This selection of images were inspired by a couple of childhood neighbours who both moved away from Ilkeston some time ago but were reunited via Ilkeston Cam. The images all relate to an area at the southern end of the town around Hallam Fields and Little Hallam and show sights that although changed over the years, will still be familiar to both of them. The views were suggested by Jan Wasley and Alicia Faulkner (née Dickens). If there is a particular area of the town, or in the vicinity that you would like to see, just drop me a line and I'll do my best to oblige. Get-a-map service. Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

 

Jan Wasley was born in Ilkeston and spent the first 26 years of his life growing up on the Middleton Estate which is just south of the number 3 on the map above. Jan recalled some "specific memory spots" that may or may not still exist. One of them was just over the border into Nottinghamshire where Trowell Railway Station once stood. He also mentioned the footbridge from where he used to do his trainspotting. Well the station has gone and the bridge carrying the main Ilkeston to Trowell road was renewed last year but I stood on the old footbridge to capture this image of the Trowell Station site. Turning to look back over the border into Derbyshire from a similar vantage point on the footbridge I also captured the small image on the right showing the humpback bridge on Nottingham Road over the Erewash Canal with the Gallows Inn on the right - another of Jan's memory spots.

And this low level shot from the towpath on the canal also shows the bridge with the inn on the opposite side of Nottingham Road towards the right of the picture. Gallows Inn Lock is just visible beneath the arch of the bridge. When Jan left for Connecticut USA in 1962 this view would have been very similar but since then a sloping footpath flanked by the railings in the middle of the picture has been installed to facilitate disabled access to the towpath.

This view up Corporation Road from the junction with The Triangle will be familiar to both Jan and Alicia. The Middleton Club stands on the right of the road approximately where the white van in the middle distance is. The former Pioneer Club (centre right) has recently been renovated and converted into a public house trading as The Davy Lamp. Hallam Fields Road in the far distance is where Alicia's home was before she left the town. When Jan and Alicia were children, their families and particularly their mothers, were great friends especially during the war when Alicia's father was off in the Army in North Africa. This view will no doubt rekindle some nostalgic memories.

Alicia, born and brought up in Ilkeston, now lives in Cambridge and remembers her mother playing tennis during the war years on the courts at Hallam Fields, behind her parents' home. She also recalls a visit with her mother to The Old Hall in The Spinney off Little Hallam Hill and mentions the old black and white building (small image left). Remembering being shown around the house, Alicia says "It was marvellous, I didn't know any building so old existed in Ilkeston." My reference source tells me that The Old Hall is a 16th century Jacobean half-timbered house. In the last decade the realigned road passing the house has been widened to provide access to new housing.

Not far from The Old Hall is "The Beauty Spot" which both Alicia and Jan remember with fondness. Jan recalls how their mothers used to take them to this open space where they were allowed to "run free". He particularly likes the vistas over the pond and remembers seeing rowing boats and canoes bobbing around on the pond. The area where children ran free described by Alicia as "a delightful spot " has now become somewhat overgrown and can best be described by the euphemistic term "returned to nature" ( see left). It is a far cry from when carnival events were held here but some of the views here probably now give more credence to the name "Beauty Spot" than they ever did before.

We began this selection of images just beyond the Ilkeston boundary at Trowell Station and we close again with a view from just beyond the town's southern boundary at New Stanton. Quarry Hill Road leads out of town, changes to Ilkeston Road and at its junction with Low's Lane (to the left in the picture above) and Sowbrook Lane (to the right) where there is a row of a dozen terraced houses. New Stanton, although the official name and marked on all the maps is not a term in common use as most local people would know the location merely as "Twelve Houses". Jan says that the row was never much to look at 50 years ago and its appearance has changed little in the intervening period, but its proximity to Stanton's Dale Spun Plan where his Dad worked for many years is the "link". It may come as a surprise therefore to find that the workers' three storey cottages built by Stanton Ironworks in 1848 are now classified as listed buildings. These images will no doubt remind both Jan and Alicia of their youth but I'll leave the last word to Jan. "Many of my old haunts are in your archive so I can get a surfeit of Il'son nostalgia whenever I feel like it. I have some very happy memories of those years even though times were hard during the war so very long ago now."

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