Lenton is a shithole, but it is our shithole

It has the best of times, it has the worst of times


Lenton is of course the place to be if you’re studying in Nottingham – Beeston is simply just not a thing. There’s the Savoy, proximity to town, the convenient Sainsburys and just being near to where your friends and the parties are. Love it all you want, you have to admit it’s a bit rough around the edges. 

For a start the Sainsbury’s on Derby Road, the top place to go for revision snacks and awkwardly bumping into that one night stand, is the third most expensive Local in the whole of the UK. What?

We don’t get a very good deal when it comes to crime either. According to 2015 police statistics Lenton is over the “upper bound” for its crime, also meaning it has a higher crime rate than that of Liverpool, Birmingham and Newcastle.

We all know someone who’s been burgled so it is not at all surprising for the crime stats to be so high. Kimbolton Avenue even held the title of “Britain’s most burgled street” a few years ago. Criminals clearly have a soft spot for Lenton also.

You would think living on a busy street like Derby Road would make you safe, turns out according to the police it is the most dangerous street to live on in the whole of Lenton. We are living in an epicenter of antisocial behaviour, drug trafficking and theft in Nottingham, by choice.

Rent is around £998 more a year on average compared to other areas in Nottingham such as Dunkirk, is it really worth it? Yes it is.

The bloody hill towards town is another feat we have to take with on a daily basis. Simple errands become incredibly painful for any of us who live further up than Rolleston Drive – the longest road in the known universe – and have to walk/cycle up and down that thing everyday. Walking from campus to Douglas or Seely Road is basically an arctic expedition.   

And as for the aesthetics, we’re clearly not paying for those. Just look around you. For a start, Lenton was used as the setting for Shane Meadows’ Bafta Award winning film This is England which was a depiction of a rundown and dilapidated Midlands in the 1980s. You can still see some of the extras about Lenton not realising filming finished seven years ago.   

And we still love Lenton. We only want a few simple things and we are happy to pay a ridiculously high rent for them. Even if some random guy is messing around with ours bins at night, even if we are paying extra to be burgled and to eat overpriced food, Lenton is our home. It would be boring otherwise.