Ruddington is an attractive and lively village situated five miles south of Nottingham in the Borough of Rushcliffe. The village, population 6,500, has an excellent range of shops and services and acts as a local centre for a number of adjoining villages. Being fiercely independent, residents have conducted high profile campaigns to retain the village's distinct, rural identity and prevent it being subsumed into the adjoining suburban districts of Clifton and West Bridgford. Those who refer to Ruddington as a town are liable to be met with frosty hauteur! Notwithstanding this, Ruddington is friendly village which retains a strong sense of community and is a popular place to live, work or visit.

A Brief History

Early History

The first evidence of human activity within the modern parish of Ruddington was found during excavations of Flawford Churchyard, which is about 1 1/2 miles east of the present village centre. Excavation uncovered a working floor where stone arrowheads and scrapers were found, together with a quantity of waste flakes and cores. These have now been dated to about 1500 BC, the late Bronze Age. Dateable pits, trenches, fragments of pottery and other domestic articles found nearby indicate that people lived on this site during the Iron Age. The site continued to be occupied during four centuries of Roman occupation by Romano-British people, and the remains of a large villa with second-century tessellated floors were discovered during the excavation.

The Saxons established a settlement close to the site of the present Parish Church in about 550 AD. The name Ruddington is Saxon in origin and means "the homestead (ton) of the Ruddingas (Rudda's people)". Rudda was probably the name of the leader of the group, which consisted of members of his family and other followers. They probably occupied an abandoned homestead with cleared and previously cultivated land. The Saxons built a church at Flawford exactly on the site of the Romano-British villa some time after 663 AD, and for centuries the people of Ruddington worshipped on the mosaic floor. It is thought that the name Flawford derives from the two Saxon words for "coloured stone floor". About two hundred years later the Danish invaders settled alongside the Saxon Ruddington, and the Danish settlement became known as 'Easthorpe'.

The Medieval Period

The Domesday Book records that at the time of the Norman Conquest two men, Leofgeat and Ulf held land in Ruddington. They were replaced by four Normans, Count Allan, Roger of Bully, Gilbert of Ghent and Robert Mallet. The first three had extensive land holdings elsewhere in Nottinghamshire. Only Robert Mallet, who held land in Bradmore as well as adjacent land in Ruddington, might have lived in the vicinity. It is estimated that the population of Ruddington was about 250 people at the time of the Domesday Survey. Two thirds of them were "Sochmen" who had more freedom than "villeins", and it is believed they were the descendants of the Danish settlers.

The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

In 1600 the population of Ruddington was 320, and the village remained much as it had been for centuries. There were four large Open Fields: Micklebarrow Field, Mill Field, Collicross Field and Thornditch Field. The villagers grew crops in the strips of these fields and grazed animals on the Waste, Commons and Leys. Both the Lay Rector and the Lord of the Manor were non-resident. In 1641 James Peacock, Citizen of London and Master of the Skinners' Company, who had been born in Ruddington, founded a Free School for the children of the village. Hugh Barlow, the first schoolmaster, later became Vicar. Towards the end of the century there was a Quaker Community and a Meeting House in the village. In 1698 there was a partial enclosure when Thornditch Field on the Southwest of the parish became pasture land.

Early in the eighteenth century William Breedon came to farm the Rectory land. He developed an improved breed of sheep known as the Dishley Herd. The Loughborough to Nottingham road was the first in the country to be turnpiked in 1735. The Turnpike crossed the flank of Micklebarrow Hill where there was a toll house (which still stands on Old Road). In 1767 there was a Parliamentary Enclosure which re-allocated the land and radically altered the village. The population began to increase from this time, but had reached only 590 by 1793. The church at Flawford was demolished in 1773, and the chapel in the centre of the village, which had existed since medieval times became the parish church of St. Peter. The first Methodist church was built in 1799.

The Nineteenth Century

By 1801 the population of Ruddington had reached 868, and over the next hundred years it grew to 2500. The rapid population growth in the 19th century was largely due to the influx of framework knitters, who rapidly outnumbered the indigenous population. In 1805 a Workhouse was built, and by 1832 it served thirteen surrounding villages. The existing Wesleyan Methodist Church was twice enlarged and a Primitive Methodist Chapel and a Baptist Chapel built. Both subsequently required larger premises. In 1826 a large Vicarage was built in Red Lion Street, which then became known as Vicarage Lane. The Parish Church was rebuilt in 1888. Terraces of small houses were built to accommodate the framework knitters and several large houses were also erected: The Grange in 1832 for Charles Paget, South Manor in 1852 for Thomas George Augustus Parkyns to the design of T. C. Hine, and Ruddington Hall in the 1850s for Thomas Cross, Banker. The James Peacock School was rebuilt in 1874 as a Boys' School, in memory of Charles Paget and his wife who were drowned at Filey. The Infants' and Girls' School, now St. Peter's Rooms, was built in 1852 by Thomas George Augustus Parkyns in memory of his parents and his grandmother, Dame Jane Parkyns. The Co-operative Society was founded in 1860 and an increasing number of shops were opened. The number of Public Houses rose from two, the Red Heart and the Red Lion, to seven. The first Post Office was established in 1844, and the first Carrier began business in 1864, to be followed by a regular horse-bus service. Gas reached the village in 1864. When the first Parish Council was elected in 1895 Ruddington was the largest village in Nottinghamshire south of the Trent.

The Twentieth Century

The opening of the Great Central Railway Station in 1900 heralded prompted the building of a number of textile factories, predominantly for manufacturing lace, and the arrival of well-heeled commuters, who's train ride to Nottingham took just 12 minutes - a journey time one would do well to match today! The large houses in Manor Park were built for these wealthy industrialists from Nottingham. A number of smaller houses and a few factories were built in the vicinity of the station, which was closed to passengers in 1963 and to freight in 1968. In 1900 a row of shops and houses was built on the west side of the High Street by Philo Mills, who also built Oxford House in Easthorpe Street, and several other houses in the village. In 1911 a piped water supply was connected to all houses. The Village Hall was built in 1915. Electricity came to the village in 1926. Samuel Carter of Guelph, Canada, who was born in Ruddington, endowed the village with the Elms Park Playing Field in 1931.

The 1930s and 1940s saw further change, as large housing estates were constructed around the periphery of the village and the industrial base expanded further. Dominating the village physically was the Ordnance Supply & Disposal Depot, opened during the early years of World War II as a bomb filling factory and persisting until the 1980s for the auction of army surplus. The depot site was reclaimed by Nottinghamshire County Council in the early 1990s. The area was transformed into the Rushcliffe Country Park, home also to the Nottingham Transport Heritage Centre which incorporates the original depot branch line and some of its buildings, and a prestige Business Park.

The Twentyfirst Century

The buildings in the village centre date predominantly for the 1860s and the Conservation Area, designated in the late 1960s, contains an unprecedented number of surviving framework knitters (FWK) workshops and some excellent examples of buildings constructed in the technique known as 'Flemish bond', resulting in a characteristically checkered brickwork. Recognition of its important industrial heritage has resulted in English Heritage, Rushcliffe Borough Council and Nottinghamshire County Council jointly funding, over the past three years, a Heritage Economic Regeneration Scheme to restore buildings in the Conservation Area. Ruddington is certainly not a 'chocolate box' village, but its interesting industrial heritage, well preserved pockets of original streetscape and three museums make it a popular visitor destination.

Abridged from "A Brief History of Ruddington" by Margaret Lawson © Ruddington Local History & Amenity Society, with additional material by Gavin Walker