History and Pictures

We are starting to construct a picture of the history of Lady Bay, based on individual contributions.  Do please let us know of any relevant material we could link to.  There is a West Bridgford History Society and their planned events can be found here and we list below two significant books on the Lady Bay specifically. But, if you keep on scrolling, you'll see we've also collected quite a bit of material.

The two books are Victorian Lady Bay, by Sally Lyall Grant and the new series of 4 books from Robert Breckles - 'Volumes 1-3 of 'Lady Bay, a History of West Bridgford's "Bread and Lard Island"' cuurently available.  Both are on sale at Lady Bay Post Office (and, in Robert's case, also at Central News on the Avenue, for £6).  More details on both can be found here.

Here is an extract from an interesting article on the Nottinghamshire History website, written by Robert Mellors in 1914 , that describes, among other things, why our area is called Lady Bay .  You will probably find the whole article interesting as it is about West Bridgford - use the page left and right buttons to browse the article.  This debate is also covered by Pat Rodriguez in an article you can download here - 'A Brief History of Lady Bay'.  Pat originally posted two articles on Lady Bay Local and theses provoked such a lot of interesting comment that we've tried to capture as much of it as possible in the many annotations to this article.  Thanks to all but especially to Pat for an excellent contribution to our collective knowledge.  We have also received these memories from Douglas Cheetham, covering his childhood from 1939-1950, including some war-time memories - Memories of Lady Bay 1939-50.  Sadly we heard that Douglas passed away soon after sharing these memories, but we know that he was happy to have made them available to others for posterity - thank you Douglas.

These maps show how much our area changed between 1835 and 1900-ish - thanks to Jeff Mackintosh for these.

Jeff also did some valuable research in 2012 on the local servicemen who died in the First World War.  His work led to the planting of the 'Avenue of Remembrance' on the eastern edge of the Hook and the production of commemorative plaques for each serviceman.  Those plaques are on display in the main bar of the Poppy and Pint, which is particularly appropriate as that building used to be the British Legion.  You can read more about it all in this PDF document.

Lady Bay has only been a residential area since the 19th Century but this article, which can be downloaded here - Chronology of Adbolton and Holme villages, describes some of the major events that have impacted our near neighbours.  Why doesn't it say Holme Pierrepont?  You'll have to read it to find out.  Grateful thanks to Nick Sparrow for sharing this research with us.

Here is a personal acount of the history of the Lady Bay Skatepark.  https://www.supereight.net/lady-bay-skatepark-20-years-in-the-making/

Lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic changed everyone's lives - our website payed a part on keeping local people informed and a sample of this can be found via this link.