Trowell - The Festival Village
w/e 26 August 2007
All this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490

Trowell is a busy little village just down the road from Ilkeston on the main road towards Nottingham. Its boundaries in fact butt up to its neighbours, Ilkeston and Stapleford and even on the east, to the outskirts of the City of Nottingham itself but the heart of the village is at the junction of three roads named after those places. These images show Ilkeston Road in both directions from near the Festival Inn. The Festival is visible here as seen from Stapleford Road but more of that later as the predominant building here is the church. St Helen's Church, the oldest building in the village, dates from the thirteenth century and stands on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon building overlooking the aforementioned triple road junction.

Also on Stapleford Road and adjacent to St Helen's is the Village Hall fronted by an obelisk that stands as a monument to the selection of Trowell as the Festival Village for the 1951 Festival of Britain. Reasons for the choice of Trowell included the fact that it is situated close to the centre of England and also because it displayed a blend of both rural and industrial life. Much of the industry such as the former Stanton Ironworks has now disappeared but there is still a working farm opposite the Hall.

The Festival Inn is another reminder of the 1951 event although the reason for the name of the pub/restaurant has probably faded in the mists of time and is unknown by many of the younger generation today that frequents the popular discos and music evenings that are regularly held there. The inn underwent a major refurbishment in 1995 and again in 2004.

Another well-known business in the village especially with the angling fraternity is Walkers of Trowell which operates from a building that screams 1930s to me, on the road towards Nottingham from the Festival and St Helen's Church. The shop was established in 1971 and the business received the Angling Retailer of the Year award in 2003.

Next to Walkers is a delightful little cottage that would not look out of place in many a country village. A plaque on the wall proclaims that this building was "The Old Ring Of Bells Ale House" and is dated 1794 - 1813. I suppose this would have been the Festival Inn of the time! Now it is a desirable three bedroomed property that, according to a local estate agent "retains many of its original features". Currently on the market with an asking price of £289,950, a licence to sell alcohol would be extra but I wonder if those original features include beer barrels, tankards, spittoons and the like ....

Our final image from this part of Trowell shows another cottage and St Helen's Church Hall. Between 1843 and 1967 the hall was the village church school but when the new school opened in 1967, it reverted to the control of the church. It is used both by church groups and other groups in the village and the aim of the church is to develop the adjacent cottage as another resource for the community. In 2001 the village celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Festival of Britain with a number of events. At that time I uploaded a couple of pages to my old site that have remained on the web ever since. They were not easily accessible though - unless you knew exactly where to look - so I have now reworked them into the Ilkeston Cam format and created a new page that can be viewed here.

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