Table 8 to Marvellous Furniture via Beeston Lock and Mish-Mash

Yesterday was my kind of day. Good food, an amble, a touch of serendipity, and inspiration.

At mid-day Susan and I walked down Wollaton Road to have lunch at Table 8 and were there for a good two hours. I will let the food speak for itself. It was wonderful and, despite the temptation of grilled haddock with mussels, I went for black pudding on the basis that I cook fish and mussels at home, but never black pudding, despite the fact that I love it. I am not sure how I will get pass black pudding if it is on the lunch-time menu the next time we go to Table 8. Truly, truly delicious.

We both had the same pudding, despite my love of creme caramel and anything with custard. It took me thirty minutes to eat as I placed little spoonfuls in my mouth one at a time and let them desolve. A Tom Jones of a pud.

The coffee came with yet more chocolate. If you haven't been, don't delay. All this cost just £34 — great value and the service was friendly and welcoming. At the end we felt ready for our walk to Beeston Lock.

Down by Beeston Canal it was quiet and the air was still and warm. The water still like a pond.

By chance we came across a Canal & River Trust table inviting passers-by to join, so we did. Siobhan here took our money and now we are registered supporters — something we have meant to do since the Trust came into existence. 

I took this view of Beeston Lock and the keeper's old cottage. It looks a picture and I suspect gets photographed thousands of times a year.

The reason for the lock and Beeston Canal is the weir just to the south of the canal. In the old days, there was an arm of the canal which linked to Trent not far to the left-hand side of this picture, but that closed a long time ago. On the day of our visit the water was flowing very fast and the roar was close to deafening.

Between the weir and the lock is a collection of boarded up cottages. I took this pic from the footbridge across the long abandoned arm I mentioned above. These cottages and this whole area will be transformed over the next few years into the Canalside Heritage Centre. The local volunteers behind the project have just been awarded a large grant by the Heritage Lottery Fund to turn the site into a museum, exhibition space, education resource, café and a centre of canal related activity and events.

From now on I will go back every few months and picture what is happening from the footbridge.It should look very different a few years from now.

A little further along the Trent past the lock, as you walk towards Attenborough and Sawley, we came across this. Someone with a sense of humour.

We had intended to have tea and cake at Fusion and buy a replacement piece of glass from Created by Hand, but they had none made, so we have a good excuse to return soon. In the end we didn't have tea or cake. We were still feeling full after our lunch at Table 8.

Across the road from Chilwell's Creative Corner is the above fine looking parade of shops and the place we wanted to visit was Marvellous Furniture. Here is part of the above pic showing the right-hand side larger.

We were not sure what to expect and inside we found a shop selling good quality old furniture at reasonable prices in a stylish manner, arranging items in a way which ensured there was plenty of space to view every item. A real joy of a shop.

The Mish Mash Gallery, which is part of Chilwell's Creative Corner, is a great place to buy cards and small limited edition prints, as well as original works of art, and whilst there I fell for a photograph measuring 22" wide x 5" high, titled 'Whitby Panorama' by Tony Brodrick. You get some sense of its size in this photograph above, which shows my personal pinboard with the panorama resting along the bottom until I find it a permanent home.

What attracted me was the detail and the depth. The above close-up of part of the panorama shows clearly what I mean. It looks more like a model than a photograph. The reason I bought it was because it fitted in well with some ideas I have in my head for taking my Beeston map to its next stage by trying to include hand-drawn streetscapes of sections of Beeston High Road and other town centre shopping streets. I have some examples from hand-drawn streetscapes of London and other cities. Whatever I do will be completely new to me, but I want to have a go anyway.

Those of you living in the area will know all these places, but I am writing as much for would-be visitors as locals. Beeston and Chilwell have a great deal to offer and I would argue that you could easily come to Beeston for a week's holiday and never go near Nottingham or ride on a bus , except for a few stops.

As I said right the start, yesterday was my kind of day.

A day out

We recently went to visit friends from Greenwich holidaying on the western edge of the Black Country in a small town/large village called Wombourne. A part of the country we know well since Susan grew up in Black Country and first came to Beeston in 1969, when she lodged for two years in Chilwell vicarage whilst at Nottingham University.

It was a leisurely drive of just under two hours and we tend to forget how close we are to places.  Whilst we were in Wombourne we went on a walk and found ourselves at Bratch Lock and the four of us were invited to join a couple on their narrow boat as it made its way through the three locks. It was a wonderful treat. I hope the pictures tell the story:

A sign by the top lock.

...but I am going to start at the bottom by a canal pond, which takes water from the top.

The road across the canal runs immediately in front of the first pf three locks.

A narrow boat exiting the lower lock.

You can walk under the road bridge along a passage more like that you would expect to find in a medieval castle.

A view of our ride as it disappears into the middle lock.

A narrow boat waits as the water drains from the middle lock so that it can continue its journey after passing through the lower lock, which you can just see.

