Description: An aerial view of the John Player factory on Churchville, later Hartley, Road in Radford. The church in the top left hand side is St. Peter's Church, Radford, north west aspect, the road running from the centre top to the centre right is Hartley Road. John Player, the son of a solicitor, whose family were well known Baptists and philanthropists, came to the city from Saffron Walden, Essex, in 1862 to take up a job as a draper's assistant. At that time, tobacco was sold loose from jars and even hand-made cigarettes were weighed out on scales in the shop, according to individual needs. The shop continued to prosper, so much so that 15 years after his arrival in Nottingham, in 1877, he bought a tobacco factory in Broad Marsh. In 1881, additional land was purchased here at Radford, for three new factory blocks, two of which were leased to lace manufacturers until such time as they were required for the manufacture of tobacco. Today the old 'Lace factory' on the Radford site is dwarfed by Player's modern factories in Nottingham. The new John Player's Horizon factory at Nottingham, built at a cost of £8 million in 1972, used natural gas to power the entire building. It collected three major architectural awards.