Not West Bridgford No 15

When I posted “Not West Bridgford No 14” in July 2015 and “Not West Bridgford Again” almost a year later, on both occasions I intended for them to be the last in a series of quirky reports on places which subjectively resemble aspects of West Bridgford, the suburb of Nottingham in which I grew up. Recently, however, I visited somewhere that was far too good to exclude from this selection of scenes that could be West Bridgford, ought to be West Bridgford, should be West Bridgford, but aren’t, and hence I felt the compulsion for another blog on the same theme.

For this is West Bridgford on Sea. For some strange reason, a high proportion of West Bridgford-alikes are seaside towns, despite the original being located almost at the geographical centre of England. I know – as per earlier blogs – that previously  I’ve detected traces in seaside resorts as far apart as Frinton in Essex, Ansdell and St Anne’s in Lancashire, and Colwyn Bay – jewel of the North Wales Riviera – but the photograph above is, atmospherically, the best yet. It is, in fact, a very pleasant  road in Rustington, West Sussex, and if you carry on down the thoroughfare in the picture, it turns right at the far end, briefly joins another road, and then there you are – at the sea front. Though neither West Bridgford nor Metroland, this is the perfect suburb, leaded lights in the front doors, the whole number … and with the breeze and shingle of the English Channel a couple of minutes’ walk away. It makes me so jealous !

Not West Bridgford No. 14

For the time being, this will be the last of my “Not West Bridgford” posts, and it relates to the longest, straightest road in West Bridgford. There are several contenders for this dubious honour, among them Harrow and Repton, Stamford and Davies, and Alford Roads, and also Trent Boulevard, but the longest of them all, stretching almost one and a half miles, dead straight (laterally, though with significant gradients here and there) from Trent Bridge cricket ground right up the hill almost to Sharphill Woods, is Musters Road. It encompasses the entire social strata of the suburb, wealthy towards the top, less so in the lower regions, with chapels, schools, medical practices, tennis courts and retirement homes along the way. A few shops at the Trent Bridge end. Formerly it gave its name to a Senior School (now demolished and replaced by a health centre) and an Infants’ School (now renamed).

 
Especially in the lower stretch, between Bridgford Road and the traffic lights at the oblique junction with Melton Road, Musters Road offers a few architectural quirky bits, primarily of a turrety nature - the sorts of polygonal protuberances in which might reside creative types and other eccentrics. 

The photograph above is of an admittedly rather dull and contrived turreted building, surely not one that would appeal to the genuine sufferer from Turrets Syndrome, but my excuse is that it isn’t in West Bridgford at all. No, it’s towards the western end of Colwyn Bay, heart and soul of the North Wales Riviera. However, it’s very much the sort of structure that might one day get built in Musters Road. What you can’t see, off the picture to the right, is the sea, but this at least allows us to leave this series of silly blog postings with the pleasant fantasy of West Bridgford on Sea.

Not West Bridgford No. 13

West Bridgford was relatively unusual in that for a place of its size and population it never possessed a railway station, although until after the legalised vandalism inflicted upon the nation by the infamous Dr Beeching the Midland main line passed right through the heart of the district. There was a minor halt some distance to the south at Edwalton, but the reasonable idea that there should be a station just five minutes’ walk from Central Avenue was never taken up. Passengers on the route from Nottingham Midland to London St Pancras via Melton Mowbray, Oakham, the Harringworth viaduct, Corby and the regular main line from Kettering southwards could enjoy a good view of the suburb, but never the convenience of local access.

For much of the route through West Bridgford the Midland Railway was carried on an embankment, with girder bridges across the Trent (now the Lady Bay road bridge), the Grantham Canal, Radcliffe Road (with a prominent Ferodo advertisement) and Bridgford Road, and brick arch bridges over Rectory Road, Melton Road and Devonshire Road (the only one of these arch bridges to survive to the present day, now carrying a footpath along the old trackbed) and a couple of minor bridges over footpaths in the vicinity of Stratford Road. Boundary Road and Melton Road, higher up, also had brick arch bridges which crossed over the railway line deep in its cutting through Edwalton hill.

The bridge over Bridgford Road, adjacent to Millicent Road and to the playing fields (now called Bridge Fields and used as an overspill car park for major cricketing events at Trent Bridge), was a skew girder span erected in the 1930s, replacing an earlier structure. Bridgford Road made a slight dip to allow the double-deckers on the No. 21 route to pass beneath this bridge, and there were lampposts there of reduced height. The bridge was demolished in 1980. The illustration, above, is Not Bridgford Road Bridge, but a rather similar one, with the same kind of extreme skew, situated in Eden Park (the subject of an earlier blog post in this series), south of Beckenham, in south-east London.

Not West Bridgford No. 12

The previous “Not West Bridgford” featured the Wirral seaside commuter town of West Kirby. Strangely, or not, this present piece takes as its subject matter the neighbouring resort of Hoylake. The picture is a view along Alderley Road, one of several side roads that lead from Market Street, the main commercial thoroughfare, to the seafront. Naughtily, in the interests of increased “Not West Bridgfordness”,  I’ve left-right inverted the picture, which in any case was obviously not taken in WB – the domestic architecture, for one thing, is a dead giveaway.

 
However, down at the junction with Market Street a pair of peculiar buildings are oddly reminiscent of the arrangement of the Methodist and United Friary churches in Musters Road, West Bridgford, as seen from the west, along Patrick Road.

Not West Bridgford No. 11

In my “Not West Bridgford” blogs numbers 1 and 8 reference was made to the Tudor Cinema, which used to stand at the southern end of Central Avenue. An unexpected visit earlier this week to West Kirby, on the Wirral, gave me an opportunity to view its own former Tudor Cinema – the direct successor to its namesake in West Bridgford - in that delightful seaside town. This is how it looks now:

Designed by Alfred Thraves, also responsible for the Tudor in West Bridgford, it was opened in 1933, seated an audience of 1100, and closed its doors in 1965, before becoming a bingo hall, shops and now premises for Dr. Barnardo’s. It is closely similar in design to its predecessor, especially the large central A-shaped gable. Facing Riversdale Road, which leads down to the seafront, the view of the old cinema from this road I found weirdly reminiscent of how the Tudor in West Bridgford used to appear as seen from the ends of adjacent roads – Davies, Priory, Albert – as shown below. 

 
Old photographs show that the West Kirby cinema also had a sign, presumably in red neon, saying “Tudor”, as did the one in West Bridgford. Uncanny.