The new National Ice Centre has made a dramatic impact on the townscape of Nottingham, and many local people have commented on the almost total transformation of the area of the city lying between Bellar Gate and Lower Parliament Street. Just over eighty years ago, however, a neighbouring tract of land underwent equally radical renewal, which changed its character absolutely.
The area today bounded by Manvers Street, Pennyfoot Street, Lower Parliament Street, and Southwell Road, is devoid of any kind of dwelling, its dominant feature being the Nottingham City Transport bus depot. A century ago, however, this irregular triangle of over seven acres was home to nearly 2,000 people, and the cause of serious concern for the City authorities.
Like most of Nottingham’s most notorious slum districts, it blossomed during the hundred years after 1745, during which the town’s population increased sixfold, with scarcely any corresponding increase in acreage. Badder and Peat’s map of 1744 shows only the southwestern corner of the area built up, and forming the most easterly point of the town at that date. Along the western edge of this small triangle ran Carter Gate, with Pennyfoot Stile at its foot, and Back Lane forming its eastern side. Beyond Back Lane was open country, leading to Sneinton on its low, but prominent hill. The boundary between Sneinton and Nottingham was the Beck, the stream whose source was at St Ann’s Well, and which flowed down into the Leen at Nottingham. The Beck still exists, although long culverted as part of Nottingham’s drainage system.
By the close of the eighteenth century, when William Stretton drew his detailed plan of the town, there had been some minor developments on the site. Back Lane had been renamed Water Lane, and off it on the east side, ran four short streets. One of these bore the name, which is now the only surviving street name in the ‘interior’ of the entire area under discussion - Stanhope Street.
The following thirty years saw a considerable amount of building here, with a number of little streets running south from Old Glasshouse Street (now Southwell Road.) A start had been made on Manvers Street in 1824, when what was ‘a mere swamp’ was sold for building. In 1844 the grid pattern of the area was virtually complete, and Salmon’s map of 1861 confirms that it was now totally developed. Although it had by then become an underground stream, the course of the Beck still formed the boundary between the parishes of Sneinton, and of St Paul, George Street. By 1861 Water Lane had become Water Street, and the thirty-seven streets, yards and courts within the area had assumed the pattern, which would exist until all was wiped out more than half a century later.
One obvious change to the district in the latter part of the nineteenth century was a result of the extensive programme of street renaming following the Borough Extension of 1877. Sneinton, Radford, Lenton, Basford, and Bulwell had each named its streets independently of one another, and of Nottingham. The inevitable duplication of popular names, and those of special local significance, was looked on with disfavour by the newly enlarged municipality, and potential sources of confusion found themselves with new identities. So Sherwin Street and King Street, both leading off Southwell Road, became Sun Street and Abinger Street. In the heart of the area Herbert Street and Eyre Street were renamed Kelley (sometimes Kelly) Street and Pollock Street. These two alterations must have been a relief to all in the neighbourhood, since another Eyre Street, which still exists, lay only two hundred yards away, and a second Herbert Street (later Beaumont Street) ran off Sneinton Road close by. As if to prove that change of name need not be logical, Kingston Street, running from Manvers Street towards Carter Gate, was retitled Newington Street, while Dennett Street, on the other side of Manvers Street, became Kingston Street. Postmen must have had a sore time of it.
Developed, as much of it was, before the passing of the Nottingham Inclosure Act of 1845, the area contained many buildings whose construction would not have been permitted later, such as back-to-back dwellings and houses with no yard or garden space of their own.
The term ‘back – to - back housing’ is still sometimes used in error used to describe any kind of terrace houses, whose rear gardens or yards back on to those of similar houses. So, at the risk of repeating what has already been said in the Newsletter at various times, it should be made clear that the name properly defined a dwelling whose back and side walls were also the back and side walls of other houses. Such a house, unless at the end of a row, therefore had only one outside wall, no windows at the back, and of course, no through ventilation.
Towards the end of the 19th century local authorities were accorded powers to compel landlords of insanitary properties to put them in order, and later acquired wider powers, which allowed the compulsory purchase and demolition of whole areas. Further legislation followed, and in 1909 the Town Planning Act made it illegal for back - to - back houses to be built anywhere. In fact, even though back – to - back houses were outlawed by the 1909 Act, developers who had already received permission continued to build such houses in Leeds until the 1930s. It is to Nottingham’s credit that the town had, as early as 1845, taken its first steps to put an end to the very worst kinds of housing.
