About the University of Nottingham Social and Sports Club
The club celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2023 and is still going strong, with weekly evening and weekend activities and event days. In addition, it hosts golf, bowls sections and snooker, pool, darts and table tennis facilities.
We have a separate function room available for hire for birthdays (excluding 18-21 ages), weddings etc by members and non-members at reasonable rates. Please contact us to enquire about availability and prices.
About Lenton Eaves
Now the University Sports and Social Club, Lenton Eaves can be found where Beeston Lane bends to run parallel with Derby Road.
Just after the bend, a footpath marks the point where the two turnpikes joined.
Lenton Eaves, built in 1875 by lacemaker Benjamin Walker Junior, was the first Victorian villa to appear in the campus area. It was built on land purchased in a complex transaction involving Thomas Bayley of Lenton Abbey, Lord Middleton of Wollaton Hall and JH Lee of Lenton Fields.
The red brick, Victorian Gothic building is in the style of a shooting lodge. It has two hound kennels, together with stables and a coach house, all backing onto Derby Road. Its overhanging eaves obviously inspired the house’s name.
It was sympathetically extended in1984. The Latin inscription to the right of the entrance, Deus Major Columna, God is our Great Pillar, tells us Walker was a God-fearing man. There is also a quirky window feature, possibly described as an oriel window, projecting from the north corner of the house. Small examples of stained glas scan be seen in the windows, with armorial designs or depictions of human characters. There is also a decorative course of brick corbels around the building and the slate roof is capped with crest tiles typical of the era.
In 1895-96, the house becamethe property of John Piggin. About eight years later, colliery owner Walter Carrington Fowler took over before John Morris, a laundry proprietor, lived there from 1911 to1941. The final owners, Reginald Lionel Kemp, a company director, and his wife Evelyn, sold to the University in 1948.
The coachman’s cottage east of Lenton Eaves has a wall plaque dated AD 1880, shortly after the house was built. Coachman Mark Wilshaw and his wife Hannah were the first to live there, and a succession of gardeners lived in the cottage in the 20th century.
