Ilkeston - Rolling Back The Years
w/e 08 January 2023
All of this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490 or
a Nikon D3300
It's been one of those dark
January weeks where sunshine has been at a premium and not aided
by the fact that the Newton household has been laid low since
Boxing Day with coughs and colds. As the weekend approached I
picked the brightest (not much) day of the week to go in search
of some photos for this page. With nowhere in particular in mind,
my wanderings took me to Whitworth Road and a trip down Memory
Lane.
It was on Whitworth Road where I first learned to ride a bike
and another childhood memory concerns the footpath between Whitworth
Road and Lower Whitworth Road. I had a homemade trolley steered
by an old frayed pyjama cord and whilst playing on it with two
younger friends, we rolled down the hill when the cord broke
and the trolley veered off to the right into a patch of nettles.
I fell of the back of the trolley relatively unscathed but my
poor friends ended up stung all over by the nettles.
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Back then there was also a fence on the right marking the boundary
of the South East Derbyshire College of Further Education (SEDC)
with the College's playing fields beyond. Now there is a footpath
leading to a recently built housing estate on the site of the
playing fields.
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Lower Whitworth Road (seen here left and right) crosses Cavendish
Road with Inglefield Road meeting at the same place at an angle.
It was here that my mind drifted back again to childhood and
the Sunday School Anniversary parades when we walked through
all the surrounding streets. We knew as we walked up Inglefield
Road that the parade was almost over as we neared Kensington
Mission on Nottingham Road at the other end of Whitworth Road.
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I walked along Inglefield Road and Little Hallam Lane to Nottingham
Road and eventually reached the Gallows Inn where once again
my mind drifted to those days in Sunday School.
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The pub sits alongside the Erewash Canal. This is Gallows Inn
Lock.
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A panel on the wall of the pub includes paragraphs about the
Natural History, Local Heritage and Leisure and Recreation as
well as a few details about the pub itself. It says that the
first pub on the site was the Crown built in 1765 and the present
building dates from 1936. What it does not record however that
someone who also went to Kensington Mission as a child was John
Tudor. John was a couple of years younger than me and made a
name for himself as a professional footballer most notably playing
for Newcastle United alongside Malcolm MacDonald in the 1970s.
When his playing career ended, for a time he was the Licensee
of the Gallows Inn.
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Still musing on thoughts from years ago I continued along the
towpath passing several pairs of mallards and also a family of
swans.
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The was also a solitary moorhen and I wondered where its
mate was.
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It can often get quite busy on the towpath and during lockdown
it was said to have more traffic than the M1 but on this dark
January day I met only one other person and was passed by a single
bike rider although there were a couple of anglers on the other
side.
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I left the canal by crossing the footbridge at Green's Lock but
seeing the path under the bridge again took me back to school
days. There's another bridge at the next lock along the Canal
at Potter's Lock. It was there that we used to hide from the
teacher when we were supposed to be running around Cossall on
Cross Country runs during games lessons. I was more of a sprinter
and never enjoyed long distance runs! Oh and that bird on the
edge of the canal was another moorhen, probably looking for its
mate I had passed earlier.
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