IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Holbeck Road, NOTTINGHAM, NG8 3PB

Typical detached houses built when the city expanded westwards from the 1930s onwards. The trees mark the edge of some of the many allotments which border Western Boulevard.

An uninteresting picture of part of an electricity sub-station and some gravel - but to those interested in Nottingham's railway history there is more to it. From the 19th century until the building of Western Boulevard and the houses either side of it in the 1930s, a railway linking Babbington (Cinderhill) Colliery and the Nottingham Canal at a wharf immediately south of Wollaton Road ran north and south here. Its course is marked by the eastern edge of the allotments to the left and the western boundary of the Girls' High School (formerly John Player & Sons) sports ground (beyond the garden hedge on the right). For other vestiges of the Babbington Colliery line, see Image], Image], Image], Image] and Image

Now owned by Nottingham Girls' High School, this huge playing field was once Players Rec, home of Players Athletic cricket, football and other sports teams. All the big Nottingham firms had fine sports grounds, and John Player & Sons was no exception. (The Raleigh ground was at Wollaton and Boots at Lady Bay.)

Looking north along Western Boulevard (part of Nottingham's ring road) as it approaches Aspley Lane.

Now owned by Nottingham Girls' High School, this huge playing field was once Players Rec, home of Players Athletic cricket, football and other sports teams. In the days of benevolent employers, all the big Nottingham firms had fine sports grounds, and John Player & Sons was no exception. (The Raleigh ground was at Wollaton and Boots at Lady Bay.)

Located on the corner of Northdown Road (left) and Grassington Road in Ainsley Estate, this distinctive building was presumably some sort of grocery shop before it became a boutique. According to Wikipedia, "Bismillah" is an Arabic phrase meaning "in the name of God", and is perhaps best known in the English speaking world for its presence in the song "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen.

Private houses were built at this end of the Ainsley Estate. The first of the council houses on Northdown Road are in the distance, where the road curves to the right. The Woodlands flats dominate the Radford skyline in the way the now demolished John Player & Sons cigarette factory once did. To their left is the spire of All Saints' Church, still further away.

This detached house on the corner of Grassington and Northdown Roads was, as the faded painted signs for Whitbread and Guinness show, once a corner off-licence (or beer-off, as Nottinghamians called them). In the High and Far-off Times, under-age drinkers could buy pint bottles of Shipstone's Nutbrown Ale to drink whilst idling away the evening on the street corner opposite.

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.