IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Woodstock Avenue, NOTTINGHAM, NG7 5QP

Woodstock Avenue and the other roads west of Churchfield Lane were developed in the 1930s. This part, next to the River Leen, was once the site of a woodyard (whose other entrance was on Lynmouth Crescent, beyond the red car and trees at the far end) and lorry park. It was good to reminisce about these things with a friendly passer-by.

The houses on Maun Avenue, on the other side of the river, were built on the site of Radford Colliery, which closed in the 1960s. The concrete-post-and-iron-rail fence, which appears in old photographs, is all that remains of the pit.

Streets of distinctively-gabled houses laid out in the 1930s as the city expanded westwards beyond its Victorian and Edwardian edges.

Looking up the Mansfield line towards Bobbers Mill Bridge, which is just round the curve on the horizon. The overgrown area on the right is where sidings once fanned out into Radford Colliery. Houses on Maun Avenue, Wye Gardens and Poulter Close now occupy the site. The factory chimney on the left is at the Collins works on Ascot Road.

The houses of Newquay Avenue, Lynmouth Crescent and Truro Crescent were built in the 1930s. Most are semi-detached, unlike the ones at the top of Truro Crescent.

Taken from the turning circle at the top of the cul-de-sac, looking towards Newquay Avenue. Laid out in the late 1930s and designed for the small cars of the period, these streets are very narrow by modern standards. Many of the houses on Newquay Avenue and Lynmouth Crescent were built without garages as few of the original occupiers would have owned cars, but all of the houses on Truro Crescent had drives and garages. Part of the Bulwell stone garden wall - so typical of Nottingham - in the foreground has been demolished to widen the entrance.

The new brickwork shows that the houses on the corners of Wordsworth Road were once shops. Fifty years on, it seems remarkable how many sweet and paper shops once served the children of Bobbers Mill and Radford. This was once on the western edge of Victorian and Edwardian Nottingham. The streets to the west of Churchfield Lane (to the right and behind the camera), extending as far as the River Leen, date from the late 1930s.

To the right are houses at what was the edge of the built-up city until the inter-war years, to the left ones built in the late 1930s. The Art Deco curves of the former Capitol Cinema, now a gospel church, show at the bottom of the hill. The rest of the day was bright, but although early-morning mist had cleared, before nine o'clock the sun had yet to burn through low cloud.