Broad Oak Street

A Memory of Nottingham.

I was born in 1949 and then spent the next 15 years living there or visiting my grandparents in Broad Oak Street. The house in Broad Oak Street forms a part of my identity. I remember every nook and cranny - the coal cellar full of magnificent blocks of stacked up coal; the pantry behind the curtain which moved in the draught and produced in me the terror of Jimmy Whip who my Grandma assured me was there behind it; the dreadful nightime outside lavatory with bits of cut up newspaper or even worse a shiney bought paper to wipe your bum on and spiders and guttering candles; the dark 'entry' was also full of spiders and dark lurking things. We could have opened the front door but it was always the back down the steps through the entry/tunnel.
My Grandad planted flowers in the backyard, there was always a blazing coal fire, and a great Sunday dinner. Great grandma lived at the bottom of the street and aunties and cousins nearby. There was lots of space in the house and a great bay window at the front.
So shocked to go back some years later and find that it had been obliterated apart from the name. History of the extended working class families who had lived there wiped out and perfectly viable Victorian houses knocked down instead of being modernised. They'd be worth a fortune in London!

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