than a stone's throw is Basford Hall, North's former residence and later a Miners' Welfare.


3. A Garden City


Narrow Marsh before slum clearance in the 30s


Collecting water from an outside tap in 1920s Narrow Marsh


Pail Closets on Sun Street

In Nottingham after the First World War there were still some 30,000 pail closets (a steel bucket for a toilet), serious overcrowding and houses without water, gas or electricity. The situation was urgent and the city embarked on a slum clearance and council house building programme. Nottingham became known as one of the largest and fastest builders in the country: nearly 17,500 council houses were built in the 1920s and 30s, about quarter of which included Aspley, Bells Lane, Broxtowe, Denewood Crescent and Stockhill. This huge undertaking followed national guidelines for "Garden Cities" which decreed that suburban housing should be based on the traditional countryside cottage with proper sanitation, parks, gardens, wide roads and plenty of space.


The Garden City ideal


The hipped roofs of Aspley - a traditional Garden City design


Melbourne Park and the adjacent allotments were complete during the 1930s

 “Come look at this!” Brenda shouted from another room. I ran to her. This room was smaller, even than the attic I knew so well. Fixed to the wall by the window was a handbasin with two shining chrome taps. Brenda was wrestling with the cold tap, trying to turn it on, but lacking strength. “A sink in the bedroom!” she said awestruck. I knocked her hand away and turned the tap on. We watched the water swirl around the small basin, then gurgle noisily away. After the one tap houses we had lived in before, such a facility in a bedroom seemed a reckless extravagance. I turned the tap off and we scampered, excited, into the third bedroom.”
Derrick Buttress, ‘Broxtowe Boy’, (2004)


Trees, privet hedges and Bulwell Stone walls - Denewood Crescent

Whilst tenants were expected to keep their gardens respectfully neat and tidy at all times, little official advice or assistance appears to have been offered. In these circumstances tenants sought  advice from family, friends and neighbours, sharing tools and swapping plants and cuttings. Garden practice often centred on salvaging and making do with very little, but the results were frequently dazzling and a source of local cohesion.
Miss Georgina Couch, University of Nottingham School of Geography (2002)


Broxtowe Lane


The radial plan of Aspley with William Crane School at the centre (Courtesy Picture the Past)


Garden City schools were keen on the outdoor life (Courtesy Picture the Past)

Stockhill Lane was among the earliest Garden City council estates in Nottingham, complete during the 20s, while Aspley was begun towards the end of that decade. The success of this meant that in 1932 the city was allowed to extend its boundaries and build upon the fields of Bilborough, allowing Broxtowe, Bells Lane and Denewood Crescent to be completed during the 30s. These houses followed designs by T. C. Howitt, who sought to create "variation in a formal setting", with housing planned around radial routes and given differences with facing gables, mansard or hipped roofs.


4. The 1920s & 30s


The city dispersed: the early 30s ring-road, and council house plan by T. Wallis Gordon


Western Boulevard under construction (Courtesy Picture the Past)


The 1930s ring road and cycle route - this is Western Boulevard today


The old route to Nuthall, Nottingham Rd


Miners cottages, Nuthall Road - now a petrol station (Courtesy Picture the Past)

This was a period marked by new roads, branch libraries and a style all of its own. Road building and widening was necessary to accommodate not only rising car ownership, but also new motor and trolley buses, which were then replacing tramlines. Until the 1920s Nuthall Road at Cinderhill had the appearance of an old country lane with miners' cottages nestling beside it; The Nuthall pub and the Elms still preserve part of the original route. But the largest road scheme was the ring road of Middleton Boulevard, Western Boulevard and Valley Road. This was one of the last pieces of work by City Engineer T Wallis Gordon and was designed to follow the example of Nottingham's Victorian ring road (Castle Boulevard - Gregory Boulevard).

