Stonebridge Road is an otherwise unnoteworthy road in Nottingham NG3. It came to my attention back in April 2016 when I tried to get some opendata from the local GIS department. I pointed out that Central Government had told the Ordnance Survey to share their data publically (giving all relevant links) but, in spite of them also committing themselves to sharing public data, the GIS dept said they “would not be permitted by Ordnance Survey as this would basically be providing people with a copy of their product”. The triangle of what is now known as “Stonebridge Park” thus remained a white spot until recently when finally we got some satellite imagery that could show it. Mostly (some houses are still not on those tiles).

Having spent March 21 mapping much of it here are a couple of features.

The estate was redeveloped as a Radburn Design in the 1970s from former Victorian housing and, whilst many of those 1970s houses were demolished in the 2010s, the street layout was largely kept. The council tried to make some improvements. Here are some of the new houses in Jersey Gardens:–

Only one of the former Victorian Houses (previously a Victorian School, now a Community Centre) has been kept:–

The Park features a City Farm (the only one that I am aware of in Nottingham) and, just north of that, 2 sets of graffiti murals have been kept largely intact for many years upon the sides of a set of garages:–

Council Design Code

I downloaded a set of public PDFs in 2016 from the council/Latham Architects. I cannot now re-find those links or whether they still exist on the net.

Purpose of the Design Code
The Design Code sets the standard for design and layout. The aim is to regenerate this part of the St Ann’s district of Nottingham by introducing a distinct urban character, and providing a high quality, coherent public realm.

Background
The St Ann’s area comprises mainly post-war development, based on the principles of the ‘Radburn’ community model, where priority is given to the motor car. Proposals to reverse the negative impact of the existing housing layout, in favour of a more traditional layout where houses front onto streets are central to this application.

Brief History/Issues
The ‘Stonebridge Park’ estate was built in line with Radburn† Planning principles in the early 1970’s. As a result the houses are ‘inverted’, with car access via back gardens and fronts facing onto communal space. Many of the houses have no proper entrance, no front garden and little private space. The flats are generally unpopular, due to their poor layout and poor build quality, inadequate thermal and sound insulation, and lack of clearly defined amenity space. In general terms, existing buildings do not relate well to open space and the public realm – there are numerous examples of blank gable end walls fronting areas of green space, often with prohibitive signage to discourage ball games, etc.

†Radburn – ‘the town for the motor age’ was created in ‘answer to the needs of modern society’ in the United States of America in 1929. Although forming the model for numerous housing estates throughout the UK, it has not proved to be a successful model in areas of social deprivation, where there is now much precedent for ‘de-radburnisation’.

The PDFs omit to point out that the City Architect of the 1970s notably said after retirement that there was graft at play between councillors & Wimpey (the firm that was given the contract to knock down vast areas of 100 year-old Nottingham suburbs & build replacements that, just 50 years later, are themselves being replaced).

Update 22 June 2022

Mapillary has changed it’s download URLs & therefore all links within my diaries that use photos stored in Mapillary are broken. I’m slowly going through to update them. The new URLs are terrifyingly long, but show OK on my screen (and I also hope on yours).