During my visit to the newly reopened Nottingham Castle I spotted a few clues that point to the architect who originally transformed the ruined Ducal Palace into the first municipal art gallery outside London.
But does anything remain of “The Midland Counties Art Museum at Nottingham”?
Nottingham’s not really a castle.. it’s a Renaissance Ducal Palace you know! Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Nottingham Castle’s new Rebellion Gallery does a dynamic job of telling the story of how Nottingham Castle as we know it has survived a turbulent history – from the demolition of the Norman fortress by Oliver Cromwell after the Civil War to the damage caused by protesters against the 1831 Reform Bill, when the Riot Act was read and the Duke of Newcastle’s Palace was torched – but what happened next?
Thomas Chambers Hine, prominent architect of Victorian Nottingham and the 5th Duke of Newcastle’s Surveyor of Estates, took it upon himself (along with his son George Thomas Hine) to transform the gutted shell of the building into a Public Museum and Gallery of Art and Science. All the woodwork – floors and staircases – had been destroyed in the fire so Hine added new stone staircases with cast-iron balustrades and the three floors of the palace were replaced with two, cutting through the old staterooms.
The top lit picture gallery was modelled on the Grand Gallery of The Louvre.
Picture (by Hine?) of the Gallery space now on display at Nottingham Castle. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
The gallery as it is today, with the skylight still performing its function. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
The Midland Counties Art Museum At Nottingham was opened by Albert Edward, Prince of Wales (Later King Edward VII)and his wife, Princess Alexandra on 3rd July 1878 and the occasion was marked with a royal procession through The Park Estate.
Stained glass window (now part of the Visiting Exhibition Space – currently hosting ‘Hello, My Name Is Paul Smith’) commemorating the Royal Visit and the Castle’s Civil War associations. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
TC Hine had a fondness for local history and published a book to mark the occasion, it detailed each phase of the building’s history and was entitled: ‘Nottingham Its Castle, A Millitary Fortress, A Royal Palace, A Ducal Mansion, A Blackened Ruin, A Museum and Gallery of Art’. It was published in two editions, the first in 1876 and a second in 1879 with a supplement covering the Royal Visit.
TC Hine’s history of the Castle, now on display in the Castle! Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Thanks to Google Books you can browse the pages of the book and look at some of the illustrations. (A copy is also available at Bromley House Library). In the book, “a labour of love”, Hine recounts the history of the Castle through the reign of each successive English monarch, notes significant incidents in the history of Nottingham and even lays claim to be the person who found the spiral stairs leading to the cave known as Mortimer’s Hole. As he goes through a timeline of the years, he notes important events, population figures and makes note of the buildings being built in the town. The book is almost a scrapbook (which is how it is described in the exhibition) although it actually contains printed pictures that have been stuck into each copy rather than the plates being directly printed onto the pages.
Nottingham Castle as a ruin, 1876 from Nottingham, Its Castle…” by TC Hine. Source: Google Books.
The deaths of notable personages are recorded and Hine describes buildings including the Nottingham Exchange, “standing as it does on the finest site in all England”, expressing the opinion that the building looked more like a “large retail establishment” than a public building fit to host the “Midland Counties Art Exhibition in connection with the South Kensington Museum”. He also describes the colonnades which distinguish Nottingham’s Market Place, even suggesting that they be developed as a feature, like the covered walkways of Bologna!
All in all, Hine’s book is a treasure trove of historical incidents and as he reaches years covered by his own lifetime, he notes the activities of other Nottingham architects as well as his own.
In summing up he compares the Castle, standing as it does upon a rock, to “the Acropolis at Athens or the Capitol of Rome”, and expresses the hope that ‘beauty and refinement “sweetness and light”‘ will arise from use of the Castle as a gallery and museum.
And so, we too must hope that in its latest incarnation, Nottingham Castle will continue to be such a beacon of “higher and nobler aspirations of the human mind.”
Closing paragraph of TC Hine’s ‘Nottingham, It’s Castle…” (source: Google Books)
To learn more about Thomas Chambers Hine and his buildings in Nottingham, join Lucy for her guided tour, The Hine Hike. The next date is 29 August 2021.
Tickets for this and all over events available on Eventbrite.