These three pictures show us entering the top lock and then it beginning to fill, rushing in with a roar.

The kind canal folk (bargees?) who invited us to go through the locks on their narrow boat. Thank you once again for the treat and, if you see this blog, I hope you enjoyed the rest of your trip around England's canals.

At the top, excess water flows down a race to the kind at the bottom (see my second picture).

The locks were worked by two Canal Trust volunteers and this was the little lock keeper's lodge by the top lock, which you glimpse in our the earlier pictures

Susan with our friends Ivy and Keith, resting by the top lock. They look remarkably happy for three Labour Party members still recovering from the general election result. Our fiends are great country walkers, whereas I prefer urban and canal walking. By any measure a good day out.

From the top lock you could look across the trees and see the roof of the Severn-Trent Bratch Pumping Station which, at a distance, could be mistaken for a French chalet.

From the road, walking back to Wombourne, I took this pic through the gate railings of the decorative brickwork and through the window you can just see what looks like an old beam engine. The chance are that it will now have electric motors to drive the pistons, but just this corner view captures what a wonderful building this is.

This is how I like to live life. Last Saturday we spent a long afternoon in Bestwood Country Park, first at the winding engine with Nottinghamshire Local History Association, then we struck off on our own with two friends from Stoke-on-Trent and explored the other side of the park, ending with tea and biscuits in Berstwood Lodge Hotel. I hope my friend Rosie is going to blog about the visit and if she does I will out a link in here. It was Rosie who got me into blogging in 2007. There is a link to her blog, Corners of my mind, in the sidebar.

Next year though we will make sure we are about for the Beeston Carnival. We are sorry that we missed it, but our visit to Bestwood was planned a long time ago.

A Broxtowe jigsaw map

This is a 'working copy' of a poster I have created for display in local libraries across the conurbation promoting the next Angel Row Historyfest on Saturday 10 October in Nottingham Central Library, 11am–3pm.

I will add a box to this page on Monday explaining the significance of the different colours. In the meantime see if you can guess.

It is three years since the last Historyfest in 2012, which gave rise to a new generation of history fairs in the county. There have since been three in Mansfield Library organised by County Libraries and two at Lakeside organised by Nottingham University's Archaeology Museum.

The 2012 Historyfest and this one is another joint effort by me and Dorothy Ritchie in Nottingham Local Studies Library and will be our last. Dorothy is about to retire and we were first involved in organising local history fairs back in the 1980s, under the leadership of the then Nottingham Local Studies Librarian Sheila Cooke and Leicestershire's County Archivist Kate Thompson. In the end we all ran out of steam and in the absence of others willing to take over, the history fairs came to an end until Dorothy and I tried again in 2012. 

As always, click on the image to see it full size.

Look closely and you will see the whole of Broxtowe borough is included and I have extracted the Broxtowe part of the jigsaw:

As a stand alone jigsaw map it needs a little work, like including the Beeston Canal and River Erewash, but I think it already reveals much about the historic character of Broxtowe. I hope it entertains and provokes some thoughts about how we view our local world.

Beeston Churches Walk poster — Sunday 19 July @ 2.30pm

http://beestoncivicsociety.org.uk

Bestwood Winding Engine treat on Saturday and it's free!

A Beeston wander prompted by a new Beeston based blog about 'urban wanders'

This post is by way of an experiment and is based on a map and photographs of where I wandered to. Nowhere was new to me, but I did see things unnoticed before. I was prompted by a friend who also lives in Beeston and, like me, used to live in Lenton. Richard (that is his name) has started a blog called The Nottingham Urban Wandering Collective.

Richard invited me to contribute and this post is shared with the new blog. More will be revealed as you look through the pics, but first my route map, which I hope is self-explanatory:

To see the map in more detail, simply click on it and it should enlarge. Now for the pics by location, running from 1 — 10.

1. The well used public footpath between Central Avenue and Wollaton Crescent, which I use regularly, looks about ready for a trim. I missed a couple of opportunities to photograph footpaths on yesterday's wander. I have fought a few footpath campaigns in my time.

Locations 2 and 3 of my wander have been posted to The Nottingham Urban Wandering Collective and relates to the old Humber factory and Queens Road Methodist Church, with its terracotta beehives above one its main entrances, plus a blue plaque by The Queens pub.

4 is a 'plastic bag factory' on Lower Regent Street (I have imbedded a caption in the photograph, a first for me). It looks in desperate need of some TLC. It must have been very impressive at one time and could be again, but two locals who passed me by as I was photographing it, described it as 'an eyesore' and 'ugly'.

5 are locations all close together at the eastern end of Nether Street. I love the way the two trees have grown together and I did find the blue plaque to George Wilkinson. There is meant to be a second Nether Street blue plaque, but I have yet to find it. I suspect I can't see it for the looking.