With the weight of the new law behind him, Philip Boobbyer, the Nottingham Medical Officer of Health, prepared a report early in 1912 for the consideration of the Housing Committee. In this he asserted that the district between Carter Gate and Manvers Street was, within the meaning of the act, an unhealthy area. Boobbyer had compiled an impressive dossier on this small part of Nottingham, and thanks to his diligence we have a remarkably detailed picture of a poor inner-city area just before the Great War.
The widest streets in the area surveyed for Dr Boobbyer were Pierrepont Street and Newington Streets, which measured thirty feet across from house-front to house-front. At the other extreme were the yards lying between Pierrepont Street and Earl Street; of these, Leopold Place was appallingly poky, being only 6ft. 3m, at its widest, and as little as 2ft. 6in. at its narrowest. The area contained, in all, 599 houses, of which the large majority, 432, were back-to-backs. A look at the 1912 plan makes clear how much this type of dwelling predominated. Of other domestic properties, a few had rear windows but no back door, while a further 55 possessed front and back entrances and windows.
In Fisher Gate stood the seven almshouses, which comprised the Willoughby Hospital. Less impressive than it sounds, this ‘series of small dwelling-houses’ was built in 1780 when the Hospital moved from Malin Hill. The almshouses were eventually pulled down in the spring of 1916. By dint of careful calculation, Boobbyer came to the conclusion that in this Carter Gate/Manvers Street area in 1912 there lived some 1,989 people, an average of 277 to the acre. It takes something of an effort to realize that this small area, quite without residents now for over eighty years, contained a population not far short of that of a small market town of the day.
If those who lived in this severely underprivileged locality were deprived of many things, they had an ample choice of licensed premises. Eight pubs were open for custom in the small area we are considering, while a couple more had already shut down. At the corner of Manvers Street and Pennyfoot Street was the Red Lion, while the Sinker Makers’ Arms and the Half Moon were in Carter Gate. The remaining five were close to one another in the middle of the area. All were to shut down by 1916, and with their passing Nottingham lost some resonant names of the sort no longer favoured by brewers. The Leopard stood at the corner of Water Street and Newington Street, and in the nearby side streets Pollock Street and Kelley Street were the Lord Holland and the Grey Horse, the landlord of the last being the impressively named John Cariston Westaway. In Pierrepont Street was the Flaming Sword, and between Earl Street and Stanhope Street there lay, appropriately, the Earl Stanhope.
Some of the pub names were eloquent of local occupations or political heroes. Sinkers were metal weights attached to stocking frames, while Lord Holland and Earl Stanhope were public figures of great celebrity in their time. Henry Richard Fox, 3rd Baron Holland (1773-1840), worked for the reform of the criminal code and attacked the slave trade. His home, Holland House in London, became a meeting place of wits and statesmen of the day. Charles Stanhope, 3rd Earl Stanhope (1753-1816) married the sister of William Pitt the Younger. He fell out with Pitt over the French Revolution, and proposed peace with Napoleon. His talents ranged wider than politics, however; he invented a microscope lens, two calculating machines, the first hand-operated iron printing press, and a stereotyping process. Stanhope also experimented with electricity, writing a book on the subject.
Further political partiality may be detected in the street names. Holland Street, Holland Court, and Stanhope Street we already know about, and it appears likely that Burdett Court was named for Sir Francis Burdett (1770-1844). He witnessed the French Revolution, but opposed the war with France, and spoke in favour of prison reform, freedom of speech, Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, and other controversial causes. Having declared that the House of Commons had acted illegally in imprisoning a radical speaker, he was taken to the Tower of London, but soon released. In 1820 his published opinions on the Peterloo massacre brought him imprisonment and a fine. In a context such as this, it is likely that Vassal Street was meant to be Vassall Street. The daughter of a Jamaica planter, Elizabeth Vassall’s marriage was dissolved in 1797 on account of her adultery with Lord Holland, who immediately married her.
