Hermon Street - Nottingham

Photographs | Family Memories

Photographs
Click on each photograph below  to show the enlarged version

* The Society does not currently possess any old photographs of Hermon Street.  The photograph on the left can also be viewed on the Nottingham Local Studies Library web site. Click on the following website address to access other photographs - http://www.picturethepast.org.uk

Family Memories

Kevin Chamberlain
My memory of Hermon Street does not go quite as far back as some people's but…

Looking at the 1958 picture shown above, on side of the building immediately lying behind the property fronting on to Derby Road is a shutter door beneath the white horizontal beam. From the 1960s to the 1980s it was the workshop of one-man business of car mechanic Jim Davis. Immediately inside that shutter door was a sharp left turn into his workshop area. It always amazed me that he could get very large cars around that corner without any damage to the bodywork (and even more impressive was the fact that he had to reverse them all out again). The workshop itself was the area under the lower roof to the left of the white beam.

He told me that before he moved into the premises it had been a bakery, and you could still see the area where the ovens had been. The floor was still cobble stones, presumably from when the place was first built. There were no windows or natural light inside the building, which must have made it difficult to work under the bonnet of cars. And there was no heating in winter (and it was sweltering in summer).

These days many car service areas are almost as clean as operating theatres and I think Jim Davis’s little black hole-in-the-wall must have been one of the last of its kind. I believe he retired from the business a number of years ago.

William (Bill) Pugsley - New York, USA
In the 1930s and 1940s my family used to live in a property on Hermon St. which can be found at the top of Derby Road next to what used to be the Drill Hall - a building much in use during the war.  Later the Post Office took it over. The house on the other side of the old Drill Hall used to be the residence of Mrs. Woolard who had a greengrocery shop at the bottom of the Park Hill steps.  I used to deliver newspapers in The Park and in the winter sometimes earned extra pocket money clearing snow with a friend.  North Road led on to Tattershall Drive which was a great place for sledging in winter.  Over on the other side of Derby Road was Derby House, owned by a Miss Wilkinson. This was an upper-class boarding house and I earned more pocket money by helping out in the kitchen on a Sunday. The chef's name was Mr. Bird. Later I think the property was used by The Lace Marketing Board.  During the war I would sometimes swap some of our margarine for tinned fruit that Miss Wilkinson's sister had sent over from Australia. The building at the top of Arundel Street [now occupied by the Probation Service] served for many years as offices for The River Trent Catchment Board. Wellington Square had a little known and infrequently used passage that led down to Ilkeston Rd.  During the war years many of the streets had water pipes laid along them which fed the emergency reservoirs established in this area.

Let us know your memories of Hermon Street

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