Remember when you could pop out in Nottingham for a beer or a nice glass of wine and have about a gazillion pubs to choose from? Well, that choice is dwindling all the time, with the likes of the smoking ban and cheap supermarket beer causing untold damage to a once-thriving sector.
Lost pubs such as The Corner Pin, Flying Horse, Black Boy, and Lion are never far from city drinkers’ lips. And who can forget the notorious Eight Bells, in St Peter’s Gate? Hands down one of the roughest pubs ever to grace our city centre.
But there are other fallen taverns that have somewhat been largely forgotten. They may not have the same notoriety, or the same legend, yet each served drinks to us and each holds a place in many of our hearts. With that in mind, let’s take you on a tour of the city’s perhaps lesser-known long-gone hostelries.
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We’ll start with the way out-of-mind City Hotel which had a short life after opening in Goldsmith Street in 1957 when it took over the licence of the Spread Eagle which stood on the site now occupied by Nottingham Trent University.
A handful of loyal Eagle employees transferred to the new pub, but the landlord was an outsider going by the name of John Gilbert. As a youngster, he played cricket for Derbyshire under the shadow of the looming Second World War. John sported a distinctive scar on a finger, the result of trying to stop a hell-for-leather shot from Notts batsman George Gunn, who was born in Hucknall. This most intriguing of landlords also played against Larwood and Voce, describing them as ‘friends’, and as if that wasn’t impressive enough he also played football for Nottinghamshire FC.
Quite how long the City Hotel’s unimpressive moniker lasted is lost in the mists of time. The same year the City Hotel opened, the final pint was pulled at the Old Wrestlers in Sneinton Hollows. A proudly old-fashioned pub, incredibly it had its own skittle alley as well as a piano for regular Saturday night sing-songs. Tunes would be belted out on the old Joanna with regulars and guests alike cheerily bawling along. A tradition that has sadly all but vanished these days.
Landlord John Rawson was the last man in charge before moving down the road to a new Home Brewery pub called Bendigo, named after William Abednego Thompson, also known as Bendigo Thompson – Nottingham’s bare-knuckle boxer and heavyweight champion of England.
Elsewhere, city redevelopment plans saw several much-loved pubs for the chop, including the Smiths Arms – affectionately known as The Red Lamp - at the bottom of Sneinton Road. The Earl Howe was known by locals as Billy Murphys, and close to the market was the Sir Robert Clifton.
St Ann’s had the Marquess of Hastings located near Alfred Street North, and the Gardeners Rest in Peas Hill Road. A trio of pub names that have long since vanished from the Radford scene are the Lord Belper in Robin Hood Street, the Phoenix Inn, Denman Street and the Forest Lion, Independent Street.
And there was a similar loss on the city scene ten years later when the Albert Hotel in Derby Road, which had stood there from Victorian times, was torn down and replaced by the Strathdon Hotel. It was much-admired for its beautifully decorated coffee lounge where ladies could lunch for a reasonable 2/6d. Heading into 1956, one of Bulwell’s oldest inns, the Black Horse in Coventry Road, was shut and the licence transferred to the Apollo, Hucknall Lane. The proud new licensees were Mr and Mrs Sidney Freestone.
Some more favourite lost pubs include the Boar’s Head, Sneinton (1962); The Old English Gentleman in Basford which closed in 1964; General Havelock, St Ann’s Well Road (1973); Napier Inn, Union Road (1971); Rose and Thistle, Wollaton Street (1977) and the peculiarly-named Zetland Arms in Welbeck Street, which closed in 1974.
Perhaps you have some favourite old lost pubs you’d like to share with us in the comments below?
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