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Up, Up and Away! The 1847 Balloon Ascent
(2 pages)
In the first half of the nineteenth century
the opportunity to watch someone ascend in a balloon in Nottingham
didn’t happen very often and such an event would attract large numbers
of spectators. In 1826 Charles Green had inflated his balloon in
the Market
Square and found plenty of people willing to pay half a guinea to
be taken up into the air and be pulled back down again by means
of ropes attached to the basket. He then took a paying passenger
for a flight in the balloon eventually coming down in Edwalton.
Nottingham then had to wait some twenty years before it got another
chance to see a balloonist in action and it was Mr Green again who
had returned to the town in 1847. It is this particular balloon
ascent that our article focuses on. The starting point Charles
Green had chosen was the Nottingham Barracks. These were situated
at the edge of the Park close by the parish boundary with Lenton.
We reproduce the newspaper report of the balloon’s ascent
that appeared in the Nottingham Review and also a subsequent
account from one of those who went off in the balloon with Mr Green
recounting the rather special welcome that awaited when they landed
at Staunton Harold in Leicestershire.
Putting Helen Watts in the Picture (1 page)
Articles
on Helen Watts, the Lenton Suffragette, have already appeared in
Issue Nos. 7 & 10 of Lenton Times. Barry Edwards
played a key role in ensuring that copies of material relating to
Helen Watts’s suffragette activities were deposited with Nottinghamshire
Archives. In this short article Barry relates how it all came
about and also provides us with copies of photographs showing Helen
Watts as a young woman and also in middle age. These are taken
from photocopies of the original photographs and so are relatively
low definition but they are the only known images of her that have
so far come to light
Where’s Wally? The Search for Walter Edwin
James (3 pages)
Karl and Pauline James currently reside
in Cornwall which means they are not best placed to research Karl’s
family links with Nottingham. Nevertheless much had been uncovered
when Pauline contacted Lenton Local History Society to ask if we
could help with a Lenton connection. She had discovered that
Mary Adelaide James, at that time living in Lenton, had committed
suicide in 1900 by jumping in the canal and wondered if we could
check and see if the local newspapers had included an account of
her inquest. We looked on the microfilm copies held at the
Local Studies in the Nottingham Central Library and found it had
indeed been reported. In the account featured in the Nottingham
Guardian it stated that her husband, Walter James, was a professional
cricketer currently living in Bilston, Staffordshire. Intrigued
by this we tried to find out more. We weren’t able to discover
much about Walter James’s cricketing career but we did turn up the
fact that one of his sons went on to play cricket for Nottinghamshire
C.C.C. while another son was on the books of Notts. County F.C.
What also came to light was that Walter James died in Moscow
in 1909 at the age of 51. With our help Karl and Pauline were
able to discover why he was in Russia at the time of his death.
If you are equally intrigued then our article can tell you
more!
 Radford
Marsh and the Pearson Family (3 pages)
Lance Wright
is someone else interested in family history and his family tree
also has a Lenton connection. His great grandfather James
Pearson was born in Lenton in 1830 and for most of his life he lived
in properties on Radford Marsh. Radford Marsh used to run
from the Derby Road through to the Wollaton Road in Radford. Its
southern end still exists and forms Radmarsh Road which is the section
of no-through road to be found coming out on Derby Road beside the
Three Wheatsheaves public house. James Pearson started his
working life as an agricultural labourer but eventually established
his own business as a coal dealer based in Radford Marsh. Drawing
on Lance Wright’s researches we provide a brief account of the Pearson
family including what happened to all James’ brothers and sisters
and accompany the article with two photographs of James Pearson
taken at Radford Marsh in the early twentieth century.
Lenton and the Railway (11 pages)
This
article looks at the history of the railway in the Lenton area.
