Wilford

Wilford is a village and former civil parish in the Nottingham district, in the ceremonial county of Nottinghamshire, England. The village is to the northeast of Clifton, southwest of West Bridgford, northwest of Ruddington and southwest of Nottingham city centre. It is at a meander of the River Trent. In 1891 the parish had a population of 2769. In 1894 the parish was abolished and split to form North Wilford and South Wilford. Remains of a paved Roman ford, bordered by oak posts, were found in the Trent at Wilford in 1900. The settlement is named as Willesforde in Domesday Book, owned by William Pevrel of Nottingham Castle, who also owned the lands of nearby Clifton. It had a fishery, a priest and 23 sokemen. The land passed to the Clifton family in the 13th Century. Wilford retained its identity as a village until the later 19th century. Surrounded by woodlands and with riverside amenities such as the Wilford Ferry Inn, the village attracted many visitors from Nottingham. Spencer Hall, the Nottinghamshire poet, wrote in 1846 "Who ever saw Wilford without wishing to become an inmate of one of its peaceful woodbined homes." In 1870 the Clifton Colliery opened on the north side of the Trent, and the area opposite Wilford became industrialised. By the end of the century the village had changed character, with modern brick-built houses replacing old thatched cottages. The parish was divided into North Wilford and South Wilford in 1887. The population increased to four and a half thousand by 1901, almost a ten-fold increase since 1801. The now-demolished coal-fired Wilford Power Station was built in the early 1920s on the north bank of the River Trent. The civil parish of South Wilford became part of West Bridgford urban district in 1935 bounded by Fairham Brook to the West, the River Trent to the North, Loughborough Road (historically the King's Road, a Royal Highway) to the East and Landmere Lane to the South. Wilford was subsumed into the City of Nottingham in 1952 as a land bridge between the city and the newly built Clifton Estate.