Not West Bridgford No. 10

Thoroughfares with shops on only one side, and open space on the other, have a peculiar attractiveness, and this is one of the less obvious reasons why seaside promenades and esplanades can be so psychologically satisfying. The sea view, obviously, is the principal reason. Inland, uplifting examples are harder to find – Princes Street in Edinburgh is perhaps the outstanding example in these islands, along with some roads adjacent to major London parks –for example, Piccadilly, partly bordered on its south side by Green Park. Elsewhere, instances are few, although spa towns like Harrogate and Cheltenham hint at this phenomenon, as do places with commons or village greens. Few major European or North American centres offer this feature, though several Australian cities do, most notably Adelaide.

Central Avenue, traditionally the major shopping centre for West Bridgford is, as was noted in an earlier blog entry, building-free for half of its eastern side, where Bridgford Park extends right up to its pavements, in the form of the croquet lawn, so called. In consequence, the arrangement is unusual and pleasing in appearance, and the Avenue is now at the heart of a significant café and alfresco dining zone, increasingly popular of a weekend evening with those tired of the youthful excesses routinely encountered in central Nottingham.

The accompanying photograph has a suggestion of the west side of the Avenue, viewed obliquely from across the croquet lawn. Except that it’s nothing of the sort, it’s Not West Bridgford at all, it’s Not Central Avenue, but Lord Street, that wonderful long one-sided street of upscale shops and eating places in the seaside town of Southport, which used to be in Lancashire, but is now within metropolitan Merseyside. Central Avenue, now with upmarket eateries like the Côte Brasserie and Carluccio’s, is increasingly somewhere that Lord Street could try to emulate, rather than the reverse. But both, in their partial openness, uplift the mood, and are simply enjoyable places to be.