Caught on the job!

Whilst photographing The Two Silver Bells item we snapped this image of Counsellor Tony Marshall (Lib Dem) ringing the bells for the fun of it!

  

Little did we know that he was also armed with a camera and snapped us back. Below is a rare shot of the Area 4 History team in action.

(Photo credits – top: George the Quizmaster – bottom: Tony Marshall)

The Two Silver Bells

 

Goose fair is opened by Nottingham’s Lord Mayor every year at high noon. The opening ceremony features the ringing of two silver bells. This year (2008) the bells were rung by Councillor Mohammed Munir. 2008 is the 714th Goose Fair.

The bells were commissioned by the great showman Tom Norman (1860 – 1930). Norman was a licensed auctioneer who moved into showmanship, managing side shows as diverse as The Elephant Man, Phoebe the Strange Girl and Lord George Sanger’s Zoo. 

Norman commissioned the two silver bells sometime 1880 and 1915, as yet we have not managed to source the exact date. The bells were cast in Oldham at Mellor’s Owl Lamp Works. They were especially silver plated for Norman as he was known as ‘The Silver King’. Also unknown is the year in which the bells were first used as a focal point for the Goose Fair opening ceremony, however there is photographic evidence of the bells being rung as part of the 1920 opening ceremony in Nottingham’s market square.

 

References:
The Great Nottingham Goose Fair by Peter Wilkes pub 1989
http://www.nfa.dept.shef.ac.uk/history/shows/norman.html

Torpedo Tom Blower

In a continuing thread on Area 4 connections with fame and the famous Rachel from Radford Road sent in a great potted history of Torpedo Tom Blower, the Hyson Green lad who broke the world record in 1937 for the fastest time in which the English Channel was swum. His record breaking time was 13 hours and 29 minutes.

Tom was born in 1914 in Hyson Green. Aster attending Berridge Road School he worked as a factory hand for Players. Whilst at school he earned the nickname “Carthorse” for being such a slow swim sprinter. Tom’s training for his long distance swimming was the stretch of the Trent River by the Meadows area of the city.

Ten years after his Channel record Tom becomes the first man to swim the northern Irish Sea in a time of 15 hours, 26 minutes.  1948 and a year later, Tom becomes a member of that select club of swimmers who have sum the English Cannel in both directions.

As part of his preparation for this endurance swims Tom undertook a marathon 30 hour session at Victoria Baths in Sneinton where he swam 2,664 lengths.

In the 1930’s and 1940’s Torpedo Tom Blower was a well recognised sportsperson, as famous as Torvill and Dean. There are even articles about him in the American Time magazine. Today however he seems to be a forgotten Nottingham figure, there is a plaque at the John Carroll Leisure Centre in Radford but it’s in need of some renovation.

All of this exercise can’t have been good for Tom, he died as a result of a heart attack in 1955 aged just 41.

References:
Time Magazine Article
BBC Online Article
Spectator Article

Graham Greene Nottingham culture shock

I have to take serious issue with Alan Carter-Davies’ comment on Greene that “Greene did not have a happy time of it in Nottingham. ” Certainly he appears to have been relieved when his short stay in the City was over. However there are numerous mentions of Nottingham in his works, viz. Brighton Rock, A Gun for Sale, A Sort of Life, and I came across yet another in The Power and the Glory the other day. It is know that he planned a further “Nottingham” novel in the 1960’s and visited the city again.

In general he seems to have looked back at his time here as a culture shock – but a memorable and formative experience nonetheless; and we should not forget a very major event in his life took place in Nottingham – his conversion to Roman Catholicism at the hands of Father Trollope at the RC Cathedral on Derby Road!

I plan to set up a Nottingham Graham Greene Society with the objective of erecting a plaque at the top of Goodwin Street. Anyone interested in supporting us please contact me. Andrew Schlich

Link to the original item

Good point Andrew, I had not taken into account the cathartic period that Greene was going through.
If it any help I would certainly support the errection of a plaque at the top of Goodwin Street. Kind regards, Alan

Skipping Rhymes

Many thanks to Moby of Laurie Avenue for sending this to us. She sourced it from an Evening Post Article dated 30th December 1996 by David McVay about children’s pavement rhymes. He was interviewing Reuben Carlisle and Dave Baldry, who worked with the Basford Bystander, a local History Magazine. Among the children’s rhymes:

Sheila Manners remembers a rhyme with a Radford or Basford bias:

Harry Ploppitt sells fish
Three halfpence a dish;
Don’t buy it, don’t buy it,
It stinks when you try it.

But the best one was submitted by T.W. Glover,Sandown Road, Toton:

My father is a sailor, he navigates the Leen
He has a wife in Radford – and two in Hyson Green
He takes exotic cargos to lots of foreign lands
And had an awful shipwreck
Upon the Lenton Sands.

 

Greene Pleased to Leave Ivy House

A little bird told me that Graham Greene used to live in the Arboretum. Another bird said Gregory Boulevard. With pressure mounting I decided to look into the matter.

Turns out that the Arboretum supporters have it. Greene lived at Ivy House, All Saint’s Terrace, NG7 -  between December 1925 and March 1926 during which time he worked as a sub editor on the Nottingham Journal (in 1953  the owners of the Post, T Bailey Forman, buy up the rival Nottingham Journal and Evening News and then in 1963 the two evening papers merge).

Greene did not have a happy time of it in Nottingham. The day after he left to return to London he wrote to Vivien Dayrell-Browning, his future wife, “Thank God Nottingham’s over.  It’s like coming back into real life again being here.”   He used experiences of living at Ivy House as a model for several situations and characters throughout his fiction. In particular his landlady Mrs Loney, (“a lazy woman who lived mostly in her basement from where she spied on her neighbours”) is suspected to be the basis for Mrs Coney in It’s a Battlefield and for Mrs Prewitt in Brighton Rock. 

Many thanks to Jim Thornton over at http://www.igreens.org.uk/graham_greene_in_nottingham.htm for his handy primer.

In a literary mood,
Alan

Stop the press…
Many thanks to Jim for pointing me to an ongoing discussion he is having with Andrew Schlich. It appears that the general consensus is that Greene lived on All Saints Street and NOT All Saints Terrace as previously written. Please read the links held within the comments for this item to read Andrew and Jim’s debate.
Thanks for bearing with us,
Alan

 

Dame Laura Knight RA

I spotted this memorial above the door of number 9 Noel Street 

This set me wondering who Laura Knight was and why is she commemorated with a plaque?

Laura Knight…

…was the most important woman artist in Britain during the Second World War 
(acording to the Imperial War Museum)

…became the first woman artist to be elected to the Royal Academy since 1760 in 1936

… was made a Dame in 1929 for her services to art

…was the youngest student (at 13) ever accepted at the Nottingham School of Art

Ruby Loftus screwing a breech-ring
Oil on canvas 86.3 x 101.9 cm
Painted in Newport, Wales, 1941

John Hancock

On April 10th 1832 John Hancock was born in Hyson Green. He was the son of Samuel Hancock who built the first lace factory in the area.

After being apprenticed to Messrs J.B.Lewis & Sons he became manager. The firm moved from Nottingham to Ilkeston Junction in 1885.

As far as we know there is no relation to Tony Hancock who was born in Hall Green, Birmingham.

Adam of Waterloo Crescent

Greetings Adam of Waterloo Crescent,
I hope you enjoy this photo taken today (15th April 2008) on Radford Road. It shows that the Hancock tradition continuing in the area. I wonder if J.Hancock & Son is an any way related to Samuel Hancock the lace mill owner?
Alan