Nottingham at Fourteen

…when you seen Nottingham Castle and Wollaton Park you seen about the lot. G.B.
Nottingham is a city with a history that reaches back at least to the early days of the Anglo Saxons and today presents a picture of open boulevards and ancient thoroughfares, lovely parks and a great amount of industry … P.B.

I myself would prefer to live some where else. S.C.
Nottingham is said to have been founded very early on about 450 AD by a man called Snot who brought his family to settle here. They first called the town Snottingham but as time went by people found that they did not like this name for their town so they changed it to Nottingham.

There is not very much night life in Nottingham which is one of the criticisms that I have of it. Nottingham has its fair share of cinemas but the other interests of younger people are left uncatered for. On the whole Nottingham is quite a good place to live in but if I had the chance to live in a smaller, more modern town I would certainly accept it. A.B.

The “City of Smoke” was once mentioned to me in respect of Nottingham. I am entitled to agree. P.E.
Nottingham is one of the cleanest cities I have seen. Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow seem to me dirty compared to Nottingham … The Council House, I think, is one of the most attractive in England, other Council Houses seem always to be dingy and dirty looking. I.G.
I have lived in Nottingham for about 3 years and before that in Newark which is in Nottinghamshire. I have watched the city grow and grow. I am in a Children’s Home and I enjoy living in it with having such a good corporation. B.D.

Nottingham today is rather dull and drab. The city centre leaves a lot to be desired, the buildings are old, some have been standing for one hundred years or more. Nottingham city centre should be developed on the lines of Coventry. There they have bright office blocks and brightly coloured shops but there is not much of that in Nottingham. Coventry city centre was heavily bombed during the war and for that reason all the new buildings have sprung up. Nottingham was not heavily bombed so the old buildings remain. I think the city council have old fashioned ideas. J.R.

Our school is one of the worst equipped in Nottingham and I think is one of the very few schools which is on two sites. There are no showers after P.E., the toilets freeze up in the winter because they are outdoors, the cycle sheds are just old air raid shelters, and there are not enough teachers for us. I.G.

Numerous people, when they leave an old Nottingham School building, enter an old factory building, in the centre of the industrial quarter … it is plain to see that Nottingham is overcrowded, underhoused and unfit for much of the rising generation. P.E.

I could name at least six pieces of waste land which would be used for building. A.C.
We wouldn’t mind a few more ice stadiums. T.J.
The only interesting thing about Nottingham his the castle. E.S.
On the land outside the castle there is a Robin Hood statue, half of him vandalised. R.B.
I think they should have more amusements in the way of one arm bandits. P.K.
Nottingham is a city of supermarkets. R.B.
Nottingham has got too many black people. A.K.
…some of the black people are very polite and better than the English. S.C.
Many coloured people live in Nottingham of which many work on the buses. A lot of these people are attacked coming home from work. I think these people deserve protection. I am glad to see that Nottingham firms give coloured people jobs instead of persecuting like other town counsels. C.N.
The police could be a bit more polite. R.F.
The people who Design the layouts for the roads and trafick island want shooting because it’s money whasted. A.K.
Today the slums are still being demolished, and the factories are becoming more and more. J.P.