The original interior of Aspley Library (Courtesy Picture the Past)


The lantern at Aspley Library, built 1937


Aspley Library in 1937 (Courtesy Picture the Past)

I entered the room and felt like yelling for joy. I had never seen to many books in one place, and all for children. Even the smell was beguiling. It would take me for ever to read them all, and the prospect was wonderful. The room was brightly lit and furnished with round tables the colour of honey. Around them there were child-sized chairs with upholstered seats - the luxury!Derrick Buttress, ‘Broxtowe Boy’, (2004)


Mock tudor shops - Aspley Lane / Strelley Rd


1930s Gothic: St Margaret's Church, Aspley Lane

These two decades were also marked by the building of 6 new branch libraries, which culminated in the art deco Aspley Library of 1937, with a stock of some 10,000 books. Designed by Gordon's successor, R.M. Finch, the library features a remarkable lantern and was described at its opening as "set in a garden at the gate of a Garden City". Along Aspley Lane and Nuthall Road, the shops, pubs and churches tell us more about the prevailing style of the Garden City movement which was imitating the countryside; mock-Tudor timber frames and medieval Gothic; the best examples being the Tudor Lodge, The Beacon pub, St Margaret's Church, the 30s Newcastle Arms pub, the recently demolished John Barleycorn pub, and the row of shops on the junction of Broxtowe Lane and Strelley Road.

Reading

• Derrick Buttress, Broxtowe Boy, (2004)  
• Ernie, Scoffham, Vision of the City: The Architecture of T.C. Howitt (1992)
• Nottingham Local Studies Library, Cinderhill Suburb Pack
• Nottingham Local Studies Library, Babbington and Cinderhill Colliery: a selection of historical resources
• Nottingham Local Studies Library, Aspley: a selection of historical sources
• Nottingham Local Studies Library, Strelley Village Pack
• Geoffrey Oldfield, The illustrated history of Nottingham's suburbs, (2009) 
• John Brunton and Andy Smart, Memories of the estates Aspley, Bilborough, Broxtowe & Strelley, Nottingham Bygones (2002)
• N. Pevsner, Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire (1979)
• J. Becket, A Centenary History of Nottingham (1997)
• D. Thompson, England in the Twentieth Century (1965)

How Nottingham was nearly Birmingham: Highway Engineering in the 1960s

(Click on images to enlarge)


This was going to be Nottingham - but it looks like Birmingham

Blaming planners for ugly towns is a bit like blaming doctors for eugenics. A one sided kick in the teeth for a practice, which has often achieved a lot of social good, and just as there are different kinds of doctors, with the different political motives, historical contexts and specialisms, then the same is true with planners.

The 1965 Traffic Plan

Take the largely unimplemented 1965 Nottingham traffic plan, drawn up by the FM Little the then Highway Engineer and Planning Officer. No doubt at the time it was influenced by contemporary thinking and developments such as the Buchannan 'Traffic in Towns’, which sort to forestall anticipated grid lock by separating pedestrians from cars and investing heavily in extensive highway engineering. Birmingham, ever re-inventing itself (and throwing away its past) was one of the biggest proponents with Highway Engineer Herbert Manzoni seen my many engineer at the time as some sort of hero. Manzoni retired in 1963 having planned the inner ring in the 40s. Manzoni is described in the Birmingham Pevsner guide as "ambivalent to town planning, indifferent to architecture and contemptuous of history". Ouch!


The proposed motorway and dual layout system - key


The proposed motorway and dual layout system - map detail

So how did this thinking physically effect Nottingham? Maid Marion Way scythed through the Norman street pattern, and busy Victorian shopping streets in St Ann's and The Meadows were lost. Yet unlike Birmingham this provoked a powerful conservationist backlash which is still with us today. Nottingham of course sees itself as a historic town - and rightly so, but this mindset has often created a reluctance about building for the future (for more on that read myself and Adrian Jones' blog on the city's planning history here) Nottingham was thirty years behind Birmingham in embarking on a new road building programe yet by this time there was a strong national reaction to urban motorways, and so the city was accidently saved by its own complacency.


The central area traffic plan

Yet before we embark on a criticism of Little's 1965 traffic plan it is important to remember what Nottingham was like before the redevelopment of the 1960s. Parts of the old Victorian inner city were known for their poverty and physical dilapidation. For example most people in St Ann's were without hot water, baths or their own toilet, never mind their own inside toilet. All this was embellished  through Ken Coates and Richard Silburn's sociological study "Poverty and Forgotten Englishmen" - although much of this was refuted by various local residents (more on that later). There are reports of gutters blocked with industrial fat, flooded cellars, broken sewage systems and epidemics of lice. Independent surveys showed that most people actually wanted to move out into better areas and so the stories of displaced communities when St Ann's was redeveloped are not clear-cut. There was little room for car parking, terrible through traffic in residential streets, no room for new consumer goods and many houses in very poor structural condition with streets covered in brick dust. So FM Little was under political pressure to start a new, use fresh ideas and do something radical and quick.