Three Lions may belong on a shirt… but there are four lions at Nottingham Castle that I am particularly interested in…
The four stone lion sculptures found in the grounds of Nottingham Castle… Photos: Lucy Brouwer
As I mention on the Watson Fothergill Walk, these four stone lion sculptures originally adorned the tower of the Black Boy Hotel. On a visit to the newly reopened Nottingham Castle I found them in the grounds welcoming visitors. Each one has weathered to give it an individual character and their paws look almost as if they’re raising a toast!
Two of the lions at the top of step to Nottingham Castle. Photo: Lucy BrouwerYou can just see 2 of the lions on the corners of the tower, added to the hotel by Fothergill in 1897. Picture Nottingham.
Fothergill worked on the hotel over many years, coming back to rebuild and extend it on several occasions. On the tower, added in 1897, you can make out the lions, each a standard bearer with a shield – their poles are now long gone but you can see where they would have held them in their paws.
The Black Boy Hotel c.1939
The hotel was demolished in 1970 and replaced by Littlewoods (now Primark) on Long Row. The lions have been at the Castle ever since.
Read more about The Black Boy Hotel here, or join the Watson Fothergill Walk to learn all about the building, its architect and his work in Nottingham.
Here’s another instalment in my occasional series looking at architects who were active in Nottingham at around the same time as Watson Fothergill.
Albert Nelson Bromley (1850-1934) is probably best known for his long involvement with Boots The Chemist, but he was responsible for many buildings in Nottingham ranging from schools to shops, warehouses to telephone exchanges.
Albert Nelson Bromley. Picture from Work & Sport (Bromley House Library)
Albert Nelson Bromley was born in Stafford in 1850, he was very young when his father died and the family moved to Nottingham to live with his uncle, the architect Frederick Bakewell (among his notable buildings – Nottingham School of Art, now NTU’s Waverley Building). After going to school in Nottingham and Lincoln, Bromley joined Bakewell in his office on Pelham Street and was articled as a pupil. Having joined RIBA as a fellow in 1872, he was on the point of moving to Manchester to take up a post when it was suggested that he spend some time on the continent sketching buildings.
Bromley spent 14 months in 1872-73 on an extended architectural sketching tour of Europe. In all, he visited 90 towns including Bruges, Chartres, Heidelberg, Prague, Venice, Siena, Athens and Constantinople in 9 countries. (Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Turkey and Holland).
Title page, Work And Sport by A. Nelson Bromley (Bromley House Library)
In Work And Sport: Memories of An Architect, Fisherman And Golfer, which was published in 1934 towards the end of his life, he states that the object of writing the book was “mainly to reduce to readable proportions the Continental Diary of my Architectural travels during 1872-3.” On departing for his travels he was advised by an unnamed ‘Artist of Architectural subjects’ to:
“Go as an Artist with a knapsack on your back… the simplest thing – look as dirty as possible – don’t shave – wear a large slouch hat and smoke a very black pipe, you will go everywhere for half price. The guides will not bother you and the pimps and gay ladies will not give two-pence for you, as an Artist has no money.”
Without foreign languages, Bromley recalls being somewhat lonely and miserable, having left behind “a very nice girl” who was to become his wife (Elizabeth, whom he married in 1878). He did eventually meet some “rough diamonds” who were willing to stand him a drink. A sample encounter: ‘Oh I see you are an Artist – come and have a drink. Well, you will not get much out of that job.’ ‘No, I am studying for an Architect.’ ‘Oh, them blokes, well, you’ll make a bit more out of that.’
The rather hazy recollections of people and places (mostly places) in the ‘Work’ section of the book are accompanied by plates of the watercolours that Bromley made of various buildings on his travels. The rest of the book is mostly concerned with fishing. There is frustratingly little about the buildings that Bromley worked on himself.
On his return to England, he re-joined his uncle, Frederick Bakewell at his office, at 5 Victoria Chambers, Victoria Street. By 1875 they had moved to 3 1/2 Weekday Cross. One of their significant commissions was an early instance of Council Housing, the Victoria Buildings (Bath Street). Their partnership was dissolved on 15 May 1876. Bakewell died in 1881, aged 57.
