Bulwell is a market town and former civil parish in the City of Nottingham district of Nottinghamshire, England. It lies south-west of Hucknall and to the north-west of Nottingham city centre. The 2011 census recorded its population at 29,771, which amounted to over 10% of the city's population; 16,157 was recorded for the Bulwell ward of Nottingham City Council. The adjacent ward, Bulwell Forest, which includes Highbury Vale, Rise Park and the west of Top Valley, had a population of 13,614 at the same census.
Toponymy The name is thought to derive from the spring called "Bull Well", which runs out of the Bunter sandstone over a bed of clay, near the north end of the forest. The Place Names of Notts suggests that the first part of the name may stand for an Anglo Saxon person called Bulla or describe the bubbling sound produced by the flowing water of the spring.
One legend has it that the town was named after a bull struck a sandstone rock, causing it to seep water; a now sealed well-housing in the nature reserve off Bestwood Road, is said to be the original. Both Bulwell St Mary's School and the Seventh-day Adventist church next door have illustrations of the tale relief carved into sandstone blocks. Generations of Bulwell's children have grown up with the legend and the city council has erected a statue of a bull goring a well in the market place.
History Early settlers The earliest documented settlements in Bulwell appeared around 800 AD and were most likely built around the same time as the first local bridge across the River Leen. The river was significantly narrower, shallower and slower-moving in Bulwell than in other potential locations along its length, and the threat of highwaymen was a danger on existing cross-country routes; thus a toll bridge was constructed at Bulwell, to allow bona fide travellers a quicker and safer passage from north to south, while impeding others.
The bridge created a rare direct road to Nottingham from the north-west, so introducing regular traffic from across the country to the area for the first time. A gatehouse was built for the toll-collectors; it also gave protection for travellers, and led to the founding of the new settlement. The travellers were an almost captive market, and the abundance of sandstone made it easy to build dwellings. As the volume of traffic using the road increased, so did the size and population of Bulwell.
Bulwell is recorded in the Domesday Book (1086) as "Buleuuelle" and classified as a village. Bulwell was by this time established as a small trading post for all kinds of goods and services, for those living and working in the surrounding area and for those travelling further afield, and this encouraged many others to settle in the wider area.
Local people, particularly the poorer new settlers, often offered space in their homes to travellers requiring overnight stops. For them it was a safer and perhaps more sociable arrangement than continuing to Nottingham. Using the river water, beer was produced locally; this may have led some guests to stay overnight unintentionally.
By around 1200, Bulwell had grown to provide all the facilities to accommodate animals and their drovers, offering full service on what was fast becoming a relatively major road. Trade thrived, and a steady stream of newcomers took advantage of the living that Bulwell could offer them.
However, although the trade was good for the local economy, the many new salesmen and tradesmen split the town in two: the established business owners, who had paid heavily to build and maintain their premises, complained of a growing number of roaming competitors undercutting their prices and taking their trade. Since they were also paying rates to the local landowner, they considered they had a right to a monopoly. In response to the complaints, a local law was enacted (around 1320) forbidding anyone without "fixed... and at least part-covered premises" to sell goods or services close to the original businesses.Parish records.
The statute was ill-worded; salesmen simply fixed posts in the ground, creating market stalls similar to their modern counterparts. These were covered while in use and uncovered in situ when not, so abiding by the law and forming a permanent sales venue. Customers of these fought also against the richer businessmen and defended the right of marketeers to operate. The location of the Market Place remains almost unchanged. It still bustles on Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
1100–1600 The population grew steadily throughout the period, but the town itself did not grow much in area; opportunities for betterment and the desire of many to live further from the presumed unhealthy town centres ensured a relatively even flow of traffic in and out of Bulwell.
At some point, the magnesium limestone and the Bulwell sandstone, on which the town lies, began to be quarried. The strong, easily worked and durable rock, a dull yellow-orange magnesium limestone similar to the Bunter sandstone under Nottingham Castle, offered a building material easy to quarry. Many houses, schools, churches and garden walls of Bulwell sandstone stand to this day for miles around the town.
An early example can be found in sections of the wall surrounding Wollaton Hall, which was built using Bulwell stone in the late 16th century. The sheer quantities used there and elsewhere in the city suggest some kind of professional mining operation must already have been in operation by this time. Bulwell stone was later also used to repair the damage caused to the palaces of Westminster during the Second World War.
Coal is also found in abundance close to Bulwell. Running as part of much larger seams criss-crossing the region, the coal lies underneath the layers of sandstone and is in places only a few feet beneath the surface. Coal mines in the area around Bulwell were therefore among the first in the county to operate on a commercial basis, with large-scale mining from around 1500 onward.Smith, R.S., 1989, Early Coal Mining Around Nottingham 1500–1650, University of Nottingham.
