Some years ago, Sherds invented a dinner party game called ‘Dante’, in which participants nominate the place where they would choose to live if, like Dante in the 13th century, you were condemned to exile. As we have got older the game has morphed into ‘where will we live when we retire?’ More recently, the game has ceased to be theoretical. We have all been forced to ‘stay at home’, wherever home happens to be, with no escape possible until the coronavirus pandemic is brought under control.
The very positive result is that many of us have developed a stronger appreciation of the natural and cultural heritage in our own back yards. People are taking regular exercise as a break from the tedium of lockdown, and as they walk or jog around traffic-free streets they are making discoveries that they are sharing with friends and family. Social media posts have been dominated by tweets, images, and blogs extolling the beauty of buildings, urban landscapes, street trees, and the plants in public parks and private front gardens, not to mention butterflies, bees, birdsong, and bluebell woods.
Nottingham City Council’s Local List
Full marks then to Nottingham City Council who have seized on lockdown as an opportunity to promote the city’s heritage. On the assumption that more people will be out and about, the Council is inviting nominations for the buildings, green spaces, and archaeological sites that should be included in the next Local List. More than 100 nominations have already been received and it is striking how many of these are preceded by the word ‘former’, as in former school, library, chapel, graveyard, pub, cinema, tram shed, brewery, and so on (the latter has an intriguing cave system underneath, dug in the 18th century for storing 21,000 barrels of beer for Nottingham’s thirsty citizens and used as an air raid shelter in the Second World War).