Bromley went on to become the principal architect for the Nottingham School Board, after being chosen as one of the initial four practices to be commissioned to build schools (see blog on Abraham Harrison Goodall). He did some work for the Nottingham Tramway Company and built houses in Sneinton and Bulwell. Hucknall Public Library was built to Bromley’s design in 1885-6.
15 & 17 Newcastle Drive, photo: Lucy Brouwer
The precise date of the houses Bromley built in The Park Estate, including his own at 15 Newcastle Drive (originally 24 Pelham Terrace) are not confirmed (Wikipedia cites an early estimate of 1878, but The Nottingham Park Houses project plumps for circa 1890).
Bromley’s work in The Park seems to be concentrated on Newcastle Drive. He not only built numbers 15 & 17, but it is also now proven that he built 21 & 23 (records exist in the contemporary architectural photographer Bedford Lemere & Co’s archive). Glendower, the house at 27 Newcastle Drive may also be by Bromley (rather than by Watson Fothergill as is often claimed). Stylistically it has more in common with its neighbours and it lacks the richness that typifies Fothergill’s other houses in The Park. (See notes on The Park Estate in Darren Turner’s Fothergill: A Catalogue of The Works of Watson Fothergill).
Glendower was built for William Foster (perhaps the WF inscribed on the front of the house leads to connections with Watson Fothergill?). I’ve found evidence (Nottingham Journal 10 Nov 1881) that Bromley tendered for builders to work on a furniture depository for Foster’s Furniture company Foster and Cooper in 1881 and I personally don’t think this building is by Fothergill either.
Bromley was steadily busy through the 1890s, with buildings which include an office and telephone exchange for The National Telephone Company in George Street in 1898, look for the candlestick telephone motif.
Telephone Exchange, George Street. Photo: Lucy BrouwerDetail, Telephone Exchange, George Street. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Outside Nottingham, there was the baroque classicism of Telephone House built for the same company in London (1898-1902).
Other buildings still standing in Nottingham include a wholesale fruit store for Buckoll, King & Co on Parliament Street (now Argos) and offices for Wells and Hind on Fletchergate (now part of the Ibis Hotel development). Deep red terracotta facings are a noticeable feature.
Former Fruit Warehouse, Parliament Street. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Bromley is possibly best known outside Nottingham for his work for the Boots Company. He began this association with Alterations and Additions to their Island Street works in 1895. This lasted into the 1920s with stores being built around the country. In Nottingham, the company’s flagship store on the prime site of High Street and Pelham Street (now Zara) was designed in a glazed light terracotta with an air of Art Deco in the ornate shapes of the shop windows.
Former Boots Store, Corner of Pelham Street & High Street. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Details of the Boots No. 1 Store (now Zara). Note the various rather muscular putti – something that T. Cecil Howitt also liked to add to his buildings
In 1903, Thomas Cecil Howitt joined Bromley’s office as a pupil, by now they were located in the Prudential Buildings on Queen Street. Work for Boots continued into the 1900s – including the shop and cafe Boots Store No. 2, 1906, now The Embankment pub. Bromley also worked on The National Provincial Bank (now Virgin Money) 1910 (demolished and rebuilt when the Council House was built by Thomas Cecil Howitt circa 1927) and additions and alterations were made to the Long Row/ Market Street Griffin & Spalding department store (until very recently Debenhams) 1910, with more work on the store in the post-WW1 years.
Bank on High Street/ Long Row. Photo: Lucy BrouwerGriffin & Spalding (Debenhams on the day it closed). Photo: Lucy BrouwerMore Body Building Putti. Debenhams frontage. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Harry Graham Watkins joined the firm and became a partner and they ran a London office for a time – Thomas Cecil Howitt notes on his CV that he was the manager in 1908. The majority of their work was probably on bank branches, Boots stores and Telephone Exchanges around the UK. The Boots stores were often designed with a nod to the local vernacular or historical styles. An incomplete list of branches includes Beeston, Derby, Exeter, Gloucester, Kingston-on-Thames, Lichfield, Shrewsbury, Winchester and York. For more on Boots stores around the UK, read the excellent Building Our Past blog.
Just before WW1 Bromley visited New York, Boston and Washington in the USA. He noted that the skyscrapers in New York assumed ‘the appearance of a fretful porcupine.’
