2019 General Election party offerings when it comes to buses and HS2

One thing jumps out when looking at the transport policies of the main parties. There is no mention of light rail/trams by any party and is it all hot air when it comes to buses? The devil is always in the detail.

Below is a BBC News list of what the manifestos of the main political parties are offering us in the forthcoming 2019 general election when it comes to transport.

HS2 will do nothing for the East Midlands or most of the Derby-Nottingham conurbation. It will not lower journey times door-to-door because of the time people will spend getting to Toton (e.g. 34 minutes by tram from the Nottingham city centre plus more minutes to get to the HS2 station) and I am one of those, should I still be alive when its completed, who will benefit, living in Beeston as I do. However, I am still against HS2.

The Greens want to upgrade the capacity of the existing railway network and electrify all railway lines and, quite simply, want to give local authorities control of local bus services. All too often good policies get lost in the detail and the Greens seem to understand this better than the other three main parties.

The Conservatives promise hardly any money for buses, only £220m over 5 years and a ‘superbus network’ (this link might help explain the aim). What we need are regular daily services operated by good quality buses serving neighbourhoods and local town centres, not just inter-urban main roads, if more car users are to be persuaded to use buses.

Labour will extend free bus travel to all under-25s ‘where routes are run by councils’ and 'restore 3,000 bus routes' and promise 'more local control'. How much more they don't say?  Nottingham City Council own Nottingham City Transport, an ‘arms length’ company, so will they qualify to provide free bus travel to all under-25s and will it just be within the Nottingham City Council boundary? Then there is what happens to Trent-Barton bus services? Surely, it is not Labour's intention to penalise a well loved excellent private bus company? You see what I mean about a seemingly good policy getting lost in the detail and, perhaps most important of all, the policy will not be fair to all under-25s.

And the Liberals are vague. The problems buses face in England cannot be solved with money alone. Government money means Government control. The Greens understand that. It’s about local control at the end of the day. What’s right for Nottingham and Beeston in a conurbation will be different in rural areas and small towns.

The choice between the main parties is stark. If the Conservatives win things will stay much the same in Greater Nottingham (we already have bus lanes and inter-urban 'superbuses' in the form of the Red Arrow and a few others), and whilst Labour and the Liberals promise lots of money, the Greens promise unambiguous local control.

On Thursday 12 December 2019 you get to choose.

Click on the lists below to enlarge:

Beeston Days Out 2019 map and a new Big City Map of Nottingham City Centre

Maps of whatever kind are never finished. At best they are snapshots of time in a world, even here in Beeston and Nottingham.

You can pick the Bays Out map and the Beeston Festival today and the Lakeside History Fair in Highfields Park next Saturday.

Click on the maps to enlarge

In addition here is a copy of what I describe of my Big City Map which first appeared in 2017 and I still regard as an achievement of sorts. I think I can fairly claim it is another unique map which I would like to to something. In the meantime explore and enjoy.

35 Bus Route Bluebell publicity

The attached page is taken from the March 2019 edition of Breeze, a free door-to-door magazine across the west side of Nottingham.

Saturday 4th May is still some way off, so more nearer the time. In the meantime click on the image to enlarge and read the article, which was  written by me:

How the 35 History Bus helps reveal a city which grew from the outside in

I admit to getting a little buzz every time I see a 35 bus with its History Bus 35 logo emblazoned on its sides, because it can be traced back to a question I was asked at the end of 2013: 'If you had a Nottingham bus for a day where would you take people to see the city's history?'

I didn't need to think. I knew the answer already. 'On a 35 bus from Bulwell to Nottingham Central Library'.

At the time, Nottingham City Council was funding a temporary initiative to promote cycling, walking and using public transport on the north-west side of city, called TravelRight, which was based in Bulwell and they had come up with the idea of a series of local history walks and recruited, Chris Matthews, one of Nottingham's top local historians to help them.

It was to Chris that TravelRight first posed the question and he kindly suggested that it was a question they should ask me. At the time I was mid-way through a six year stint of running the Angel Row History Forum, which met quarterly in Nottingham Central Library's Local Studies Library, with the support of Library staff and the Nottinghamshire Local History Forum (NLHA).

The 35 was the progenitor of a response by me to the 900th anniversary events held in 1986 to mark the compiling of William the Conquerer's survey of England, which became know as 'The Domesday Book' because it was subsequently used to settle arguments about who owned what and records, for much of England, in minute detail who owned what and where in 1086, including Nottinghamshire.

The local historian in me has always been (and remains) a vocal critic of Nottingham City Council's 'citycentric' approach to local history and promotion of Nottingham as a tourist and visitor 'destination' — I did live in Lenton between 1979 and 1984, a place which has played a large part in the making of the Nottingham we know today. Had there not been the powerful Lenton Priory a mile south-west of the town, the Nottingham we know today would be very different.

