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Yesteryear...
By Stephen Best
SNEINTON ROAD, FROM THE CORNER OF WINDMILL LANE: a postcard issued about 1905. This pleasant scene was to remain substantially unchanged until the 1950s, when wholesale redevelopment of the area took place, though by that time the cyclist would have found it inadvisable to be on the wrong side of the road, as he is in our picture.
The trees mark the end gardens of Notintone Place, and the houses between there and Windmill Lane remind us of the handsome domestic buildings which disappeared in the cause of progress. In this short stretch of road lived Frank Sketchley, music teacher; Edwin Gibson, parish clerk of St. Stephen’s; and William Sheldon Swift, painter and decorator. That gentleman’s signboard can be made out above the head of the pedestrian, who is about to pass the fine bay-windowed house on the corner of Windmill Lane, the home of Frederick Hoffmann, pork butcher.
The lamp post on the left is at the end of Notintone Street, just outside Joseph Smith’s chemist’s shop. The pillar box, it is worth noting, was emptied eleven times each weekday between 5 a.m. and 10.30 p.m., with one morning and one evening collection on Sundays. Just to the left of the cyclist is the ’Paul Pry’ public house, with Henry Murphy’s grocery shop below it, on the corner of Byron Street.
Sneinton Road was very much Sneinton’s 'High Street' in the Edwardian era, and was a place of constant life and bustle.
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