For those who might have assumed the former Arboretum tea rooms were just about tea drinking and bath buns, think again: they were also about dancing! Thanks to Val Wood of Friends of Nottingham Arboretum for kind permission to use this photograph from 1952, showing the “new dance floor” at the Arboretum tea rooms.
Sadly, the Arboretum team rooms building – which ultimately became The Park pub – was destroyed by fire in 2006.
Nevertheless, the desire for a new cafe and supervised toilet facilities regularly recur in user surveys of the Arboretum. And Nottingham City Council are currently hoping to realize their proposals for a new building on the site of the old tea rooms which will include provision for new café space, toilets and an education/community space.
Note that dancing in the Arboretum did not always meet with approval. One letter from the matron of a nearby nursing home complained in August 1939:
“These wild noises with shrieks of dancing go on till after 10 O’clock then for some considerable time the shrieks of the people in the street make any form of peace or rest quite impossible”.
[Arboretum Correspondence, Cat/10/128/2/2. Nottinghamshire Archives]