Park Way, flying over the Park Estate

But Little was a Highway Engineer and not a Planner, and so his report was myopic in the extreme: focusing solely on highways and not on social, economic, landscape or historic information. A planner is like a jack of all trades, responding to different political view points and social and economic pressures when most interest groups only consider their own.  The city's first architect David Jenkin was only appointed in '64 and doesn't appear to have been directly involved, so this was a case of highway first, architecture second. It was hardly an an integrated plan. The report was almost instantly opposed by his fellow planning officers in the Corporation of Nottingham (the Council), the Nottingham Civic Society and a number of local residents associations - especially in St Ann's. In the end it was actually dropped after central government weighed in, probably anticipating further opposition and funding problems if this scheme went ahead.


The Eastern Bypass: roughly Alfred St, Manvers St and LadyBay

So how horrific was it? Very. The Aboreturn and The Park estate would have had a 2 lane dual flyover. Huge junctions and slipways would have sat heavily over Forest Road, St Ann's Wells Road and Huntingdon St. The first inner city suburbs (St Ann's, the Meadows, All Saints) would have been physically and physiologically cut off the post 1877 suburbs (Basford, Forest Fields, Lenton and Sneinton). St Ann's would be cut into four islands and Eastcroft would have a giant flyover and bridge crossing adjacent to Lady Bay. Mansfield Road would be a 3 lane motorway. The Lace Market would have been intersected by a slipway. It doesn't bear thinking about.


Forest Way flying over the Arboretum and All Saints

But FM Little didn't have hindsight. We now know about traffic inducement - if you build more roads for cars then there will be more cars and less pedestrians and public transport. In short he didn't know that it would in time create another grid lock; only one which was larger and uglier than before. We can all imagine a blackened concrete flyover creating a constant droning noise during a Sunday stroll through a desolate Arboretum.


1970 St Ann’s redevelopment showing failed Eastern Bypass

So thank god complacent democratic Nottingham stopped it eh? Or stopped most of it at least - you can still find traces of the Eastern bypass following Alfred Street to Alfred Street South. The southern end of Barker Gate is still a vacant plot awaiting a slipway which never came, and of course we still have the awful 'unwelcome to Nottingham' Broadmarsh gyratory. Maid Marion Way has recently been gently tamed - pedestrians can cross over it rather than under it. What we have now in Nottingham is a city which is comparatively good for walking, cycling and is often seen as a public transport exemplar. Much of this would have been near impossible if 1965 traffic plan wasn’t opposed by the local residents and subsequent generations of city planners.


 The St Ann’s Radburn layout, again showing failed Eastern Bypass

The redevelopment of St Ann's can rightly be criticised for an incoherent Radburn layouts, poor shopping streets and often stark landscape. Yet in someways these massive postwar schemes were successful: after redevelopment all residents had hot water, structurally better houses, room for new consumer goods, more green space, and a healthier environment. Coates' survey showed that most residents preferred the new St Ann's but the biggest thing they missed was the shopping streets and pubs. However, "St Ann's Inner City Voices" by Ruth Johns, refutes a number of Coates and Siburn's arguments through many first hand accounts and argues that people were displaced. There is a general perspective that the area needed the attention but in the end it was far too insensitive. It also shows there have been much campaigning since by SATRA (St Ann's Tenants and Residents Association), FF (Nottingham's Family First) and various councillors to make improvements since. Nevertheless Johns is rightly upset about the area's currently undeserved contemporary reputation and highlights the various active social organisations going strong.

River Leen Greenway: Bulwell – Basford car free route

This is my latest piece of work: A designed and authored historical guide to a car free cycle and pedestrian route. The River Leen Greenway runs from Bulwell to Basford. The first edition has currently been printed and distributed by The Greater Nottingham Transport Partnership. The booklets can be collected from most libraries, cycle shops and the tourist information centre. Or people can email admin AT thebigwheel.org.uk to get a copy post out to them.



In case you haven't already stumbled across a copy, I've uploaded the content and its images in the following blog post. I hope you enjoy it and have a pleasant wander around the area. Oh, and a pdf copy of the document can be downloaded here.

