Distance: Just over 2.6 miles

Difficulty of the Terrain: Easy

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Short urban walk from the heart of Nottingham to the University of Nottingham’s University Park campus on the city’s outskirts, home of Lakeside Arts. The route is mostly along the Nottingham Canal.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Nottingham’s University Park

Sprawling along on a low ridge above the big lake in University Park, the University of Nottingham’s main campus is vast, befitting an institution which with nearly fifty thousand students in China, Malaysia and the UK is by some key measures the Midlands largest.

These days as well as being a big centre for university research, teaching and innovation, the university’s green, pleasant and welcoming main campus on Nottigham’s south western fringe, is also home to Lakeside Arts and several museums. Major regional cultural attractions which draw visitors from far beyond Nottingham and the university’s staff and student communities alike.

However, like its peers amongst pretty much all the Midlands universities, its origins are far more humble. While it only officially became a university with the grant of a royal charter in 1948, making its only marginally older than Keele University just outside Stoke-on-Trent, the University of Nottingham, like its former polytechnic counterpart Nottingham Trent University, can trace its origins back to 1798. This was when an adult education school was first established in Nottingham. Remarkably the Georgian building this was first housed in continues to exist on Shakespeare Street not far from the Nottingham Trent campus, now divided into student studio flats, to this day.

In the latter part of the 19th Century, from 1873, Nottingham was a venue for lectures as part of the University of Cambridge’s University Extension Lecture Series. The popularity of these events suggested that there was a desire for higher education in Nottingham which led to fundraising throughout the mid to late 1870s which enabled the establishment of University College Nottingham in 1881.

University College Nottingham, like other university colleges around the country including the precursors to the other older Midlands universities like Birmingham, Leicester and Keele, was focused on teaching students to take University of London exams. These if students were persistent enough would eventually lead to a University of London degree. This system essentially prevailed for nearly seventy years from 1881 until 1948 when University College Nottingham became the University of Nottingham and began awarding its own qualifications.

It was in the 1920s that University College Nottingham moved out of the city centre to its current main campus at University Park near Beeston. This move was enabled by funding from Jesse Boot whose wealth was extracted from the work undertaken by staff of the Boot’s chemist company. A firm which, while owned by American venture capital these days, retains a head office in Nottingham and some ties to the University of Nottingham.

A key building funded by Jesse Boot is the Trent Building. It takes its name from the major local river, which Jesse Boot took as his aristocratic title when he was made a peer. This striking white stone structure, visible on top of the campus ridge from far off, was initially where the entire university was situated. Not unlike the science, technology and engineering departments in the Aston Webb Building on the University of Birmingham’s Edgbaston campus. 

Soon though, University College Nottingham and the later University of Nottingham expanded. In common with so many other campuses across the region the university’s main campus is home to much fine modernist, and more recent architecture. An unusual feature of the University of Nottingham’s system is the focus upon its halls of residence and the services and social activities for students provided through them. This works in practice not unlike the college systems at York or Lancaster and makes the campus more of a focus for student social life than is the case at other civic universities in the UK.  

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

This walk to the University of Nottingham’s University Park campus home of Lakeside Arts begins at Nottingham Railway Station on the edge of the city centre.

Once on the central station footbridge turn right and descend down a flight of steps to street level.

Here turn left and pass under a viaduct which carries the tramline running into the city centre from the west.

Walk up the pedestrianised street on the far side with the station on your left and an array of bars, coffee shops and a few convenience stories on your right.

At the top of the road – level with the front of the station – it joins the busy Carrington Street which runs across the Nottingham and Beeston Canal into the middle of the city.

Turn right here and walk a very short way down Carrington Street.

Crossing over onto the left hand side of the road you come to a flight of steps which lead off to the left down onto the towpath of the Nottingham and Beeston Canal.

Once on the towpath turn left and begin walking along the towpath.

The route leads under a series of city centre bridges past some locks, alongside an array of modern office and public buildings, as well as a range of converted warehouses from the 19th and early 20th Centuries along the southern boundary of the city centre.

Presently after some way on your right you get a great view of Nottingham Castle on top of its crag.

The Nottingham and Beeston Canal along which you are walking is a surviving section of the Nottingham Canal which runs through the city, is a stub of a much longer route which once ran up to the eastern Derbyshire village of Langley Mill. Here it connected to the Cromford Canal which ran all of the way up to the Derwent Valley Mills located on the fringe of the Peak District. The canal ceased to be maintained from the 1930s onwards, and in the 1950s Nottingham City Council in response to sanitary and environmental health concerns, filled in a large chunk of it, above where it intersected with the River Trent. A stubby section lives on as a popular walking route in the Broxtowe Borough Council area where, existing as a semi-drained curio, it essentially forms a long linear park.

Passing Nottingham Castle you leave the city centre.

Following the canal you pass by a large canal marina.

Then through a stretch across a residential area.

Presently after over a mile of walking you come to a mighty concrete bridge carrying the A52 to the west of the city.

Here on the left there is a set of steps running up to the carriageway.

Once up by the road turn right and walk a short way downhill. Ahead of you perched on an opposite hill stand the towers and chimneys of the science faculties at Nottingham’s gargantuan university, one of the largest in the country.

Follow the path downhill alongside a grassy bank.

Near the bottom of this head through an underpass to your left.

Once through the underpass, having passed under both of the elevated roadways, turn right.

The path winds up on A6005 which runs through the studentified and slightly bohemian suburb of Dunkirk.

Once out of the underpass left and walk along the road.

After a short distance cross the road using the traffic lights on your right.

A little further on and you emerge beside a tram stop opposite the University of Nottingham’s Lakeside Arts.

Here the University campus stretches before you running uphill towards a ridge. The late 1920s vintage Trent Building sits prominently on the hilltop in a manner which recalls the earlier Aston Webb Building at the University of Birmingham or the slightly later Parkinson Building at the University of Leeds.

At the tram stop adjacent to the University of Nottigham’s University Park campus, turn right, crossing the tracks.

Here to the left on the far side of an access road there is a gateway leading into the park. Walk straight ahead along the path approaching the Lakeside Arts building.

Having reached the building, turn left and follow the path along the side of the building approaching the University Park lake. 

Once beside the lake you see the white limestone Trent Building, the university’s original central building on this campus straight ahead of you across the water.   

Turn right and walk along the eastern edge of the lake.

Soon to the left there is a path around the lake, which you turn and follow.

Presently approaching the Trent building there is a rough track, a desire line, cutting across the grass in front of you. Follow this and walk uphill across a lawn towards the Trent Building.

In no time you reach the steps up to the Trent Building.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

The University of Nottingham’s University Park campus is served by a tram route which runs along the main road to the south. This runs east back towards Nottingham city centre past the railway station, as well as west towards Beeston where there is also a railway station. Beeston Railway Station is nearer the campus on foot than Nottingham Railway Station. The campus itself at the time of writing in November 2024 was served by several bus routes including the 34 and 36 back towards Nottingham city centre. There were also numerous buses serving Nottingham city centre, as well as more westerly destinations, including Derby, which could be caught from roads near the campus.