Product Code Database
Ruddington () is a large village in the borough of Rushcliffe in Nottinghamshire, England. The village is south of Nottingham and northwest of Loughborough. It had a population of 6,441 at the 2001 Census, increasing to 7,216 at the 2011 Census and 7,674 in 2021. Ruddington is Twinned cities with Grenay, France.
The village residents have previously conducted high-profile campaigns in an attempt to retain the rural identity as a village and prevent it being subsumed into the adjoining suburban village of Clifton and town of West Bridgford. It maintains this through a variety of local amenities such as several shops, schools, public houses, community centre, village hall and churches within the village centre.
Administratively, Ruddington Parish Council manage the area as the first tier of local government, Rushcliffe Borough Council and Nottinghamshire County Council providing successively higher level services.
Rushcliffe Country Park, an area developed on the now decommissioned Ruddington Depot,Margaret Lawson (2026). 9780903929103, Ruddington Local History & Amenity Society & The Friends of Rushcliffe Country Park. ISBN 9780903929103 along with the Ruddington Fields Business Park which hosts several national businesses, both lay to the south of the main village. Other industrial sectors include units in the north of the Manor Park area and the Artex head office on the southern edge of the Wheatley Fields housing development.
Fairham Brook forms the south and west boundaries of the parish, meeting the Nottingham city border before flowing under the Fairham Bridge which links Ruddington and Clifton. Its subsidiary stream Packman Dyke becomes the border for a short distance, before meeting the former Great Central Railway track alignment which becomes the boundary in the north western corner of the parish, Wilwell Farm Cutting Nature Reserve creates a brief deviation with a line of trees before the GCR route meets the existing NET tram route by the A52 trunk road. The north parish border runs alongside the A52 easterly before diverting at Lings Bar roundabout, mirroring Flawforth Lane to the historical St. Peter's church site before branching off south of Crockhill Wood, meeting and tracing the A60 road briefly, then following a private farm road to the south of the business park and along farm plots and reaching Fairham Brook at Ruddington Moor.
Bradmore, Bunny and East Leake lie to the south of the parish; Gotham to the south west; Barton-in-Fabis to the west; Clifton to the north west; Wilford, Wilford Hill and West Bridgford to the north; Edwalton to the north east; Tollerton and Plumtree to the east; and Keyworth to the south east.
In the Domesday Book in AD 1086, Ruddington's population entry recorded around 250 people. Most were involved in agriculture and this way of life changed little for many hundreds of years, the population marginally increasing by the 17th century to only approximately 320. Open field lands were reallocated amongst the inhabitants in 1767.
There are 1st century Roman remains of a large villa at Flawford. The first known St. Peter's church dates from the 9th century and was built over the foundations of the villa, this was a shared church also catering to the nearby villages of Edwalton, Plumtree and Keyworth. Alabaster church effigy pieces were found here in 1779 and are presently kept at the Nottingham Castle Museum.
St Mary's was first established in Ruddington village as a manor chapel in around 1292-94 attached to the adjacent manor house (now the Hermitage), the lord of the manor at the time overseeing the building. It was eventually renamed as St Peter's Church after the Flawford church, due to disrepair, was pulled down in 1773–79.
Ruddington's association with the knitting industry had begun by the start of the 19th century after the invention of the Stocking frame in Nottinghamshire. The industry attracted new inhabitants and the population grew to 2,500 during this time as an associated extension to Lace machine manufacture. New houses and frameshops, including the site occupied by the present-day Ruddington Framework Knitters Museum (see the Museums section below) were built to provide homes and workspace for the knitters and families. The 1851 census showed that half of the heads of households in the village were involved in the occupation. Framework knitting in the village declined towards the end of the 19th century as steam-powered machines developed and factories provided large-scale competition to the manual methods still being employed by the villagers.
Charles Paget, local Nottingham MP, in 1828 built the Ruddington Grange manor house, which established the hamlet of the same name.
White's Directory in 1853 records George Augustus Parkyns, as the principal owner, and lord of the manor of Ruddington.
Ruddington Hall was built in 1860, by Thomas Cross from Bolton who was a banker and Justice of the Peace, he owned it until his death in 1879. In 1880 an American merchant, Philo Laos Mills, purchased and resided at the hall. He was appointed High Sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1897. It was a hospital during the Second World War until 1980, when it was bought and converted into offices, and is in use today as the head office for a local business.
The Village Hall was constructed between 1912 and 1913 to the designs of the architect William Herbert Higginbottom. The Misses Paget gave £800 of the £1,100 () construction cost.
Sellors' Playing Field was gifted to the village via the parish council in 1947 by Frederick Sellors, the annual Wakes Funfair being held on the site since 1968.
Ruddington expanded further between the wars and after as new housing estates were built at the edge of the village. The Ordnance Supply and Disposal Depot opened at the start of World War II and occupied a large area on the southern outskirts of the village. The depot closed in the 1980s and the site was redeveloped in 1993 into Rushcliffe Country Park and Ruddington Fields Business Park.
The new school would also take people from Bradmore and Bunny, and would open in the summer term of 1958. Nottingham Evening Post Thursday 24 October 1957, page 9 It was built in eight months, with eight classrooms and a science laboratory. Nottingham Guardian' Journal Thursday 6 November 1958, page 4 The headmaster was Thomas Henry Burdett DFC, with 310 children. He stayed until the end of the school. Mr Burdett originated from Worksop, and married in West Bridgford in December 1940. Nottingham Journal Friday 6 December 1940, page 4 He was awarded the DFC in February 1944, and flew with 540 Squadron, flying reconnaissance aircraft. Nottingham Journal Saturday 12 February 1944, page 3 The school was officially opened on Saturday 8 November 1958, by Sir Edward Herbert. Nottingham Guardian Journal Monday 10 November 1958, page 2
It became a county junior school in 1972, St Peter's C of E Junior School, on the main Loughborough road.
| + Bus services in Ruddington, Nottinghamshire !Bus operator!! Line!!Destination(s)!! Notes |
|
|