The coalescence of Nottingham into a city greater than the sum of its parts remains a largely untold story. Without the likes of  Bulwell, Bilborough, Wollaton, Lenton, Radford and its other Domesday settlements, Nottingham today might be no more than a small town with a ruined castle. The map below dates from 2008 and shows places recorded in the 1086 Survey/Domesday Book by Nottingham City Council ward boundaries (these will change in May 2019)

I subsequently compiled another map in 2010 showing extant Domesday communities (Sutton Passeys disappeared during the medieval period, but is believed to have been subsumed into the Wollaton Hall estate and when the City Council built council houses on the estate's eastern edge in the 1920s the main road on the new housing estate was given the name 'Sutton Passeys Crescent' (Morton was another lost medieval village, now under Nottingham University's main campus, near the Portland and Trent buildings. My wife, Susan, took part in trial excavations in c.1970 whilst studying history and archaeology at the university, so its location is known).

So, what I hope the above maps show you is that there is no truth in the story that 'In the beginning there was just Nottingham and as it grew it took over the surrounding land...' You might argue that the 35 bus reveals a city which grew from the outside in — not the other way round — all of which makes it worthy of its new name as Nottingham City Transport's History Bus 35. Look carefully and you can see these roundels on the side panels of every 35 bus:

New edition of 35 History Bus Leaflet coming soon

I will be launching a new edition of my 35 History Bus leaflet at the Lenton Priory Martinmass Fair on 14 October 2017. Here is a preview. Just click on the image to enlarge.

Box Boxes update

Now that I'm back on my feet (it's six months since I had open heart surgery) I am reworking the 35 map for the Lenton Martinmass Fair in October and working on a new box following several requests over recent weeks (more when it happens). Lucy in the @ Little Magpies crafty shop on Beeston High Road is selling my boxes and friends ask me for one-offs and I have had an event in Beeston in mind for next summer (capturing a moment in time in Beeston Town Centre and recreating it outside Lucy's 2 Little Magpies using cardboard buses, cars etc.

By coincidence (Nottingham) City Arts have an event using cardboard boxes planned for December this year which I only found out about this week. 

I suddenly realised I have no photos of the current version of the bus box except one including me taking at the Lakeside local history fair last year.

The good news is that I have worked out how to fold a scored sheet ready to cut and glue in just one place so it can go into an envelope to be posted. It's taken a year but it's happened by chance.

I will start posting more as History By Buses gets more of my attention.

Kegworth with Sutton Bonington Spider Map

I have created this 'spider' map in the the style of a map familiar to bus users in London. You will find them at almost every bus stop. My map is for use by Nottingham University's Students' Union, who asked me to design a map for them. I admit to be being pleased with the outcome.

The test, of course, is the map's legibility and whether or not it holds the viewer's attention. I hope it will. Anyway have a look and make up your own mind.

The map can be used by anyone.

Remember, click on the map to enlarge.

Bilborough 35 History Bus Day less than a week away.

All aboard for a special Bilborough day. Ding ding!

This post is still a work in progress. It should be finished by 8 July 

Welcome to a unique post, based on Nottingham City Transport's 35 bus route between Bulwell and Nottingham City Centre, using maps copied from a Burrow's Pointer Guide Map of Nottingham c.1960, which you can find on the Notts History website created and managed by Andy Nicholson.

The blog has been created to accompany a one-off day organised by St Martin's Church, Bilborough, and generously supported by Nottingham City Transport.

The 35 bus route could fairly be designated Nottingham's 'Heritage Bus Route', for it takes you on a ride through history to a string of 'pre-conquest' communities, all with entries in the Domesday Book of 1086, which is a unique record of who owned what in William the Conquerer's England. Look through its pages and you will find place names at every twist and turn of a 35 bus, beginning with Bulwell, them Hempshill, Strelley, Bilborough, Wollaton, Lenton and finally, of course, Nottingham. To hear these place names in Old English is to hear our forebears speak: Bul(e)uuelle; Hamessal; Straelie/Straleia; Bileburch/burg; Waletone/Ol(l)avestone; Lentone/tune; Snoting(e)ham/quin.

If our 35 was able to go back a thousand years, it would also visit, or go very near, two 'lost' Lenton 'pre-Conquest' communities: Mortune and Sudtune/tone (now remembered as Sutton Passeys, the name having been revived in the 20th century). Nine of Nottingham's fifteen pre-Conquest communities are on its route. No other Nottingham bus route comes close to claiming the title 'Heritage Bus Route'.

The map below accompanies an entry on the Our Nottinghamshire website entitled 'A city greater than the sum of its parts'. The 

All the old photographs are from the Picture the Past website, the online image archive of Derby City Council, Derbyshire County Council, Nottingham City Council and Nottinghamshire County Council, where there are thousands more photographs not only to look at, but buy as well.

The old adverts have been taken from a c.1936 Nottingham Official Handbook issued by Authority of Nottingham City Council. It is a treasure trove of information.

The orange line on the six maps below shows the route of the 35 from Bulwell to Nottingham City Centre. Many of the places which existed in 1960 have disappeared completely or have been replaced by parks, hotels, nature reserves, tram-tracks, housing and new roads.

The 35 bus route was created in about 1983. Its predecessors were the 55 between Bulwell and Bilborough and the 63 between Wollaton Vale and the City Centre.

