By Jane Woodcock
These are some of my own personal memories of growing up in the old village of Tollerton, that is, the part of Tollerton that runs from the church to North End Cottages.
My parents, Alan and Maureen Woodcock, moved from Nottingham to North End Cottages in Tollerton in 1956 with their four children, including me. I am number four. I was born in 1955 so I was just a baby when we moved here. My three younger sisters were born here. We were not the only large family in Tollerton but we certainly helped increase numbers for the local school.
My parents were very fond of reading and took us all to the library in West Bridgford every week. We brought home a lot of books! We all still love reading.
My father worked in quality control for an electronics firm in Nottingham. He was also a Parish Councillor, a JP and was awarded the British Empire Medal in 1991. My mother was a School Governor. She was always busy, not only looking after her own children but also helping at playgroup. She was a good cook, a talented knitter and dressmaker, often making clothes for us for special events. She also loved to crochet. She used to make knitted and crocheted toys and other items as gifts or for charity sales. My mother often assisted at the local farms with housekeeping and all sorts of general work.
When we moved here two of my older siblings went to the school in Plumtree as the new Tollerton County Primary School only opened in 1959. The logo then was TCPS and I was among the first children to start school there. Our wonderful headteacher was Mrs Gretton and, if I recall correctly, there were just two classes at the start – Class One and Class Two. I remember enjoying school. It was not just about learning in the classroom as we had lots of other activities, including keeping bantams and rabbits, and each of us had a little patch of land for growing things. On one occasion, each pupil in the school had a tree to plant, mine was a Norway Spruce, but I think the trees may no longer be there. TCPS gave us a good start in our education and my siblings and I went on to grammar schools in Nottingham.
North End Cottages comprise a detached house joined by an archway to a terrace of cottages leading back from Tollerton Lane. It is the last set of buildings as you leave Tollerton before heading towards the airfield and Spires hospital. There is an archway with an inscription which is now sadly eroded. The cottages were originally built as farm workers’ cottages, a schoolroom and accommodation for the schoolteacher.
When we were children, there was a wooden gate across the path beneath the archway. Our next-door neighbours were Mrs Foster on one side and Mr Tom Nutt on the other. Mrs Foster was a widow and I remember she had a very nice dog. Mr Nutt had a sort of smallholding in his garden with hens, a cockerel, ducks, and goats. Across the lane he also kept small ponies in a field.
Mr and Mrs Edgson lived in the cottage nearest Tollerton Lane and Mr and Mrs Woodford lived in the detached house. Mr Edgson kept the allotment garden over the road, and I remember Mr Woodford carrying home wood for the fire.
The old village, as I always refer to it, was quite different when I was growing up compared to nowadays. The cottages were small, with gardens and orchards. There were two farms in the old village along Tollerton Lane, Manor Farm and Chestnut Farm, as well as Homestead Farm on Little Lane and Glebe Farm on a lane leading from the double bend.
Mr and Mrs Marigold lived in the next property along from North End Cottages and after that was Chestnut Farm, owned by the Gadd family, with the big farmhouse on the corner by Cotgrave Lane. They did arable farming along with pigs and from time to time over the years they kept sheep. Occasionally we would find a pig wandering along Tollerton Lane. There was summer work to be had at the farm, always hard work though! The farm has gone now, replaced by the Chestnut Mews residential development.
There was an orchard on the corner of Cotgrave Lane where there is now a bungalow. Several of what used to be small cottages along Tollerton Lane in the old village are now a lot bigger. Manor Farm has been converted into residential dwellings.
Among the people I remember from my childhood growing up in the old village are Mrs Farnsworth at Manor Farm; Mrs Chambers at the Old Post Office; Mrs Foster at The Lodge, Cotgrave Lane; Mr and Mrs Mould with their children in the cottage opposite Bassingfield House; Miss Don in a lovely cottage adjoining the old forge cottage; Mrs Handley in a cottage at Tollerton Hall; Mr Seward and his sister; Mrs Dale and her neighbour Mrs Green. There must be lots of people I don’t recall but I do remember it was a quiet village with kind people who looked out for each other. It seemed that many of the older ladies were widows.
As a family we were (and still are) very good friends with the Hoyland family of Homestead Farm; on Bonfire Night we used to get together around a huge bonfire in a field and eat our baked potatoes as we watched the fireworks.
Tollerton Lane itself used to be a lot narrower and quieter. Overhanging trees were a bit of a nuisance for the double decker buses. The pinfold used to be near where the bus stop is located currently. It has been moved to the corner of Cotgrave Lane.
Tollerton was a lovely place to grow up as my brothers and sisters and I used to walk our dogs and play in the fields and cycle all over the place. Most of the fields were smaller than they are now. We played on the old disused runway, splashed about looking for sticklebacks and bullheads in the stream, and explored the old wartime pillbox, being careful to watch out for the cattle that also wandered into there. There was an old threshing machine on the disused runway. The view towards Cotgrave for many years was dominated by the pithead winding gear towers of Cotgrave Colliery. It was very strange to see one day that they had disappeared.
