With the industries of Boots, Player's, Raleigh and Nottingham Lace creating prosperity, people moved out of the city to West Bridgford which quickly expanded from a village to a town.
Estate Agents both past and present acclaim it as the perfect place for both families and the elderly. It has all the required facilities and was originally promoted as 'five minutes from the Town and five minutes from the countryside'.
It was called 'Bread and Lard Island' by the people of Nottingham. It was supposed to be a place where those who bought the new, large houses there, lived without the money to eat properly. Another version of 'Pride, poverty and pianos' or 'Fur coat and no knickers'.
Selby Road was part of the planned expansion of the area. In 1912 two pieces of land, next to and parallel to, the 1870s railway line to London, were sold for about £1200 to local builder Jesse Gray [1845-1927] and his Mortgagee, Mary Simmons, widow.
The original road was to be called WATCOMBE ROAD, but it's name was changed to SELBY before building started. Note: There are no 'Streets' in West Bridgford, only 'Roads'.
In 1912-13 Jesse Gray built Nos. 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9. In the next couple of years, the odd numbered side of the road extended up to and including No. 19. These houses then stood alone on an unmade road facing a vista of nothing but fields, with steam trains on a 30 foot embankment at the end of the gardens, for the next seven years.
1n 1955-6 the last of the original houses on the road was built, taking a total of 43 years to complete one road. No. 19 had a double plot and a final house, 19a, was added much later in the 1980s.
As Selby Road nears its 100th birthday, a group of residents have decided to archive its development and the changes that it has undergone. No house or road history is complete without recording the lives of the people who have lived in it. We are therefore asking anyone who lived on, lives on, or who had relatives or friends living on, Selby Road to contact us with their memories, stories, and hopefully photographs, so that this can become as full an account as possible of an ordinary road in the East Midlands. This Blog will keep an update of some of the photographs and stories that come to light.
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| Fred Collingwood Chartered Accountant and Tobacconist Original owner of No. 23 Selby Road |
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| Frank Baker Art Editor of the Nottingham Guardian newspaper Original owner of No. 78 Selby Road |
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| Elsie Baker English teacher Wife of Frank Baker |
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| The Baker family in the garden at No. 78 Mr & Mrs Baker, Alan, Alwyn, Betty, Philip & Ian |
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