Written by Adam Baker at Queer Norfolk
At Norwich’s Millennium Library, CJ De Barra (they/them) brought Nottingham’s queer past to life. From the funny and the messy to the radical and revolutionary; CJ shared fiercely human stories they’d discovered over years of research with the Norfolk LGBT+ History Club. They walked us through decades of hidden lives, using their research and catalogue of 140+ oral histories to show how queerness in a smaller city behaves differently than in big metropolitan hubs.
What emerged was a portrait of Nottingham that, for anyone queer in Norwich, felt very familiar.
One of the striking threads in CJ’s talk was how queer life in Nottingham thrived because it was a smaller city, not in spite of it. Norwich, with its own close-knit queer community, has that in common. Communities in small cities often formed in concentrated pockets. People knew each other (for better or worse) and word traveled quickly. All this made for a dense patchwork of memories and stories to explore.
CJ’s research highlighted Nottingham’s LGBTQ+ venues across the decades, places like the New Foresters, the Lord Roberts, and a rotating cast of pubs and nightspots that served as refuges for Nottingham’s queer population. Norwich knows this story well. From the Loft, to countless DIY events that have sprung up over the years, our queer spaces exist in the cracks, move around, or burn brightly for a short period before flickering out.
Trans histories can be difficult to trace, but CJ showed how gender‑diverse lives still surface in the archives when you know how to look for them. They spoke about Rosie, who arrived in Lowestoft from Serbia and later moved to Nottingham in 1900. Although Rosie lived as a woman within her community, a court case involving fraud led to an invasive examination in which officials insisted on labelling Rosie as male. This reminded me of the Ferrow Brothers, who transitioned in Great Yarmouth in the 1930s and were reported on with fascination rather than hostility. Through these stories, we can see that gender‑nonconforming and trans lives have always existed in our region; what was missing was the language to describe themselves.
One of the unexpected cross‑city parallels CJ touched on was footballer Justin Fashanu, who played for both Nottingham Forest and Norwich City. He remains the first professional male footballer in the UK to come out publicly.
Fashanu’s story intersects with race, sexuality, tabloid hostility, and local sporting memory. He arrived in Norfolk as a foster child, launching his early career, and later becoming a symbol of both queer pride and queer tragedy.
CJ’s discussion reminded us that queer histories don’t stay neatly within city borders, but rather ripple outward, linking communities in ways we often overlook.
After CJ’s talk, they led an oral histories workshop. We listened to recordings of local LGBTQ+ people reflecting on their lives. So much depends on memory, and memory is naturally fallible: details blur and stories shift as they’re retold. But rather than seeing this as a weakness, CJ framed it as part of what makes oral history so vital. Queer History often goes unwritten, so seeking these stories out was vital for CJ as they prepared to write their book.
Small cities often get forgotten in national narratives, but CJ’s work proves how transformative these places can be. And their workshop was a reminder that we—here in Norwich—have stories worth telling, archiving, celebrating, and passing on.
If Nottingham’s queer history can be illuminated through persistence, creativity, and community collaboration, so can ours.
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Queer Norfolk is a volunteer-led archiving project that hands ownership of queer collections back to communities, empowering people to access, discover, and contribute to local collections that reflect our shared histories.