In 1839 the line from Nottingham to Derby was opened and this
passed through part of Lenton parish although any local residents
would have had to go to Nottingham or Beeston if they wanted to
catch a train. In the late 1840s work started on the Nottingham
to Mansfield line and once this was up and running in 1848 you could
catch a train at Lenton as a station had been built alongside the
Derby Road just east of the Three Wheatsheaves. Although
bridges were built to take the railway over the Nottingham Canal,
the River Leen and Birch Lane (later renamed Sherwin Road) it was
by means of level crossings that road users crossed the line at
Church Street, Derby Road and over on Radford Marsh. The development
of the collieries in the Leen Valley in the second half of the nineteenth
century saw ever-increasing amounts of coal being transported along
this line. The existence of level crossings meant inevitable
delays for these freight trains and in order to improve matters
the Midland Railway decided to do away with those in Lenton. Having
initially looked at the construction of the Nottingham to Mansfield
line our article goes on to look at the construction of the road
bridges and what had to go to make way for them. In order
to build the Church Street bridge we lost Lenton’s Manor House while
two other properties had to come down over on Derby Road. We
pinpoint who was living in these particular properties when they
were commandeered by the Railway Company and what subsequently happened
to them when they moved elsewhere. In the late 1920s the Derby
Road bridge was deemed to be too narrow to cope with the amount
of traffic now using it and the Corporation undertook to widen it
in the early 1930s. Our feature has several photographs taken
while the bridge was being widened and we also have photographs
of the station buildings at Lenton. You’ll be getting on in
years if you can recall them in situ as the buildings were all demolished
back in 1953 and few if any will be able to remember the time when
passengers used the station as Lenton only operated as a goods yard
after 1911.
Our Sponsor’s Story (1 page)
Started
by Gary Crosby in 1993 Transit Express Travel gradually built up
a small fleet of minibuses and coaches which from 1999 were based
at the Evans Business Park situated at the end of Radmarsh Road.
Gary had long harboured a love of veteran vehicles  and
most of those he acquired for the business were not exactly in their
first flush of youth. He enjoyed the challenge of their restoration
and subsequent maintenance. Some of them he would take to
veteran bus and coach rallies held up and down the country often
providing the transport for other local enthusiasts to attend these
events. However most of those who hire coaches nowadays want
access to the very latest in vehicle design. Gary has no desire
to compete in this market and so recently decided to run down the
transportation side of his business, rebrand himself as ‘Transit
Express’ and concentrate on the repair and overhaul of other people’s
vehicles. The closure of the Evans Business Park in 2007,
for its subsequent incorporation into the Jubilee Campus site, meant
Gary had to move to new premises. These are located on New
Road which lies off St Peter’s street in Old Radford. Here
with part-time help from Chris Jackson they service and repair trucks,
buses, coaches, trailers, caravans, vans, cars and even motorbikes.
They can carry out safety inspections, undertake MOT repairs, welding
jobs and bodywork restorations; given their shared penchant for
older vehicles - the older the better, though preferably on a British-built
chassis - although more modern and foreign vehicles can be accommodated.
They will also source and supply new and used parts for Ford
Transits, Ford D. Series and Ford R. Series, Ford Cargo, Leyland
Leopards, and body parts and glazing for older Plaxton & Duple
buses and coaches. They have obtained a waste carrier's licence
which adds another string to their bow, especially now that the
need to recycle materials is being emphasized.
Nazareth House: A Childhood Lost (1 page)
Following
the inclusion of Dolores Draper’s recollections of life at Nazareth
House in the 1950s and early 60s featured in Issue 25 we include
some more observations, not so fondly recalled, from Dolores’s sister,
Angela, who was just a baby when she was sent to live at Nazareth
House in 1951.
Nazareth House: Post-War Recollections
(2 pages)
Pauline Wroe (née Watkins) was someone else
who was prompted to send us her detailed recollections of life at
Nazareth House in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Sport at Cottesmore Girls in the 1930s
(2 pages)
Hilda Boosey (née Holton) was among the
first girls to attend Cottesmore Girls School when it opened in
January 1932. Hilda enjoyed playing most of the sports on
offer at the school and recalls the Annual Sports Day when she was
declared the Junior Champion.
Lenton’s Ice Rink that never was (½ page)
In
1930 it was announced that an ice-skating rink was to be built in
Lenton; large enough to host international ice hockey matches. The
papers of the day went into considerable detail about what the facilities
would include. No doubt the young people of Nottingham, and
especially those living in Lenton, got very excited about this prospect.
Our article recalls what had been planned for the site just
off Triumph Road. Nottingham eventually got its ice stadium
in the late 1930s but it was not built in Lenton. Quite why
Lenton’s was never built remains unexplained unless it was simply
a case that the potential investors all got ‘cold feet’ at the last
minute.
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