Not West Bridgford No. 8

In the first of these “Not West Bridgford” blogs I mentioned the Tudor Cinema, which used to stand on the corner of Central Avenue and Rectory Road – in what is now (ironically) called Tudor Square (it wasn’t called that when the cinema was there). I noted the influence of the Tudor style in other parts of West Bridgford. So on Tuesday afternoon this week it was a real pleasure to go along to an excellent illustrated talk about the Tudor Cinema by Bob Massey, given at West Bridgford library.

As well as some of the cinematic history, and events such as air raids and floods which impacted upon the locality, the speaker provided a considerable amount of architectural detail.  The Tudor’s architect was Alfred John Thraves, who worked for a practice in Victoria Street in the centre of Nottingham. Thraves also designed a precursor, very similar in overall appearance, but sadly now a Chinese restaurant - in Bourne, Lincolnshire. A later clone of the Tudor appeared in West Kirby on the Wirral, and another related Thraves design – never actually a cinema but still surviving among a row of shops – can be seen in Mansfield Road, Sherwood, on the north side of Nottingham. Any of these might have made it into “Not West Bridgford” – although only the Sherwood example was known to me prior to Bob Massey’s talk.

The Tudor lasted only from 1931, shortly after the introduction of “talkies”, until 1959, when the mass acquisition of TV sets was well under way. Despite protests, the cinema was demolished and replaced by a design-free two storey block – currently this block includes an Iceland supermarket, a Thomson’s travel agency, and the Shalimar restaurant. When a photograph of this architectural masterpiece was presented at Tuesday’s talk there was a titter of amused derision among the audience, who were all of a certain age and able to recognise retrograde progress when shown it. Lets face it, they’ve had a lot of practice.

If – back in the Fifties - one stood on the steps of the Tudor one could look in an easterly direction, straight up Davies Road towards the edge of the built up area, half a mile away, in the direction of Gamston Bridge. On this side of West Bridgford are several long straight roads – Davies, Blake, Eltham, Burleigh, Stamford and Leahurst among them which – very subjectively it has to be admitted – offer a strong sense of “east”, the direction from which the new day arrives, and towards low land adjoining the Grantham Canal, with allotments and so forth. Despite new building at Abbey Park and Gamston this visual impression is still available today.

 
To illustrate this blog posting with a “Not West Bridgford” example I offer a photograph of part of a shopping parade at Beacontree Health, on the east side of London, close to Dagenham, where there is also this strong sense of easterliness. It’s sort of suburban Co-op Arts and Crafts architecture, between-the-wars, slightly ramshackle. With a little imagination these shops could be in West Bridgford – at Abbey Road, Brockley Road or Hilton Crescent, perhaps.