Experience of a Vanished Street

A Nottinghamshire schoolboy out for a stroll in the city which he had known well all his life turned a corner ‘and was suddenly struck with a feeling of having stepped into the past’, he wrote to me in 1976 after reading my Apparitions and Ghosts. He found himself gazing into a cobbled street with old-fashioned cottages which seemed strangely out of place in a modern centre. Although he described the streets to his mother and others, he was never able to find it again. Here is his story:

In the summer of 1961 I had just finished my ‘O’ level examinations [he was 16 at the time] and had a lot of time on my hands. One sunny afternoon I was strolling aimlessly round Nottingham, a city I knew extremely well, having lived there all my life. I was somewhere near the castle, but I was not sure exactly where, when I turned a corner and was suddenly struck with a feeling of having stepped into the past. I was looking into a narrow cobbled street on one side of which was a row of half-timbered cottages with shutters alongside the windows and window-boxes full of brightly coloured flowers. I seem to think they were mostly geraniums. There was no one in sight and the street was surprisingly quiet for somewhere near a city centre. It was obviously a cul-de-sac so I did not enter the street but turned round and carried on towards the castle, being surprised to find such a picturesque spot which I did not know. I later described it to my mother and other relatives, all of whom had lived in Nottingham all their lives, but none of them recognized the street from my description. Since then I have often looked for the street but without success and I decided the street no longer existed.

The sequel to this is that the Nottingham Evening Post ran a series of photographs of old Nottingham scenes, and I was interested to see, last year, a photo of the very street I had seen. The caption stated it to be Jessamine Cottages but I had a strange feeling when I read the street had been demolished in the mid-1950s. My mother spoke to Mr. Dick Iliffe of the Nottingham Historical Film Unit (to whom the photo belonged) a few days later and he confirmed the date of the demolition. I suppose it is possible I had seen the street as a child but I do not consciously remember doing so and in any case I am sure of the year in which I saw it because of having just taken my exams.

My correspondent, Mr. John Watson, is an engineer. His mother, Mrs. Mary Watson, confirmed that she had been told about the experience at the time ‘and when a picture of this very place appeared in the Evening Post he recognized it at once only to read that the property was demolished quite a time before John had seen it. It was most uncanny! The details in the picture were exact in every detail as John had described them to me.’

The City Secretary of Nottingham confirmed that Jessamine Cottages, off Castle Road, were demolished in 1956 and kindly enclosed a number of newspaper cuttings about them. He put me in touch with a member of the staff of the City Planning Office who used to live in one of the cottages. I wrote to this lady, Mrs. Jessie Woodhouse, who explained that ‘Jessamine Cottages were built above street level and were not accessible to vehicular traffic. Therefore, as the majority of the cottages were occupied by elderly people, most of the time the row of cottages would appear deserted.’ She added that ‘Castle Road, which ran below the level of cottages, was a fairly busy road, although there would be quiet periods during the day’.

Jessamine Cottages, built in 1715, originally comprised the workhouse of St. Nicholas, one of the three parishes of Nottingham at the time. In 1815 the workhouse was divided into tenements. Gradually they fell into disuse and many, in the 1950s, were overgrown with rambling weeds. In the 1940s there was much discussion, and lively controversy, in the press about how this picturesque corner of Nottingham might be preserved. The premises were offered by the corporation to Nottingham Archaeological Society at a nominal rent to serve as a possible headquarters as repository of relics of bygone Nottingham, but this offer was refused because of the condition of the cottages and the cost involved in repairing them. When the time came to demolish the cottages they had been condemned for many years. Describing the cottages, a local writer said that ‘Their picturesque gables, dormer windows and the patch of garden in front of them surrounded with hollyhocks, lupins and jessamine make an old-world atmosphere that never fails to enrapture visitors.’ In 1945 they were demolished to make way for the People’s College of Further Education, opened on 23 March 1961, which covers a considerably larger area than that occupied by the cottages. It was in the summer of 1961 that John Watson had his visionary experience of the cottages as they were in earlier years.

Mr. Watson concedes that as a child he might have seen the cottages but he did not consciously remember doing so. A forgotten memory may have acted as the spur for his hallucinatory experience, but it does not follow that he had seen the cottages in the course of his childhood rambles. It is clear from material sent to me by the City Secretary that Jessamine Cottages were difficult of access. A paragraph in one of the local newspapers said that ‘the cottages are built in the shape of three sides of a rectangle and stand on rock foundations high above neighbouring property, but they can be passed in Castle Road without notice.’