If this Ride into History on a 35 has a theme of sorts, then it is housing. Nottingham has much to be proud off when it comes to housing, For all its black spots in the past and its failure to build more public housing in recent decades, the blame for this can be fairly laid at the door of successive central governments of all political persuasions.

Industry runs housing a close second, though in 2014 there is not much to see. In 1960 it would have been very different.

A trolleybus in Bulwell Market Place (enter years started and finished).

Babbington Colliery also known as Cinderhill Colliery (enter dates)

Holden Square, Cinderhill c1950. Also known as Brickyard Square (check).

 Broxtowe Boy by Derrick Buttress story and link to be entered.

Roman Broxtowe link to be entered.

Broxtowe Hall, demolished to make way for the Broxtowe estate. Location marked by the present-day street name, Broxtowe Hall Close.

Oxmoor Wood, Strelley, within ten minutes walk of the 35 bus (see walk page to be added).

At first glance this could be Tuscany, Italy. In fact its a view from Oxmoor Woods.

Balloon Houses, Bilborough, on the Trowell Road, demolished xxxx.

'Tottlebrook Bridge' on the Derby Road, located a few yards west of what is now the Priory Island roundabout.

Sherwood Foresters in September 1914 crossing the River Leen in Lenton, with the old Rose & Crown pub to the left of the photograph.

Spring Close, Lenton, showing the canal. The area was completely cleared to make way for the construction of the Queen's Medical Centre (add Lenton Times reference and link).

Lenton Lodge at Hillside by the Derby Road (add info)

Lenton Times link to be entered

South-west corner of Derby Road / Lenton Boulevard junction.

Lenton Savoy Cinema in 1949, surrounded by buildings (add info about makeover and when).

Nottingham Victoria Station forecourt, with Hotel to the right. Today, only the clock tower and Victoria Hotel remain.

Trolleybuses on Milton Street, outside the Victoria Hotel, in Nottingham City Centre, c1950. The 35 passes this spot every day as it makes its way to its own stop outside the Victoria Centre, by the entrance to John Lewis.

A view of the old Victoria Station clock tower from the 35 bus stop outside John Lewis.

A view down Angel Row, towards Old Market Square, from Mount Street

(add a 2014 photograph yet to be taken).

NOTTINGHAM CITY CENTRE HISTORY RELATED LOCATIONS

Each number refers to a location. See list beneath map for details (links to be added).

A long overdo makeover is coming

After nothing for over three years I am returning to History By Bus with a monthly post and a makeover, beginning with the latter, as you can see in the new heading.

The focus of this blog will be History by buses which serve the Greater Nottingham area. Any wider ambitions have been ditched. Health problems and other priorities are the reason for this decision.

So why come back to it now? Well, anyone visiting my BeestonWeek blog will see that buses and heritage still figure in what I do, including maps. I have also continued to produce and amend my 'History by 35' leaflet which continues to be popular at what local history events I attend.

I am presently working with St Martin's Church in Bilborough, Nottingham, on a reprise of my 35 bus day out (date to be confirmed) and producing a new version of the 35 leaflet for the occasion.

Over the coming months I intend to look at selected individual bus routes.

I have also created a Nottingham City Centre heritage and cityscape map which offers the viewer a different perspective of what to see and do in the city. This is a work in progress (as maps always are) and can be seen under Pages in the column to the right of this text.

I am working on a blue plaque version of the City Centre map as well.

Robert Howard

Erewash days of delight

I spent over half my life crossing the Erewash valley without even knowing its name as anything other than that of a borough council or a river; somewhere to be crossed when going to and from other places. Long Eaton and Sandiacre were not more than names. Ilkeston I knew because of the Co-op and the town's lovely museum.

Eastwood is also part of the Erewash valley, even though it is in Nottinghamshire, so it is a town I know a little better, as much for its D H Lawrence Birthplace Museum as anything else.

The River Erewash forms part of the boundary between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire and I knew about the Erewash Canal because I crossed it so many times on trips to Derby or Ripley and saw it from a bus at the point where the Tamworth Road and Canal run alongside one another as you leave Long Eaton heading towards Sawley and Castle Donington.

 A Skylink bus approaching Long Eaton town centre along the Tamworth Road, which for about half-a-mile runs alongside the Erewash Canal, on its way to Nottingham.

I always wanted to walk the Erewash Canal – something I finally managed in 2012 and 2013. Walking its seventeen miles  gave me a whole new appreciation of the Erewash valley and its importance. I did my walk in four chunks and have been back since on a couple of occasions. I am in process of creating a separate Erewash page and have created the map beliw to show how easy it is to reach from Nottingham and the buses you can catch. All run frequently, except the 20 (Sundays only) and the 21 (Monday–Saturday). These buses run every sixty minutes.

The northern end of the Erewash Canal at Langley Mill, where it joins the Cromford Canal. It also used to be where the Nottingham Canal ended.

The southern end of the Erewash Canal at Trent Lock, where it joins the River Trent. in the background you can see Ratcliffe-on-Soar Power Station. To see more photographs and information about the Canal, go to the Erewash Canal page in the left-hand column.