IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Edwalton Avenue, NOTTINGHAM, NG2 6BD

Behind the red car are typical Bridgford villas which house the constituency offices of the local MP, Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke, who at the time this photograph was taken was Father of the House.

Unusually still housed in this imposing Victorian building.

Dating from 1895, this was Musters Road Elementary School when my mother and her brother and sisters were here in the 1920s.

West Bridgford's population rose from 293 in 1881 to 7,018 twenty years later. It is essentially a Victorian and Edwardian suburb, which is why the narrow strip of new houses running parallel to Stratford Road between Bridgford Road and Melton Road shows up so clearly on aerial photos. These flats stand where there was once a railway embankment, now levelled, which carried the Nottingham-Melton-Oakham-Corby-Kettering line on which the fastest trains from Nottingham Midland to London St Pancras ran. There was of course a skew bridge over Rectory Road; fifty years ago I would have stood underneath it to look in this direction.

The white house on the corner of Stratford Road is, I think, a little older than most of Bridgford's red-brick villas.

During the fast growth of Nottingham in the Victorian period pressure was put on the Musters Family, who owned much of the land in West Bridgford, to allow suburban development south of the River Trent. Eventually the Musters sold their land, but they put in place strict planning regulations to the area then known as the West Bridgford Estate. This development was planned over a grid of tree lined streets. The main roads such as Musters Road (see Image) had restrictions on the density of housing and house size. Smaller houses were permitted on side streets, and terraces were erected on roads such as Stratford Road for the servants of the wealthy Nottingham merchants who bought up the larger properties. It is interesting to note that there are no "Streets" in West Bridgford. Originally many roads were name "Street" but this was felt to be too urban by the Victorian "planners". Thus all street names were changed from "Street" to "Road". The one exception is "Village Street" in Edwalton, a village that has been totally absorbed into the town of West Bridgford.

With the modern retirement housing of Church Croft on the right.

The Musters Tennis Club and the West Bridgford Bowling Club are based here. The Marlborough Court flats on the left were built on the levelled site of the Midland Railway embankment which until 1968 carried the quickest trains between Nottingham Midland and London St Pancras, via Melton Mowbray and Oakham.

Heading east.

West Bridgford's population rose from 293 in 1881 to 7,018 twenty years later. It is essentially a Victorian and Edwardian suburb, which is why the narrow strip of new houses running parallel to Stratford Road between Bridgford Road and Melton Road shows up so clearly on aerial photos. These flats stand where there was once a railway embankment, now levelled, which carried the Nottingham-Melton-Oakham-Corby-Kettering line on which the fastest trains from Nottingham Midland to London St Pancras ran.