Men like of Sir Francis Willoughby made fortunes from the extraction of coal. This allowed Willoughby to build the extravagant Wollaton Hall. One of the world's first railway lines, completed in 1604 between nearby Strelley and Wollaton, was built by Willoughby's heir, to aid transportation of the coal from his mines. Horses and other beasts of burden would pull the rows of trucks filled with coal, with the rails acting as a guide and a smoother surface than the roads of the time.
The church on the hill overlooking Bulwell, built in 1849–1850, stands on the site of an original church dating back to the 13th century or earlier. Towering over most of north-east Nottingham, Bulwell Saint Mary the Virgin and All Souls can be seen from afar and its bells ring across the area each weekend.
1600–1900 In 1667, George Strelley "built a school for the educating and teaching [of] young children of the Inhabitants of the said Parish", a building that survives to this day, along with many other houses built at the time. It is now a private home, but retains many original features. An 1852 act of Parliament allowed a gas pipeline from Basford and the south to be extended and provide street lighting and commercial and domestic service that revolutionised life in the town.
The earliest supply of mains water did not arrive until 1877, to replace many local springs, wells and the river providing for the needs of business and domestic use. Before 1877, water-borne diseases were rife and the river water highly polluted by industry and sewage, leading to high rates of infant mortality in the region. The proportion of children dying before their fifth birthday decreased by over 75 percentage points in Bulwell between 1870 and 1890, although this brought overcrowding and further demand for overstretched services like housing. Health care again suffered through insanitary living conditions, but the population continued to grow fast.
In 1843, bad weather did irreparable damage to the earlier St Mary's Church. The architect of the present one was Henry Isaac Stevens. In 1885, a further church of St John the Divine in Quarry Road was consecrated.
Bulwell Hall
Bulwell Hall was a mansion built in 1770 by the landowner John Newton, set in grounds to the north of Bulwell town centre and known initially as Pye Wipe Hall, a name that stuck locally. Passing to Newton's descendants, Bulwell Hall was sold at auction in 1864 to Samuel Thomas Cooper, along with over of land. It served variously as a sanatorium, an approved school for boys and an Italian prisoner of war camp before its demolition in 1956.
S.T. Cooper and the National School The purchase of Bulwell Hall made Samuel Thomas Cooper a lord of the manor in and around Bulwell. Cooper was a philanthropist and paid £3,000 to build another school for local children in 1866; it served up to 518 children, a remarkable feat for the size of the building. Remaining in use as the old building of St Mary's CofE primary and nursery school primary school, it is now listed and serves far fewer pupils than when it was built. (See picture:)
After Cooper's death, his widow, Annie Cooper, donated £600 to Bulwell St Mary's for a better organ. Still in use, though now electrified, the organ houses a plaque marking her donation in memory of her husband. Some sources claim this was the same S.T. Cooper who later enclosed Bulwell Bogs as his own private ground. It is known that Cooper died in 1871, aged 39, and that the protest over the Bogs took place in 1872, but this does not preclude a protest taking place after his death for actions made whilst still alive. There is no other S.T. Cooper recorded as lord of the manor of Bulwell.
Civil parish In 1891, the parish had a population of 11,481. On 1 April 1899, the parish was abolished and merged with Nottingham.
Boundary changes The Deanery of Bulwell was founded in 1888, four years after the creation of the Diocese of Southwell. Bulwell remained a town in its own right until a boundary change in the 1890s placed it in the City of Nottingham. The ground floor of the 19th-century Old Town Hall is now a retail outlet for fireplaces. The long disused dance floor on the first floor has performed a variety of uses.
1900–present Over the past century, Bulwell has been much augmented by housing estates such as Crabtree Farm, Snape Wood, Highbury Vale and Hempshill Vale.
Snape Wood and Sellers Wood were parts of a swathe of woodland that bordered the landfill site to the north-west of Bulwell, stretching down to the farmland that became Hempshill Vale estate to the south-west. Both woods were protected under Royal Warrants dating back to the 12th century, but the drastic housing shortage in Bulwell in the 1960s and 1970s led to the protection being set aside.
A token remnant of Snape Wood, in the middle of the new estate, amounts to little more than a fenced copse with three pathways leading through it. Owned by the local authority, Nottingham City Council, the site was designated a local nature reserve, but years of neglect have left it rubbish-strewn and in need of a structured management plan. Despite the fly-tipping and lack of active conservation, the site surprisingly supports a wide variety of wildlife, from rare wildflowers to mammals such as grey squirrels, hedgehogs and urban foxes, and up to 20 different species of bird. In February 2009, plans to set up a community group to take on the maintenance and conservation of the site on behalf of the local authority were moved.