St Mary, Nottingham St Nicholas and Nottingham St Peter. It was expanded in 1877 by adding the parishes of Basford, Brewhouse Yard, Bulwell, Radford, Sneinton, Standard Hill and parts of the parishes of West Bridgford, Carlton, Wilford (North Wilford). The first incinerators for waste disposal were built in Nottingham by Manlove, Alliott & Co. Ltd. in 1874 to a design patented by Alfred Fryer. They were originally known as Destructors. The first horse drawn tramcars were operated by the Nottingham and District Tramways Company Limited in 1878. In 1889 Nottingham became a county borough under the Local Government Act 1888. City status was awarded as part of the Diamond Jubilee celebrations of Queen Victoria, being signified in a letter from the Prime Minister the Marquess of Salisbury to the Mayor, dated 18 June 1897. The Great Central Railway opened Nottingham Victoria railway station in 1899. 20th century Electric trams operated by Nottingham Corporation Tramways begin on 1 January 1901. Nottingham Council House was rebuilt between 1927 and 1929 to designs by Thomas Cecil Howitt. World War II The Nottingham Blitz was the Nazi German Luftwaffe bombing on the city of Nottingham on the evenings of 8/9 May 1941 as part of a nationwide campaign to disrupt key industrial production, undermine morale and destroy factories, rail networks and infrastructure. During one air raid alone 140 people had been killed and 4,500 houses had been destroyed. Large areas of Nottingham and West Bridgford had been destroyed and University College Nottingham had been damaged. Economic decline In common with the UK textile industry as a whole, Nottingham's textile sector fell into headlong decline in the decades following the World War II, as British manufacturers proved unable to compete on price or volume with output of factories in the Far East and South Asia. Very little textile manufacture now takes place in Nottingham, but the city's heyday in this sector endowed it with some fine industrial buildings in the Lace Market district. Many of these have been restored and put to new uses. Robin Hood The legend of Robin Hood first arose in the Middle Ages. Robin Hood is said to have lived in Sherwood Forest, which extended from the north of Nottingham to the north side of Doncaster, Yorkshire. Although Robin Hood is generally associated with Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, some authors (e.g. Phillips & Keatman, 1995) argue that he came from Yorkshire. Hood's