Gedling Borough Heritage Brought Alive

This website introduces you to the historic features and exciting heritage of Gedling Borough, which is not just another corner of England, it possesses a wealth of world-class heritage and takes the visitor from city suburbs into the iconic English countryside. Gedling Borough has previously been little known outside of its own community, but this website will bring it out of obscurity and into the limelight; we have a great story to tell.

We concentrate on providing the framework of a general history, and provide links to other websites, where the more serious student will be able to gain further knowledge of our heritage.

A Heritage Lottery Fund project

This website came about as a result of a project designed to roll the heritage of Gedling Borough into one location. For several decades’ diligent local historians and dedicated societies across Gedling Borough, Nottinghamshire, have been researching the history of their communities and have consequently produced fascinating works, including books, films, websites and leaflets. Some have created and led heritage walks, given talks, held exhibitions and installed plaques to help us remember the people and events of our borough. However, in recent times it was realised that nowhere could we find a collective history of the Borough of Gedling, which was formed in 1974. To this end Gedling Borough Council, working with local history groups, developed a project and successfully applied for a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund to produce that collective history. From the commencement of the project, in January 2018, volunteers from across the borough worked hard, alongside council officers, to celebrate our heritage through a variety of ways, such as the borough’s first ever heritage festival, writing and producing interpretation boards, mosaics, a large wall mural depicting a thousand years of history, guide leaflets, a web site and films designed to immortalise our heritage and encourage people to become more engaged with our fascinating past. Residents were engaged by entering several heritage-based competitions, joining walks or attending a talk or local heritage film show.

A book entitled The History and Heritage of Gedling Borough has been published to enthral its readers with our exciting past. View the book (10mb – pdf)

Large portions of the text used on this website is taken from the above-mentioned book, for which we offer our gratitude to Dr Stephen Walker and all those acknowledged in the book.

Two films were produced to present an outline of the heritage of Gedling Borough. Click here to view the short film or here for the longer/narrated film.

We urge you visit the Gedling Country Park and café. Around the park you will find various heritage interpretation panels and a nature trail of wooden sculptures. Inside the café you will find the 9.6-metre-wide mural depicting our heritage. Perhaps two of the most striking productions of the project are two mosaics hung on the outside walls of the café. You will not be disappointed by a visit to the park and café.

Click here to view or download a pdf copy or our heritage leaflet guide of the borough’s outstanding features. Gedling Borough Council have recently established a Heritage Forum that unites the many heritage groups from across the borough and is designed to promote our fascinating past and beautiful natural history.

The council have also produced a Heritage Strategy to guide its work in this area of concern over the few years.

Acknowledgements This web site has been produced with the help of many volunteers from across Gedling Borough with the support of Gedling Borough Council and a Heritage Lottery Fund Grant.