IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Rectory Road, NOTTINGHAM, NG2 6BE

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.

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

Heading east.

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.

Flats are being built on a site previously occupied by the ambulance station shown in Alan Murray-Rust's Image

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.

Unusually still housed in this imposing Victorian building.

On Rectory Road. The building behind is the local divisional Police Station.

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

Flats are to be built on this site next to the Police Station. The site was previously occupied by the ambulance station shown in Alan Murray-Rust's Image