Of the other street names, Waterloo Place and Brunswick Place recalled national events and the Royal Family. Fredville Street, Pierrepont Street, Thoresby Place, and Kingston Street celebrated local landowning families. John Plumptre M.P., last of his line to live in Plumptre House near St Mary’s church, married in 1756 the daughter of Sir Brook Bridges, owner of the Fredville estate near Canterbury. Fredville – surely the most risibly named of all English country seats – remained the home of the Plumptre family until it was demolished about 1939, by which time the street in Nottingham named after it was long gone.
Pierrepont Street, Kingston Place, Thoresby Place, and of course Manvers Street, took their names from the family of the lord of the manor of Sneinton; Pierreponts had been Earls and Dukes of Kingston before the creation of the Manvers earldom. Thoresby Place, however, was a particularly mean and squalid place to bear the name of their seat.
There were 63 shops in this small area, two of them especially long-lived and well-known businesses. The men’s outfitters Price & Beal traded at 12-14 Southwell Road, just across the road from their later premises, which were pulled down only a few years ago. Sanderson’s tripe dressers in Carter Gate had a shop in Upper Parliament Street, opposite the top of Queen Street. Other trade or business premises noted by the medical officer included two stables, a slaughterhouse, a cooperage, a shoeing forge, and a carpenter’s shop. Apart from the slaughterhouse, the least attractive next-door neighbours in 1912 must have been the five marine stores in the neighbourhood. ‘Marine store’ was a euphemism for a rag and bone or scrap dealer’s shop, and one of the five was William Henry Trickett of Vassal Street, whose family business (latterly in Trent Lane) prospered into recent years.
It was Health Department practice to make a photographic survey of properties considered ripe for demolition, and John Strong’s marine store at 91 Newington Street was one of the premises recorded. Strong’s sign proclaimed him to be: ‘Coal and general merchant: Rags, bones, and all kinds of scrap metals: Laces, wool, waste purchased in any amount: Dealer in old iron, old clothes, etc.’ Perhaps the most surprising feature of the sign was a telephone number - Strong must have been a go-ahead trader. In his adjacent yard was a bewildering confusion of carts, boxes and hampers, piles of old sacks, and discarded rubbish of all kinds. The number of rats about the premises can only be imagined - and within a few feet of all this squalor were family homes.
Turning to the dwelling houses in the Carter Gate/Manvers Street area, Dr Boobbyer declared that 201 were ‘unfit for human habitation, and irreparable.’ A further 242 were ‘unfit in their present state, but probably repairable.’ This left 156 homes in the area in sound and sanitary condition. The irreparable houses were mostly in the area north of Kingston Street, with others in Kingston Place, Kelley Court, Pott’s Square, Smith’s Square, and the streets and courts off Water Street. Of the 201 worst houses in this ‘lower class part of the district,’ only ten possessed an inside water supply, and all but ten had pail closets.
Although 443 houses were not fit to live in, only 95 were unoccupied. In Pomfret Street, one of the worst streets, 16 houses out of 44 were empty. The lowest rents in the area were 2/- (l0p) a week for houses in Baron Yard and Leopold Place, while the highest were 6/3d (3lp) and 6/8d (33p) for some houses in Carter Gate and Manvers Street, on the outer edges of the area. Boobbyer described the occupation of the majority of the inhabitants of the area as ‘unskilled and casual labour, so far as the men are concerned, and the lower class of the common female mechanical work of this district.’ Among the working male residents were 141 labourers, 49 hawkers and 39 carters, together with fourteen smiths and eleven miners (whose nearest place of work would have been Clifton Colliery.) Occupations followed by four or more men included shunter, twisthand, tailor, cycle hand and canal boatman. Other male workers in the area included a sawyer, tinman, mineral water maker, cooper, and agent for incandescent gas mantles. Of the trades represented among female residents, laceworker and lace dresser predominated with 121, while thirteen of the area’s inhabitants were charwomen.
The deprivation endured by the people of the area was not accompanied by any very apparent lawlessness. Indeed, the medical officer was told by Superintendent Parnham of the City Police that in his experience the Carter Gate/Manvers Street area, ‘though a very poor district is remarkably free from crime.’ In this respect the area compared extremely favourably with the nearby Meadow Platts neighbourhood to the north-west of Gedling Street.
