23 - Gotham Car Sales, Nottingham Road

There were no houses built on the north side of this road until the 1920s. The council houses toward Nottingham, on the Bidwell Crescent and Wodehouse Avenue estates with building starting in 1948.
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The land where the Car Sales business now stands was originally bought in 1946 by the Dabell Brothers for the construction of a new lorry depot. The lorries had previously been based in the South Notts Bus Co. yard. However when the British lorry haulage businesses were nationalised by the Labour Government under the 1947 Act, the proposed lorry depot was no longer required. Hence a garage Service Station was built in its place. This business continued and expanded under various owners until February 2000 when the present owner found that petrol sales were uneconomic and thereby choosing to concentrate on Car Sales. At the time this was the only remaining petrol outlet in the village and local residents were faced to travel further afield to obtain their supplies. In previous years there had been five businesses selling petrol to the public in Gotham.

A grocers shop and a butchers shop along this same stretch of Nottingham Road, have also closed and reverted to private houses in recent years as part of the changing scene in our village.