For me, old Tollerton is a country village. I remember lush pastures with hedges and ditches, cattle, some marshy land near to the airfield with snipe, a reed bed, mushroom picking, blackberry picking, a crab apple tree, picnics, making dens. Nowadays I only see great big arable fields, due to intensive farming practice.
My siblings and I were Brownies/Cubs, Girl Guides/Boy Scouts, Air Rangers. Brown Owl was Mrs Iris Stirland, a wonderful lady who, always supported 100% by her husband Len, contributed greatly to the life of the village. We were involved in jumble sales, charity fundraising events, Remembrance Day parades, the garden fete that was held in the rectory garden, and other events. I was a very active member of the Girl Guides, a patrol leader, camp permit holder, and Queen’s Guide. I became Brown Owl of 2nd Tollerton Brownies for a while until work commitments took over, and my sister Barbara was Tawny Owl.
Guide camps often took place on the large field belonging to Tollerton Hall, in the corner by the wood. Campfires were great fun with songs and hot chocolate. Our Guide troop took part in the Girl Guides Diamond Jubilee Rally at Syerston in 1970 and to the best of my memory we won a tent pitching competition, which was a stroke of luck as at first we couldn’t get the tent out of the bag!
Growing up alongside the airfield was often exciting. Apart from the light aircraft, with people learning to fly, there were events such as the King’s Cup Air Race and air displays, which we could easily view from our upstairs window, including one time when Concorde flew low over the airfield.
Over the years helicopters became much more prevalent and they do tend to be noisy. As a family we are very accustomed to aircraft noise and it has never bothered us, although occasionally light aircraft do seem to come very close to the roof when landing. There are still lots of light aircraft and helicopters, although at the time of writing it seems that prospective new developments may affect the airfield and change the area completely.
We used to walk almost everywhere in those days. We walked to Plumtree for vaccinations that were done in the village hall, Mum pushing the pram with our border collie Chum walking alongside, and we walked to primary school, although I do remember sometimes taking the bus. We often followed the footpath across the fields to Edwalton, which in those days was a small village with a sweet shop. As we got older, we would cycle a lot. I remember going swimming at Portland Baths just off Arkwright Street and having to walk home as my brother had persuaded me to spend our bus fare on a bag of chips!
The bus service was not good. Having to travel into Nottingham and then catch another bus to secondary school was fraught, as the bus that came via Cotgrave was usually too full and did not stop to pick us up. Traffic came to a halt from Gamston onwards (Gamston was a tiny village at the end of Tollerton Lane in those days) and then crawled in a jam to Trent Bridge, and along London Road to Broad Marsh. This meant a real risk of being late to school.
The Rectory Rooms (now the Church Centre) were the centre of the village for many activities – Brownies, Guides, Scouts, jumble sales, badminton club, Camera Club (which my father used to run) and an annual event called Café Continental with entertainment and food. The old rectory itself used to be part of village life as the annual garden fete took place in the garden there with all sort of stalls and maypole dancing by the schoolchildren. I remember a working party of Girl Guides helping to paint a room in the old rectory. We scared ourselves silly thinking it was haunted.
I used to help my father when he cut the grass and generally kept the churchyard neat and tidy. There used to be an ambulatory between Tollerton Hall and the church which is gone now, and with my overactive imagination it always felt spooky there. I used to give special attention to clipping the grass around a tiny grave, just a small square set into the ground, as I thought it was a child’s grave, and a wooden cross that has since gone, which I imagined was an unnamed grave. I won a local painting competition with a picture of that wooden cross.
The post office is still there. The building that now houses the Charde Restaurant was at one time two shops – a Coop and a butcher’s shop. I can remember going to Gem, which is now Asda, in West Bridgford. It seemed enormous!
There was a variety of shops over the years in what is now the Parish Rooms, and I remember a van that used to come round the village selling groceries and sweets.
Milk was delivered in glass bottles with foil lids and it was a race to get to the bottles to rescue the cream (top of the milk) from the blue tits! Jim Blackburn delivered milk to us and after that David Brooker took over. We washed and saved the foil lids for a charity, the Guide Dogs for the Blind.
In 1976 it was reported that there had been a sighting of a lion near the airfield and the police took appropriate action to protect the village. My youngest sister remembers being escorted to the school bus by armed police. The lion was never found and it remains something of a mystery.
When I was growing up in the village, Tollerton Hall was known as St Hugh’s College and it was a school for boys. A friend of my sister lived in a cottage there. She was from an Italian family and her mother made the most delicious food, including a sort of doughnut that she made to sell at the annual garden fete held in the hall grounds. On the way home from school my sisters and I used to go into the hall grounds in the wood alongside Tollerton Lane to see the squirrels and rabbits.
In conclusion
I have many happy memories of growing up in Tollerton. I have lived and worked in different countries in Europe and the Middle East but for me Tollerton holds a special place as the country village in which I grew up alongside my brothers and sisters. My mother passed away in 2018, and at the time of writing my father is approaching his 96th birthday. Tollerton was the village they chose in which to bring up their family and give us all a good start in life. It was the best choice.
Jane Woodcock
April 2024