Bulwell - Basford


Beside the River Leen heading towards Basford

The Bulwell to Basford car free route follows the River Leen as it flows south from as far as Newstead Abbey and falls into the River Trent at Wilford. The River Leen was embanked in the 1960s and since then the river has often been forgotten about despite its important history. Today paths are being built alongside the river so that people can enjoy the history and wildlife once again. Of particular note on this route is a medieval street pattern, a Victorian battle for public recreation, the horrors of the workhouse, three former railway embankments and some proud industrial remains. Today the route ends at Basford but in future it is planned that the pathway will be extended to as far as Wilford, in order to provide a sustainable free transport and leisure corridor from the north to the south of the city.


Heading towards Bulwell with St Mary's overlooking the Greenway


1. Bulwell Town


Commercial Rd with former shop fronts

Between Commercial Road, Main Street and Station Road the medieval street pattern survives. This radically changed in the 1970s when Bulwell nearly doubled in population with the building of housing estates on the town’s western side. These estates were built on farm land, potteries, collieries and stone quarries. Many people thought the traffic would increase and so a ring road and flyover was constructed cutting Commercial Road in two, yet thankfully somefine and historic buildings survive.

Strelley House

Strelley House is the oldest and dates from 1667 and was an early charity school funded by George Strelley of Hempshill. The nearby dovecote also dates from this time and was a useful source of meat. Bulwell’s architectural heyday was in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when the town was booming with nearby collieries, quarries and bleachworks.

Sheltons Solicitors - originally designed as a doctor's surgery

Main Street is littered with interesting buildings from this busy period and perhaps the most original is currently under the care of Sheltons Solicitors. This was built as a doctors surgery in 1919, designed by a local man and features a fine first floor stone oriel window.


2. Bulwell Bogs


The 1830s stone bridge carries the ancient river crossing at Bulwell

The changing history of Bulwell Bogs can be charted via its three bridges. The oldest is the 1830s stone bridge which once carried the only route to Basford now known as Station Road. This ancient route features nineteenth century houses, some of which are built out of magnesium limestone, which was quarried nearby and called Bulwell Stone.


The bogs waterside recreation park

The bogs were always a source of fun and recreation in Victorian Bulwell until a land owner attempted to enclose the grounds in 1871. A dispute ensued known as “the battle of the bogs” which was only resolved by Nottingham Corporation, who agreed to purchase and preserve the bogs in 1879.


The iron footbridge built in 1880

A year later the iron footbridge was built - note the leisurely lattice balustrade with curved brackets. Seven years later the Highbury Road bridge was completed and is marked by the fantastic Public Hall built in 1895 for entertainment and early cinema shows. History repeated itself in 2002 when local residents successfully campaigned to save the Bogs from development.



3. The Workhouse


The old perimeter wall of the Workhouse

Along Northcote Way an old perimeter Bulwell Stone wall is clearly visible, this was built when Highbury Hospital was originally Basford Workhouse - a Victorian prison for the unemployed poor. Its history begins in 1814 during a period of rising unemployment and economic uncertainty. The government sought to control the situation via the workhouse, a place wherethe poor were incarcerated upon receiving benefits. Inmates had to wear uniform and were given hard labour such as stone breaking, digging or uncoiling rope, while men and women were segregated both from each other and the outside world. Food rations were weighed before eating and the day-today routine was disciplined by religious instruction. Over 300 inmates jostled for space alongside children, the sick, the disabled and the elderly. By the 1930s it was gradually replaced by a more successful system of education and healthcare.


4. The Railways


Formally a landscape crossed by railways

Between the Deptford Crescent footbridge and Highbury Vale tram stop there were three railway tracks crossing over the River Leen and heading west, two of which left the main Nottingham - Worksop line, while another crossed the Leen Valley after circling the eastern half ofthe city. The first was Thomas North’s colliery line, constructed during a mid ninteenth century economic boom in Nottingham, as land was released for building factories which demanded fuel from the coalfields of West Nottinghamshire. The tram to Phoenix Park follows the original route to North’s mid nineteenth century colliery at Cinderhill. Stanton Tip is a reminder of the millions of tons, which were hauled out of the earth here. The other two lines were built by famous railway companies who were competing with eachother to supply coal to the city.


