Part 04 - Brown's Road to Station Street
w/e 05 August 2018
All of this week's pictures were
taken with a Kodak DX6490
Information for this series has been sourced from
various places including the"Long Eaton Centenary Town Trail"
leaflet (CTT) and the"Long Eaton Townscape Heritage Initiative"
booklet (THI).
Part 03 of the Town Walk ended in Brown's Road with a look at
High Street Mills but Part 04 returns to High Street where diagonally
across from Brown's Road is the distinctive architecture of the
1930s shop that for many years was the retail outlet of the F
W Woolworth company.
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On the same side of the road and just a little further on is
another distinctive building dating from 1935. The building looks
in need of some care and attention particularly at the top but
you may just be able to make out on the High Street facade and
also above the shop windows at the corner of Howitt Street, the
name of Montague Burton, the gents' outfitters.
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Across High Street and between the 1930s buildings opposite is
what is described in the THI booklet as "a particularly
idiosyncratic Long Eaton institution" in the form of Rowells
drapers. Rowells also merits a mention in the CTT leaflet which
mentions an "original mosaic entrance way 'Derby Drapery
Co.'" but the current gentleman shopkeeper told me that
this had been removed at the request of the Council due to Health
and Safety regulations. Sadly our heritage cannot be allowed
to stand in the way of commerce.
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The two shops adjacent to Rowells, Dry Cleaning at number 12
and Pete's Upper Crust Cafe at number 10 both benefited from
the THI scheme with funding towards new shop fronts.
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Another beneficiary of the scheme as we look back here along
High Street is number 15, the building just left of centre that
received a grant for roof repairs. This is where Cross Street
to the right meets High Street but we continue along the Town
Trail and High Street to the left.
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Number 5 High Street on the corner of Clifford Street and West
Gate (to the right at the traffic lights) was formally the Royal
Hotel.
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Again benefiting from a THI grant the hotel has been converted
into a number of flats but the original entrance to the hotel
still has the date 1888 above the door. This was when the town
house built in 1930 that still forms the core of the building
was transformed into the hotel.
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Part of the 1830 town house can still be seen behind the fence
and gate on Clifford Street. It was originally built for John
Howitt when he left The Hall in that year.
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Across from the former hotel is another quite impressive building
on the corner of Station Street - but it merits mention in neither
the THI nor the CTT literature. I remember this building when
it housed the Co-Op but that could be a little confusing.
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On the other corner of Station Street is a building where the
date stone in the gable shows that it was built in 1900. This
is where the confusion arises as this building formed the premises
of the "New" Long Eaton Co-operative Society. The original
1900 building - the clock tower was not added until 1927 - was
designed by Long Eaton architect Ernest Ridgeway but that design
like the Royal hotel has been modified to create a number of
flats.
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