It's no longer there!

Every so often I come to my senses.  It is possible to become so used to the street scene which is in the here and now, but totally obliterate from my mind the street scene which used to be.  Then searching for photographs of the former layout and land use, draw a blank.  I can give you any number of pictures of the Clock Tower or the Cathedral, or a different photo of St Peter's Street for every day of the year.  But there are locations which never were photogenic or important enough for anyone to use time and a length of film to record what was there, even once.  And that's a shame.

Here are two examples from this week's problem-solving exercise.  We now think of Albion Road as being almost exclusively residential.  I know that many residents will remember buying fish 'n' chips on the right-hand side going down.  After number 25 on the left are some rather impressive two-and-a-half storey homes (right).  They are newish, which raises the question of what was there before, since the rest of this little estate is around 120 years old.   Just one picture has turned up of the former buildings.  Dye works, cleaners, iron foundry, rubber works; all were here at some point, but presumably only one owner at a time.

Does anyone have other Albion Road pictures which also show these industrial buildings within an otherwise residential street?








In a nearby location I am unable to find even one picture of the site.  It is on a corner of the former Gaol Field at the Stanhope Road end of Camp Road, which used to be a small nursery.  These houses (right) occupy the site today but until the 1950s the first house on this side of the road was number 12.

According to the street directories it was known as Yokohama Nursery Co Ltd, in the ownership of Mr A Dimmock.  It appears to have been a nursery since the mid 1920s, which is when the Corporation, then in ownership of the prison estate, began to sell the field adjacent to the building.



Does anyone have a photograph of this nursery, or any sales or marketing literature for it?  The author would like to make a former piece of the east end better known than it is.