In the 1930s, Watkins retired and the practice was joined by Bromley’s grandson Thomas Nelson Cartwright and the rather elusive Thomas Herbert Waumsley. Bromley celebrated his 80th birthday in 1930, so how active he was in the new partnership is debatable. Cartwright went on to join the firm established by Robert Evans Jr in a partnership that became Evans, Cartwright and Wollatt in 1948.
Albert Nelson Bromley died in August 1934 at his home 15 Newcastle Drive. His buildings, as Ken Brand notes, are neither distinctly Victorian nor blatantly Modern(e) but there is a certain feeling of neatness and proportion. His Evening Post obituary summed up his involvement in the appearance of the city:
‘…Mr Bromley was as keenly concerned about the preservation of the amenities of town and country as he was about his personal affairs, He strove… to arouse the public mind to the loss of beauty caused by such blots as ribbon buildings, hideous advertisements, ugly or inharmonious buildings, and the demolition of historic places.’
My friends at the arts organisation Primary are currently crowdfunding to improve their building, which was formerly a school, at the corner of Ilkeston Road and Seely Road, Nottingham. You can help them to improve accessibility and make their studios, galleries and community venues even better for everyone and at the same time you get to own some original artworks, experiences and other great rewards. More info in their video:
Built in 1882-3 as Ilkeston Road Board School, it is an early Nottingham example of a purpose built school from the Victorian era of compulsory elementary education. Education in Victorian Nottingham faced particular challenges, as many children were employed in the textile industries. In 1870, the Nottingham School Board was established to offer a programme of elementary education and by 1903 secondary education became available. In 1877, Basford, Lenton and Radford were subsumed into Nottingham City and so this school, which is technically in Radford, was part of that scheme.
The first wave of Nottingham Board Schools don’t follow a single style. The architects Evans and Jolley, George Thomas Hine, Albert Nelson Bromley and Abraham Harrison Goodall were all appointed by the School Board in 1881 and worked on designing schools until Bromley became the School Board’s sole consultant architect in 1891, when his rather more severe Renaissance style became dominant.
The Ilkeston Road Board School building (now Primary) was also built in Renaissance Revival style using red brick with decorative terracotta and ramped gables.
As you can see from these photos, the front of the building has been extended.
The architect for this building was Abraham Harrison Goodall (1847-1912). Born in Bradford, Goodall was articled to Richard Charles Sutton in Nottingham and was his assistant until 1874. R C Sutton is notable for the Romanesque architecture of the Congregational Church on Castle Gate (1863) which, because of its polychrome brickwork, is occasionally mistaken for the work of Watson Fothergill.
In 1874 A H Goodall moved to his own office at 14 Market Street, Nottingham.
Nottingham Journal, June 1874 (British Newspaper Archive)
Other Nottingham buildings by A H Goodall include the 1887 Poor Law Guardians Office (now the Registry Office) on Shakespeare Street. This is a lush example of Italo-French Gothic with foliage and carving, with clustered shafts (columns) at the windows.
The Poor Law Guardians Office, 1887. AH Goodall. Photo: Alan Murray Rust
Goodall was also the architect of a terracotta-clad Lace Warehouse for Boden & Co on Fletcher Gate in the 1890s.
22 Fletcher Gate, Boden & Co Warehouse now Das Kino pub. Photo: Wikimedia
1909’s Westminster Buildings, is a bold but coarse piece of Baroque Revival with a broken pediment, also by A H Goodall.
A H Goodall was also known for his work on several Methodist New Connexion Churches across the country. He built Sycamore Road School (1886) in St Anns, Nottingham. He became a Licentiate of the RIBA in 1911, a classification of membership for architects who had not taken formal examinations, he had however taken some classes at the Nottingham School of Art, and was given a prize for the design of a piano in 1868. He married Emma Sharpe in 1876, they lived at Noel Street and had at least 5 children. Their oldest son, Harry Hornby Goodall, followed his father into the architecture profession as well as being a noted cricketer who designed the Dixon memorial gates at Trent Bridge.
In 1906 AH Goodall had been in business for 31 years but following a series of “unwise speculations” and a failure to keep proper accounts he was declared bankrupt. The School Board work had now been passed to the city architect. Just the year before, in May 1905, Goodall had written to the Nottingham Journal to criticise the “unnecessary expenditure on school buildings”, he calculated that spending on furniture was almost double what it had been in his time on the job, and that “This is the principal of the very liberal basis with a vengeance… Small wonder the education rate (tax) is high.”
