Woodthorpe Park - once a cricket ground

Image: © John Sutton Taken: 18 May 2010

The small park behind The Vale public house at the corner of Mansfield Road and Thackerays Lane was once home to Woodthorpe Cricket Club, for which I played in the late 1960s. There is no sign of a wicket now, or of the tennis courts which restricted the width of the cricket field - which also had such short straight boundaries that it was only a delicate chip for a six into the garden of the club president, on Park Road, to the right. The trees in the background are growing on the embankment of the short-lived Nottingham Suburban Railway, whose passenger service lasted only from 1889-1931, but which remained open until 1951 to serve Mapperley brickworks. It curved south from Daybrook Junction (just offstage left, where B&Q now stands) and passed through and under Woodthorpe Grange Park, serving stations at Sherwood and Thorneywood, before joining the Grantham line at Trent Lane Junction, trains terminating at London Road. Its course through Woodthorpe is marked by the curve of Worcester Road, while further south the almost appropriately-named Raibank Gardens is built on the trackbed.

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