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NOTTINGHAM PAST & PRESENT: STREETS AND YARDS
MIDDLE PAVEMENT, 1900
Middle Pavement is a short street at the top of Low Pavement and formed a link in the great line of traffic which became so important in the latter part of the eighteenth century; it presents many features of interest.
The right foreground shows the quaint old house called the 'Old Postern Gate'. It stood at the corner of Middle Pavement and Drury Hill and occupied the site of the postern which guarded the passage through the wall at this point; when it was pulled down about 1910, considerable remains of a guard chamber, used in connection with this postern, were found to be incorporated in its cellars. It appears to have been built just before the Civil War (that is about 1600) and was known for many years as the 'Bull's Head Inn'. It was a very picturesque building and we miss it sadly.
Hard by is a wine and spirit business, which has been conducted on its present site for several hundred years; its yard still retains many of the features associated with ancient inn yards.
At the corner of Middle Pavement and Fletcher Gate stood the house in which Philip James Bailey lived for some time—a beautiful 'Juno-Head' knocker taken from this house is preserved in the Castle Museum. Bailey's 'Festus' is a household word in Nottingham; its object is to show the ultimate triumph of good over evil and the final salvation of all men. It is full of wonderful thoughts, and the quotation 'We live in deeds, not years—count time by heart throbs, not in figures on a dial' is variously rendered wherever the English language is spoken.
The little balconies on the houses to the left of the picture always fascinate me. They seem to speak of a more spacious and less hurried time than ours, and one half expects to catch a glimpse of a crinoline through the windows behind them.