Archaeological remains of the Gt Northern Railway

The huge embankment beside a pedestrian footpath to Garton Close still preserves the remains of this Great Northern Railway line which arrived in 1876. Unnerved by their rival, the Midland Railway followed this route only six years later. Today you can stand on the earthen remains of the route before the footbridge which connects to Deptford Crescent.


5. Industry


Pearson’s former bleach works

The River Leen had always meandered near Davids Lane and in the nineteenth century it was a hive of industrial activity and experimentation. Our first relic is the mill on Mill Street, which was built in the early nineteenth century to grind corn from the fields to make flour - a reminder that agriculture wasn’t far away. The mill leet which was the watercourse that powered the mill, is still visible. Some of the numerous riverside millers between here and Papplewick were also innovators in cotton spinning and bleaching. George Pearson and Co’s bleachworks was built by the 1880s on Southwark Street - one of many factories which used the waters of the River Leen and Daybrook in order to dye Nottingham Lace perfect white.


E Sallis hosiery manufacturer beside the Vernon Park entrance

Until the City Council bought Vernon Park in 1900, it was formally the ornamental lake and garden of a bleachworks owner. Despite the decline of hosiery at Basford, Ernest Sallis and Co’s works on Waterford Way is a remarkable survival and an architectural gem. The building is complete in its original 1950s deco style and is still run by the family descendants.


Wonderfully intact cool 1950s typography

Nottingham to the Sea: Trent Lane Depot

An update:



For an update and petition, please visit this link

Original article as follows:


Trent Lane Depot, Nottingham

Trent Lane Depot was Nottingham's ambitious attempt to connect with the trade of the North Sea during the inter war years of the twentieth century. During that time the Corporation of Nottingham took over management of the Nottingham - Newark stretch of the river. This was when the city was seeking to continue the diversification of its economy, especially since the local monopoly of the lace trade was then clearly at an end. But the corporation was also seeking permission from central government to extend the city boundary from beyond this very location (the eastern end of Sneinton) and eastward into Colwick. Any ambitious project on a national scale was sure to bring the city kudos at a time when it was struggling to shake off a reputation for slums. At first central government refused, on the grounds that the city had yet to clean up its social problems, and so the corporation solicited the help of local architect TC Howitt and begun building a series of 'garden suburbs' of both private and public housing. Nearby council houses off Colwick Road, are witness to this early stage of council house building in Notttingham. It is perhaps no co-incidence that TC Howit's civic centre, which was complete in 1929, was named 'The Council House'. Three years later the boundary was extended.


Corporation of Nottingham c.1930 

The warehouses on Trent Lane were constructed of reinforced concrete and at the time they were proudly considered by the corporation to be among the best in the UK. With a total of 9 floors for loading and discharging materials such as timber, metal, chemicals and manufactured goods. These would be carried by barge to and from Hull, where any international trade could then be transferred onto ships. The 1937 Nottingham handbook proudly states that during the previous year over 230,000 tons had been carried on the Trent and that Nottingham had successfully created a major inland port, boasting "from Nottingham to the sea". Although this is somewhat less than the two or three million tons carried by an international port such as Hull, it is still quite an achievement for a landlocked city.


Second warehouse and dock entrance

In the post war years, petrol was also carried down the Trent to a new depot at Colwick further down stream. It was the growth of the combustion engine coupled with the gradual silting up of the Trent at Stoke Bardolph, which was to bring about the end of Trent Lane by the 1980s. Of recent years there have been attempts to regenerate this area with waterside luxury apartments, although with the onset of the credit crunch, the planned demolition of this site appears to have been put on hold. When I was commissioned to do this walk by Hinterland in 2006, it seemed as though this landscape was going to become another symbol of a laissez-faire era dominated by finance and property. Instead, we are now returning to some traditional ideas set deep with the rotting concrete of Trent Lane: social housing and industry.

--

References:
J. Giggs, Housing, Population and Transport, in J. Becket, (ed.), A Centenary History of Nottingham pp.435 – 462.
Nottingham City Council, The City of Nottingham Official Handbook, (Nottingham, 1937).

Originally written for Hinterland Projects Publication 2 (2009)

Boston, Holland

Finally, finally got round to writing my own blog post on one of Britain's lessor known towns: Boston, in the Part of Holland, Lincolnshire. This is via Jones the Planner - a collaborative blog between me and the urban designer Adrian Jones. You can also check out our Flickr Sets. Hope you enjoy it.