Public health however, was an aspect of the area, which compared very poorly with Nottingham as a whole. Here the evidence was damning indeed, and Boobbyer’s figures spoke for themselves. In 1911 the death-rate for the area was well over twice the average for all Nottingham, and the infant mortality rate nearly double the rate for the city as a whole; three out of ten babies born in the area did not survive to their first birthday. From these facts, and from all the other data collected by him, the medical officer could come to only one conclusion: ‘that the area in question is unhealthy... and that it can best be dealt with under an improvement scheme.’
Although many of the houses became empty during the Great War, little was done to clear and redevelop the district until the early 1920s, when demolition began in earnest. This was a total clearance scheme, not a single old building in the area being spared. By the autumn of 1921 the first new building had appeared, in the shape of new premises for the Carter Gate Motor Co. on the corner of Carter Gate and what would be known as Stanhope Street. (The site of the old Stanhope Street was in fact obliterated, and the new street bearing that name was laid out approximately on the line of the demolished Pierrepont Street.) In April 1923 this building quite dominated the almost-cleared area, with just a couple of rows of old and abandoned houses still standing in Fredville Street and Newington Street. The only other buildings left in the area were one or two shops in Southwell Road, and a couple of warehouses in Patriot Street, which ran off it. The delay in demolishing all these properties had been caused by the inability of local authority officials to discover who the owners were.
In 1925 the decision was taken to build the Nottingham Corporation Tramways depot and offices at the Southwell Road end of the site. The growth of the municipal tram and bus fleets in the 1920s had made imperative the provision of a central depot and office complex. Nearly all the cleared Carter Gate/Manvers Street land was available for this, and other forthcoming and long-planned improvements for the area brought with them the prospect of much wider roads giving access to the site. The first bus garage in the area to be completed, however, was that of Trent Motor Traction; built at the corner of Manvers Street and the new Stanhope Street, backing on to the Carter Gate Motor Co., it opened in March 1926. Construction of the Corporation depot began in April and proceeded rather slowly. Motorbuses were being garaged there by April 1928, and in the following June head office staff were transferred there. The whole building was in use by the end of the year. When complete, the depot was able to accommodate trams, buses, and trolleybuses: in the parlance of the day ‘Tram Cars, Petrol Buses, and Rail-less Cars.’ There was room for eighty trams on eight roads, and a total capacity of about 150 vehicles of all kinds. The decreasing importance of the tram was recognized in 1929 when the undertaking changed its name to Nottingham Corporation Passenger Transport Department. Although accurate, this was hardly a title to trip lightly off the tongue.
We should not forget Dr Philip Boobbyer, whose devoted work had seen to it that the Unhealthy Area was expunged. Happily he lived to see the Carter Gate/Manvers Street area redeveloped, retiring at the end of 1928 after 40 years in charge of the Health Department, and speeded on his way by a 12-volume Oxford English Dictionary, subscribed for by his staff. Sadly, this notable servant of Nottingham survived for only thirteen months longer, dying in January 1930 of a heart attack, not long after taking his customary cold bath; he had never really recovered from being knocked down by a car some years earlier. Boobbyer is one of the city’s notable servants who deserves to be much better remembered. In March 1928, a few months before his retirement, he had attended the funeral of his father-in-law, whose name, unlike Boobbyer’s, is still instantly recognizable in Nottingham: the architect Watson Fothergill.1
By now the transport-orientated nature of the block had been intensified with the arrival in Lower Parliament Street - as Carter Gate 2 had become - of the Dunlop Rubber Co., and Charles Mackintosh, motor tyre makers. The row of shops underneath the transport headquarters in Southwell Road was now open, and included the City Clothiers, the Meadow Dairy Co., the Home and Colonial Stores, Gardner’s Drapery Bazaar, the London and Midland Piano Co. Ltd., Sydney Flitterman, clothier, and Lloyds Bank.
May 1933 saw the opening of a larger Trent bus depot, running through from an entrance in Lower Parliament Street to an exit in Manvers Street. Having space for 145 buses, it enabled the Trent Company to vacate their 1926 depot, which was immediately acquired by Nottingham Corporation Transport Department. They were able to use it for night-time garaging for forty buses, which for about six months had had to be stabled in the former Cammell Laird factory in King’s Meadow Road, which had been standing empty for some time. In 1936 the name of the undertaking changed yet again, to Nottingham City Transport. This had the twin advantages of brevity, and of the reversion to the old initials, already carved in stone on the depot building.
