Sneinton and Me 8 - The Bedsit, Castle Street and Sneinton Hollows

Castle Street, where I had a bedsit during my time at uni, is a street of quirky nineteenth century houses of great character. The pub at the end was run by the local developer Peter Elliot Bates for many years around the turn of the twentieth century. 

My bedsit was in number 12, 'Jasmine Cottage', a house dating back to Georgian times. For more than 30 years at the end of the 19th century it was home to Frederick Pullman, of Pullman's drapery store on Lower Parliament Street¹. I took this photo from the end of Meadow Lane when I was living there in the seventies. The arrow shows the window of my flat.

The photo below shows the same area, taken around 1895 from a slightly different viewpoint. 

The 25 inch OS map of 1901 shows Jasmine Cottage (A) and the farmyard (B). The days of the farmyard were numbered. The Manvers estate were selling the land for development at this time, and soon it would be replaced by a church, a new road and houses.

Here it is in 1913 on the OS 25 inch map, the farmyard having been bisected by Sneinton Boulevard. It remains much the same today, though the church has been through many changes of use since then.

This record of land sales from the Manvers manuscripts at Nottingham University shows building plots superimposed on the original outline defined in the 18th century Sneinton Enclosure Act - the boundary of Shepherd's Farmyard (shown in green). 

This Georgian hob grate was revealed behind the backplate when the gas fire in my flat was replaced in 1977.

 The house has been upgraded since so I imagine it is long gone.

And below is the view from that window in my flat one Winter morning in the mid 1970s, overlooking what was, in the 1890s, the Farmyard.

And here's the same view in Spring. I wonder if Mr Pullman's family planted the cherry tree.

Notes

 1/ Frederick Pullman and Henry Cooper 

Pullman was involved in many businesses around Nottingham, including a directorship at Thomas Danks, builders' merchants, where my mate Dave started work in the sixties. He was also Sheriff of Nottingham in 1889/90 and a few years later was elected Lord Mayor. I am indebted to him for my Thursday afternoons off when I was a shop worker, as he was president of Nottingham's Thursday Half Holiday campaign for some years. The house next door to Jasmine Cottage is got up with battlements and a tower (seen in the 1895 picture above); we used to call it Cooper's Castle. I didn't know who Cooper was then,  but I do now - he was Henry Cooper of Cooper and Rowe's Eagle Works on Carlton Road, which is still there though not making textiles any more. There's much more about these guys by Stephen Best at the Nottinghamshire History website - and about Sneinton and Nottingham in general - well worth a bit of Googling.

Photos:

1895 photo: https://picturenottingham.co.uk/

Other photos: WhysWhys

Maps: National Library of Scotland: https://maps.nls.uk/

Manvers Land Sales Plans: Manvers Mss at Nottingham University