I am sure that John Clifford School has its champions, but the buildings are awful and the main entrance is ugly and forbidding. I would hate to walk in through these gates every day. Suspicion is poisoning our education system. The building has clearly reached the end of its days and needs replacing. Having been to meetings in the school only strengthens my belief that the pupils and staff deserve a new school ASAP.

6. Until this wander I had never taken in The Star Inn sign before, which looks like a night-time view of Nottingham's Council House. With the star shining above, perhaps the sign portrays a hope of better things to come. Having noticed it, I like it almost as much as the Commercial Inn sign on Wollaton Road, which I have referred to in a recent post.

Location 7 on Middle Street was on my list simply because I wanted pics of both. The war memorial seems isolated where it is and deserves a more prominent position. Perhaps with the coming of the Tram it could be moved to the new Interchange, where it would be seen by a lot more people every day. I did go down West End and found the blue plaque there, which is a bit of a disappointment. It really tells you nothing other than this was where Beeston's 'oldest buildings' were (are?). The spot on West End needs an information panel with images.

Location 8 marks Church Street with its two plaques and just tucked inside the churchyard by the gate is the Crimea War memorial. It's a lovely spot and I never been there once and not seen passers-by stop, sometimes reading the names, as if just to remind themselves of who they are. The Middle Street war memorial deserves to attract the same kind of attention. I recently blogged about the Boer War memorial in Broadgate Park, which is the grandest of the three. All should be seen by any visitor coming to Beeston.

9 is the shops beside the Interchange and The Square. I suspect a good other folk in town of Saturday were enjoying the sight of a tram caught up in work on the track, which meant the tram was parked up so to speak with a lone security guard to protect it, but it did me the opportunity to take a view from the tram towards The Square and I have to say I think it looks impressive. Enough I think to tempt passengers passing through to come back and have a closer look at Beeston town centre and that has to be good.

I rather like the stone slabs with an image of a wheelchair engraved on them and put down at the spots where wheelchair passengers should wait.

The Square was busy with a people looking at display panels and waiting for a on-stage performance by the community theatre group Excavate about the Chilwell munitions factory tragedy. The image below is from their website:

It appeared to be reminiscence theatre, drawing on the recorded memories and memoirs of the workers and families of those caught up in what happened in 1918. 

Next Saturday will see The Square and Broadgate Park alive to the sounds and sights of the 10th Beeston Carnival between 10am and 4pm (Summer Fete starts in Broadgate Park at noon). A fun day for sure. Let's hope the day is warm and sunny as yesterday.

10. My wander ended in the O'Liva café with a fine black Americano coffee and a small 'Sicilian treat' and a second one I took home to Susan (it's in the brown paper bag). For just over £3 it has to be the best value coffee and treat in Beeston. I could have chosen other favourite haunts like Mason & Mason, the Local not global deli, Fusion or the White Lion, but on this occasion O'Liva was close to where I needed to shop before walking up Wollaton Road and home. 

Altogether, I was out wandering for a good part of the morning. I wonder where my next wander will take me?

A new extended Beeston Pubs & Cafés Map with added extras and a bus note

I have been working on this new version of my Beeston map since mid-May and at some point I have to share it with the wider world as a way of ironing out its imperfections.

Like my other map, it has been created so that it can be printed in mono with no loss of detail. The background colour in the text boxes will disappear. I know that some of the Beeston Blue Plaque locations need tweaking, but they are all on the right streets, if not quite in the right locations (ie. Humber Road; Nether Street, West End).

I have also extended the map south to include Beeston Lock and Marina, as much so that I can show the new Canalside Heritage Centre. I know it's a work in progress, but Beestonians, a bit like Lentonians, seem to forget the canal and the Trent.

The Nottingham Coach bus route 17 no longer serves Beeston. As from 1 July it is doing a Long Eaton - Toton - Stapleford - Sandiacre - Long Eaton loop every 30 minutes Monday - Friday c9am - 3pm.

Also, from 12 July the new Beeston Interchange will take over from Beeston Bus Station (which will close at the same time) and the YourBus Y36 will return to the same route as Nottingham City Transport's 36 bus route. YourBus will be running the S1 Shopper along Park Street and Broughton Street from c9am - 4pm Monday - Saturday. Let's hope the service is used.

The 'war' between the tram and buses has yet to start (see my March blog), but changes are afoot. I remain confident that the buses will survive, between Beeston and Nottingham and Long Eaton, probably Stapleford too.

Now, back to the new map. I have created the map A3 size, but it scales down to A4 and looks perfectly OK, albeit the text is a little smaller.

As with my original Underground style Beeston map, it is there for others to use and can be easily adapted. All I ask in return is that my Beeston Week box in the left-hand corner remains.

I hope you find the new map of interest. Any comments will be welcome.

To see the map in more detail simply click on the image and it should enlarge. It can be printed A4 or A3 landscape.