The 1941 directory recorded that the block was, apart from the Southwell Road shops, almost entirely occupied by the bus undertakings, the Carter Gate Motor Co., and Dunlop. For the duration of the war the area was the scene of unremitting hard work as City Transport and Trent strove to keep a service going, beset by fuel shortages, manpower crises, black-out regulations, and security rules. The last-named required, among other things that the word ‘Nottingham’ be painted out on all buses.
The post-war period brought a succession of changes to the area. The City
Transport depot was extended, resulting in the building-over of the Manvers
Street end of Stanhope Street. Carter Gate Motor Co. became Hanger Motor,
with refurbished premises, and a new building was put up at the corner of
Lower Parliament Street and Pennyfoot Street. Maintaining the area’s
association with transport, this served as the premises of Steyr-Daimler-Puch.
Recent years have brought further developments: some good, others bad. The
Trent bus garage now bears the name of Barton Buses - Barton is of course
part of Trent - while the Hanger Motor building stands empty. Steyr-Daimler-Puch
has been replaced by Machine Mart, which sells welding equipment, water pumps,
power tools, garage equipment, and the like.
The Nottingham City Transport Depot
The Nottingham City Transport premises wrap themselves around a large proportion of the site’s circumference, and the Manvers Street elevation provides a contrast between gigantic exit doors of the 1920s (with roller blinds, now never opened) and characterless recent infill. Is there, though, anything to bring the amateur of townscape and architecture, rather than the bus spotter, to the place? I think there is. Apart from the Barton garage, whose two entrances are typical of 1930s municipal bus architecture (with a faint touch of Hollywood Egyptian?) we still have that part of the City Transport depot that incorporates offices and shops. This is a curious building, deserving of a more lucid analysis than it will receive here.
Designed under the regime of T. Wallis Gordon, City Engineer and Surveyor, it chiefly consists, so far as the casual onlooker is concerned, of a long façade curving from Lower Parliament Street into Southwell Road, and running the whole length of that street until it turns the corner of Manvers Street. The curve makes it difficult to appreciate the overall design, and to decide whether we are looking at one building, or two. A walk along the frontage, however, reveals that there are two distinct symmetrical compositions, linked by, and flanked by architecture of rather ambitious character, interspersed with much more utilitarian stretches.
Working from the earlier end of the depot, we begin in Lower Parliament Street, where a stone-built bay turns the corner into Stanhope Street at an angle of 45 degrees. Flanked by rusticated quoins, a decorated carved panel bears the words ‘Nottingham Corporation Tramways 1926’ in sans serif capital letters. This title is lent added authenticity by the two fragments of tramline, which have surfaced through the tarmac at the entrance to Stanhope Street. There follows a nondescript range of brick, with stone dressings, and then the main entrance, the first of the more formal compositions. This is of brick and stone, and emphasized by quoins with carved cartouches at the top. Its centre is entirely of stone, slightly projecting, with an arched hood on curly brackets, above a rusticated doorway with some pleasant leaded glass in the fanlight. The letters NCT are carved above the door.
After a further dull section of brick, the façade is enlivened by two bays of stone, with a circular window in the gable, topped by carved swags and garlands, and the date AD 1926 on a crisply carved stone between the upstairs windows. The ground floor has rustication around two pairs of vehicle doors, one of which has what appear to be original metal grilles in the upper parts. We are now in Southwell Road, and have reached the point where shops or offices are incorporated into the ground floor. This bit of the building is of five brick bays, each pair of upper and lower Georgian-style windows being linked in an elaborate vertical stone composition, with prominent keystones. These form, in effect, narrow stone bays alternating with the brick. This particular style of window is repeated in four other brick-built ranges of the building.
