Oftentimes the local sites buzzing with history are hidden gems, almost completely changed from their previous appearance. This is certainly the case with Union Road, which CJ De Barra looks back on here...
There is a certain sadness and curiosity that surrounds Union Road. The small side street off Huntingdon Street is now predominately home to student accommodation and car parks but it was once a busy part of St. Ann’s. While one side is shiny, modernised and full of apartment buildings, the other is boarded up, closed and contains the ghost signs of businesses long gone. There is little information on what its future may hold.
So what changed?
There are lots of reasons behind the street’s changes but the biggest one has to be the demolition of St. Ann’s in the late sixties and early seventies. Union Road was one of the streets affected by this and over the years, it has failed to hold on to businesses that were based there. Even Lidl has abandoned its corner building in recent years.
It’s hard to picture it thriving but it was once home to lively pubs, businesses and family homes along with the usual array of local characters. A dig into the archive reveals snapshots of the people and places that once existed on the street.
It wasn’t just about the pubs when it came to entertainment. The Victorian craze for billards also saw a state-of-the-art facility open on Union Road. Billard tables were a common feature of upper-class Victorian homes whereas more working-class areas had to rely on public venues to play. While it was predominately men who played, women were also involved. The ‘Harold Holt Billard Rooms’ opened in April 1921 featuring ten tables that had been made by the Holt factory in Halifax.
“When in town, visit the Harold Holt Billard Room,” the advert demanded. It opened with a showdown between owner Holt and T.A. Dennis who would also display fancy and trick shots for an excited public.
If you didn’t fancy Billards then there were enough pubs on the street to keep you entertained. The Napier Inn was one such popular place to go. It is unclear when the Napier opened but it appears in newspaper records as early as 1859. The pub had a piano where local singers would perform along with a front and back bar. In a more gruesome twist, the pub was occasionally used for inquests into deaths. This is common for Nottingham in tight-knit communities in the Victorian era including St.Ann’s and Carrington but feels strange to imagine today! Pubs were used when civic mortuaries lacked space. They often had space to store a body until the inquest was held and were the closest places to the scene of the death.
Conditions in St.Ann’s were tough so local businesses did what they could to support families in the area. The Napier often organised buses for as many as seventy children to go on day trips to places such as Drayton Manor Park or Calverton Lido. There the children would be treated to food, gifts and fun activities before being brought back to their families throughout the 1950s. The nearby Foxhound Inn also offered free food on occasion for the children.
Nora would often come in to throw unsuspecting straight customers out of the back bar where they had accidentally wandered. She would do the same with new LGBT faces in the front bar kindly informing them, ‘I think you want the back room.’
The Napier passed through many different owners over the decades but Nora and Jim Osbourne were the last to own the pub before it was demolished. The pub had a curious mix of locals and curious characters. The back room was also occasionally used as an LGBT+ space popular with butch and femme lesbian and transgender women. Nora would often come in to throw unsuspecting straight customers out of the back bar where they had accidentally wandered. She would do the same with new LGBT faces in the front bar kindly informing them, ‘I think you want the back room.’
In an oral history account, journalist and campaigner, Ray Gosling remembered that it wasn’t just the Napier but the Union Inn was also a safe space for gay people at this time. He recalled that he used to go to the area to smoke weed. Indeed the Union Inn was raided for drugs in January 1969. The drug squads visited the pub and ordered sweepings of the floor to be taken for analysis along with searching 32 people who were on the premises. The owner Charles Wooton, who had been running the Union for six years by then, appeared in court and was fined £20.
The pubs at this time were deemed fit but it was thought that it would be easier to redevelop the area if they were demolished. So many from Union Road disappeared at this time including the Union and Napier. Nora and Jim were reaching retirement age so may not have wanted to fight to keep the pub. Sadly, just as the demolition plans reached their peak, Nora passed away in 1969.
The shops were another big feature of Union Road as many living in St. Ann’s would not have to leave the area to get food, supplies or clothing. It felt like there was a pub on every corner or a shop selling everything you needed.
It was more common to make things last rather than replace so there were often tailors or cobblers on the street. One such shoe repair shop was run by Mr. J.E. Stevenson and his wife in the early 1930s. Oral history accounts record Stevenson as a blind man who had lost his sight in World War I. Post-war the men who were injured in the war, especially those who were blinded were retrained in different vocations, one of which was shoe repairs. He would sit downstairs mending the shoes while his wife ran the shop. They employed local boys to run between the two for eight shillings a week.
The war did change the street as many of the men were conscripted into the armed forces. Some made it home again but others sadly didn’t. Edward James Taylor, the owner of the Foxhound Inn never came home from Malai. He, like many others, had signed up in 1940 and left England shortly after. He was taken prisoner after the fall of Saigon in June 1943 but died just three weeks later in a camp from amoebic dysentery leaving his wife and a four-year-old son behind.
Another business on Union Road was Allsops, the book binders which managed for 43 years before moving to Ilkeston in 2007 when their lease ran out. The ghost sign for the shop remains on the black exterior even though the lettering has been removed. The business is still going today.
Other such signs that remain on the road are for The Factory, a shisha bar that opened in 2009 but has since closed. Long before it was a shisha lounge, the site was the location for the Coachmakers Arms. If you walked up St Ann's Well Road as far as Commercial Square, then you could see the curved Coachmakers Arms at the junction of Union Road.
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