IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Canterbury Road, NOTTINGHAM, NG8 1PT

Robert Shaw Playing Field - named for the nearby primary school - is the triangle of land between the Nottingham-Mansfield and Radford-Trowell railway lines at Radford Junction. Beyond the embankment of the Trowell line are some of the houses at the end of Kennington Road. The Radford author Alan Sillitoe describes children's fights on this bit of railway and the building of the council houses on either side of the line in the 1930s in his short story "The Decline and Fall of Frankie Buller". A more peaceful child, I cycled here most evenings fifty or so years ago to see the St Pancras to Edinburgh Waverley Express go by, coal trains on the Mansfield line and shunting on the Radford Colliery sidings away to the left.

Frosted railings and trackside.

The left hand line leads to Trowell Junction on the Erewash Valley Line. Once used by express services between London and Sheffield via Nottingham, it was earmarked for possible closure towards the end of the 20th century. It has revived since then, carrying the Northern Trains local service linking Nottingham, Sheffield and Leeds. The line straight ahead is the former Midland Railway Leen Valley line, opened in 1849 to tap the expanding Nottinghamshire coalfield. Passenger services were withdrawn in the 1960s under the Beeching Plan, but were revived in 1993 as the Robin Hood Line, which now operates half-hourly between Nottingham and Mansfield Woodhouse, hourly to Worksop.

A drab and misty September morning in an area of Radford once known as Sodom, as older Nottinghamians may recall. Many of the Victorian terraces at the Wollaton Road end of this area were demolished in the 1970s, but the council houses built in the late 1930s remain.

A view from Canterbury Road, taken on a misty September morning. These council houses date from the 1930s, when the streets west of Radford Station were extended northwards. When I was a boy this part of Radford was known as Sodom.

In the early 1960s this was a good place to hang out with schoolfriends. A lot of trees have grown since then, obscuring the railway line to Mansfield and Worksop straight ahead and the line from Radford to Trowell Junction and the Erewash Valley Line to the right. Industrial units and student flats now occupy Radford sidings and goods yard on the other side of the Mansfield line, along which countless coal trains from the Leen Valley pits passed. The Waverley Express to and from Edinburgh via the Settle & Carlisle, which so excited small boys, no longer uses the route to Trowell.

This part of Radford originally developed near the railway station in the last quarter of the 19th century. It expanded in the 1930s when these council houses were built, and new houses like the one in the background on the right replaced some of the Victorian ones in the 1970s. When I was a boy this area was locally known as Sodom.

After a frosty night the early morning is bright, sunny and very fresh!

New development.