Next to be seen is the other symmetrical range, of five elements. Its narrow central bay is of stone, with a rusticated and pedimented doorway protected by a wrought iron gate, and a round window at the top stage. On either side of this centre are brick bays with the same stone windows as those described a moment ago, and a pierced parapet. Flanking these are stone outer bays, with an arched pediment featuring a carved wreath and swag. The first floor windows have broken pediments, the outer ones triangular, and the middle one segmental. The bays are further emphasized by rusticated pilasters on the upper floors, with a repeat of the garland and wreath at ground floor level. Of their shop fronts, the westerly one, originally a Lloyds Bank branch, has the added feature of fluted attached columns.
A further four-bay brick section follows, with two shops below. Then, as though squashed in because there was no room for anything wider, a little two-bay stone feature with pedimented windows, and segmental pediment enclosing a cartouche in front of a flat cornice. Rounding the corner into Manvers Street is a brick frontage of three bays, with the best of all the shop fronts below. This, the former Flitterman’s, has a recessed entrance, original glazing bars, and attractive leaded lights at the top of the curved shop windows and above the door. It must be hoped that this will not be vandalized by modernisation.
In Manvers Street proper is one of the busiest parts of the whole building. This is a one-bay stone feature with another iron gate (originally the entrance to the depot cart way) in a rusticated surround. Above this is a window with a broken pediment and big keystone, and yet higher up a real conceit; a round window (can it have been intended to accommodate a clock?) surmounted by a very fancy keystone is set within a raised panel with an arched top. The keystone reaches up into a segmental pediment, set against a flat cornice. The round window is flanked by cartouches on which the interlaced figures 1927 are carved. More rustication completes the ensemble. It all brings to mind H.S. Goodhart-Rendel’s remark about the designer of a Victorian church in Chelsea, who ‘was determined that no visitor should be dull for a single moment.’
We have, by walking from right to left along the front of the building, followed the exterior from its 1926 beginnings to its external completion in 1927. If the reader has found the foregoing description incomprehensible, I apologize, but if anyone decides to go and look for themselves, then my purpose will have been accomplished. The architecture of the bus depot has been unsung for years, but, for all its faults, it is a product of the period of civic pride that gave us the Council House, and worthy of more than a passing glance. After all, it may be argued that if nobody looks at them, our buildings effectively cease to exist.
Several of the shop premises are empty nowadays, and many of the shop fronts are spoiled. This little row, however, still offers a colourful slice of Nottingham life. The Nottingham Drum Centre: Danny’s Tattoo Studio: John Isaac Photography: the Salvation Army Care & Share Shop: Massinissa snack bar and takeaway food: Sapco Memorials - granite and marble headstones: and, in the former bank, Levinson Wentworth, fire sprinkler systems. The empty shop at the corner of Manvers Street has already been mentioned; there have been sporadic signs of furtive activity on these deserted premises, but the repositioning of a stepladder was the only visible result.
Drum Centre, tattooist, cafe, and monumental mason notwithstanding, the area is undeniably less rich in human interest than it was when nearly two thousand people lived in it. No one, however, could possibly grieve for the passing of ‘houses, courts and alleys which are unfit for human habitation,’ and in which ‘the want of light, air, ventilation and proper conveniences and other sanitary defects are dangerous or injurious to the health of the inhabitants.’
Stephen Best
April 2003
1 It is good to be able to report the recent publication,
in The Nottinghamshire Historian no.69, Autumn-Winter 2002, of ‘Nottingham’s
health pioneer; Dr Philip Boobbyer...’ by Denise Amos.
2 One feels that it was a great pity that the fine old name
Carter Gate was ever done away with. It reappeared as part of the much more
recent housing development in Fisher Gate.
Editor’s note: The recently published proposals for the regeneration of Nottingham’s so called East Side, that area east of the bottom of Hockley, Lower Parliament Street and London Road at a cost of around £500m, earmarks the Bus Depot for demolition! The suggestion is for the Bus Depot site to have built upon it 396 homes, 280,000sq ft of offices, 84,000sq ft of retail and 37,500sq ft of leisure use. The value of this scheme is estimated at some £124m. Comment on and criticism of the whole master plan will appear in due course.
Part of this article first saw the light of day as ‘Unfit for Human
Habitation’ in Sneinton Magazine no. 14, Autumn 1984. As he has so often
done before, Ken Brand read the revision, and offered helpful suggestions.
He also went far beyond the call of duty in looking at the frontage of the
bus depot with me, and checking that I had committed no howlers. My warm thanks
to him.
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