502
ALAN
SILLITOE
from time to time. Such people, if they had as much pride and bite
about them as Burton, could have thought him somewhat un–
justified at being so aloof, though I don't suppose they'd ever give
much indication of it.
He always lived close to Nottingham, a lifetime spent within
a few miles of the Goose Fair and Market Place. He was born and
bred and married and buried at Lenton, but also lived at Bridge
Yard, and later at a block of three cottages beyond Radford Wood–
house known for some reason as "Engine Town" - though it is
marked on Ordnance Survey map of 1860 as "Old Engine Houses."
They were demoli hed in 1939, a few months after water taps and
electricity had been put in, to make way for the spread of new
houses from Nottingham.
·
The cottages were connected by a motorable high-hedged lane
to Radford Woodhouse, a compact settlement of four streets, beyond
which one went by paved roads to Nottingham. But to other localitie:;
there were only footpaths and tracks aero the fields. To reach Aspley
or Basford one went up Collier ' Pad, a leafy and narrow bridlepath
that ran along the edge of Cherry Orchard (an open space of un–
dulating scrubland), a path which was often used by miners going
home from Radford or Wollaton Pit .
Burton never thought of himself as a city man, even when his
house was on the actual town boundary and he could find himself
in Nottingham simply by walking to the end of the yard. There were
still many fields to cro s before coming to the packed houses of Old
Radford and the first lively outlying pubs of the city.
On Saturday night he dressed in his best suit. In fact he had
two, which seemed an unparalleled luxury compared to the state of
my own father at the time. There wa a black one and a brown one,
with boot to match each, and in one of these he'd make hi way
down the dry or muddy lane, according to sea on, and under the
long tunnel-like railway bridge, stopping at the beer-off in Radford
Woodhouse for a pint, then going on by the disused lime kilns up to
Wollaton Road, which would take him the two-mile walk into
Nottingham.
As a child I once caught a glimpse of him in a pub when some–
one going in opened the saloon bar door. Burton wa drinking
standing up, talking to other men, the upper half of his tankard-arm
