IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Smite Court, NOTTINGHAM, NG7 5RU

The Dartmeet Court flats are on the site of a timber yard.

Narrow roads and turning circles laid out in the 1930s with the small cars of that time in mind. The Dartmeet Court flats on the extreme left were built on the site of a woodyard.

A big area of the Mill Allotment Holders Association's plots stretches from Ascot Road to New Bridge, between Grassington Road and the railway. The railway is over the hedge at the back, and the houses on Poulter Close (built on the site of Radford Colliery) can be seen through the trees on the other side of the railway. These allotments feature in Radford author Alan Sillitoe's short story "The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller", set in the 1930s.

To a four-year-old this gentle slope seemed very steep. I lived at the house in the centre of the picture for the first twenty years of my life. The rear extension and the garage at the side have been added since my parents moved in 1968.

Looking towards Truro and Lynmouth Crescents. The flat-topped houses seen through the trees in the distance on the right are on Poulter Close, built on the site of Radford Colliery on the other side of the River Leen.

These are typical two- and three-bedroom semis built just before the Second World War. (My parents and I lived at 15 Newquay Avenue from 1948-1968. The lean-to garage is new since my day and covers my cricket pitch....)

Bright morning sunlight in September. These narrow streets were laid out in the 1930s with Austin Sevens and Morris Eights in mind.

This view is taken from the corner of Alfreton Road and Bobbers Mill Road, looking down Newquay Avenue. On the left are the side of the former Capitol Cinema and a Second World War air-raid shelter. The building on the corner opposite the Capitol (just visible here, and much modified) was once Towlson's sweet shop. Lynmouth Crescent runs at right angles at the end of Newquay Avenue. It is almost impossible to imagine that until the 1960s Radford Colliery stood behind the trees - once exclusively poplars - on the other side of the River Leen, which ran along the ends of the gardens of the houses on Lynmouth Crescent and was a good place to fish for tiddlers and see dragonflies. Part of the colliery site is now Poulter Close.

This undistinguished photo could be anywhere, I know. It is half-way along the footpath through the allotments between Ascot Road and New Bridge. These allotments feature in Radford author Alan Sillitoe's short story "The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller". This path hasn't changed in the fifty years since I cycled along it as a lad, and was probably the same when fictional hooligan Frankie Buller created mayhem here in the 1930s.

For a view of the street where I lived as a child taken 55 years after this one, see Image Much is the same (the houses themselves, and their Bulwell stone garden walls), but much has changed. The wooden gates, windows and front doors (all various species of mid green in the mid fifties) have all been replaced, and thanks to the Clean Air Act, the end of steam on the nearby railway and the closure of Radford Colliery (which was behind the poplar trees visible between and above the houses on Lynmouth Crescent) the pebble-dash on the upper storeys now stays bright white and not the smoky grey it was then. The lad on the bike is me, proudly riding my first (second-hand) two-wheeled bike past our house (offstage left). Mum’s writing on the back of the tiny Brownie print dates it July 1955 and notes that I am six – so it’s before my birthday at the end of the month. The bike was maroon – but only I can see this black-and-white snap in colour....