IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Bridport Avenue, NOTTINGHAM, NG8 1PY

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.

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.

Many of the Victorian terraced houses at the Wollaton Road end of Kennington and Canterbury Roads were demolished in the 1970s, but this side of St Paul's Street remains. To the left, roofers are working on the council houses built in the late 1930s. This area, photographed on a grey September morning, was once known as Sodom, as older Nottinghamians may remember.

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 Passenger services were withdrawn in the 1960s under the Beeching Plan, but were revived in 1993 as the Robin Hood Line, which now operates half-hourly between Nottingham and Mansfield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.

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.

Kennington Road is part of the catchment area for Southwold Primary School. It is a cul-de-sac, with a railway line running just beyond the furthest most houses.

The white building in the centre is where Pearce's ice cream was once made. Older Nottinghamians will remember it clearly - bright white vanilla, with tiny shards of ice in it. The building is now occupied by another ice cream maker, Coronato Bros. The colourful building in the distance, on the other side of the railway, is Opal 1, a block of student flats.