Street Tales: The Bubonic Bell Inn

Words: Joe Earp
Illustrations: Mike Driver
Thursday 25 December 2014
reading time: min, words

Find out more about the plagued history of that owd pub on Angel Row from a man who tells Nottingham stories you've never heard before...

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These days, the Bell Inn is still made up of two buildings - the current central doorway would have been the alley between the buildings, giving access to the stables at the rear, which is now converted to a bar. The pair of buildings have one roof - well, three really. Over the years when it’s been in need of repair, they have circumvented the problem by plonking a new one on top of the broken one. Other than having olives on the menu, live jazz and a pleasantly plague-free environment, it’s pretty much as it was.

Another tale from the Bell Inn’s history is when the landlord’s son married a widow, the landlady of the Trent Bridge Inn, he discovered a large field to the rear of her pub. Being someone who was interested in a new game called cricket, he used this for his team to practice on, leading to the establishment of the Trent Bridge Cricket Ground on that site. Owzat for a history lesson?

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