The Ilkeston Road Board School, which became Douglas Junior and Infant School and eventually Douglas Primary School, ceased to be a school in 2008. The school was much loved by its staff and pupils and held a special place in the local community. After a period where the building’s future was uncertain, it became Primary, which uses the old classrooms as artist’s studios and communal spaces as exhibition rooms, in 2011.
As a Grade II Listed building, changes can only be made when strictly necessary and the fabric of the building is well preserved. Some 1960s additions at the back of the building remain as well as the integral layout of the former classrooms, which lend themselves to use as artists’ studio spaces. The interior has been painted white and some false ceilings have been removed revealing the scale of the Victorian classrooms.
Primary took the decision to purchase the building from Nottingham City Council in 2020 and with their crowdfunding campaign the plan is to make the building more fit for its current purpose, improving sustainability and providing level access so that it can remain a useful asset to the local community. Toilets will be improved and the open space in the former playground and rear garden will be developed.
Exhibitions in the building are regularly open to the public. The ‘Making Place’ Exhibition is open 21 May – 3 July, 2021. It reflects Primary’s long term community programme, which looks at how we all interact with Nottingham’s varied local history.
Making Place Exhibition being re-installed at Primary. Photos: Lucy Brouwer
Help Primary to hit their Crowdfunding target – or even to exceed it – by signing up for one of the great rewards on offer – these include exclusive artworks, books, masterclasses, badges and walks with artists.
Find out more about Victorian Nottingham and the architects who built it by joining Lucy for one of her Watson Fothergill Walks – or Zoom talks.
The more I work on Fothergill, give talks and promote my guided walks, the more contact I receive from people who want to know if the building they have spotted is the work of Watson Fothergill, architect.
Recently, I’ve been sent several photos, either houses people have spotted while on urban walks or pictures they have seen posted on social media, each with the question: Is this a Fothergill?
But is it a Fothergill? Pics from l-r, Wilford Grove/ Wilford Crescent East by Chris Pyke-Hendry, Hardwick Road by Lucy Iliffe and Lenton Boulevard spotted on Facebook (originally from Picture Nottingham)
I always direct people to Darren Turner’s Fothergill: A Catalogue of The Works of Watson Fothergill, Architect, an extremely thorough piece of research that has been invaluable to me in putting together my tours. In the book, Darren has found evidence for every attribution he makes and the results are compelling. However, there remain a group of buildings he calls “The Awkward Squad”
Many of these dodgy attributions persist. This goes back to the over-enthusiastic obituarist in the Nottingham Journal who in 1928 laid claim to Fothergill’s distictive buildings being found in “almost every city and town between Nottingham and London.” (I’m not really sure that a bank in Loughborough, a cemetery chapel and a coffee house in Ongar and a solitary house in Sydenham really hold this to be true.)
Clip from The Nottingham Journal’s notice of Watson Fothergill’s death, 7 March 1928. Source: British Newspaper Archive.
There are also a lot of photographs that originate from Nottingham’s council archive, many now online at Picture Nottingham, that are labeled as being buildings by Watson Fothergill. A great many of them are genuine Fothergill’s and there are some wonderful photos available, but some of them are part of “The Awkward Squad” or have even proved to be designed by different architects entirely. Several of these photos from the 1960s are credited to Mr FC Tighe.
F.C. Tighe, City Librarian (standing), with composer Eric Coates (who himself also has a connection to Fothergill!) 1953, Nottingham Evening Post. (source: Picture Nottingham)
Francis Charles Tighe was the Nottingham City Librarian (from 1953 until his death, aged 48 in 1964). In the early 1960s, Mr Tighe entered into correspondence with Brigadier George Fothergill Ellenberger, Fothergill’s oldest grandson (WW1 veteran and son of Eleanor Watson Fothergill Ellenberger and Georg Hieronymous Ellenberger – see blogs passim). Mr Tighe was preparing a lecture on Fothergill and Ellenberger sent him several family records including Fothergill’s diary. The microfilm copy held by the University of Nottingham archives still has the numbered tabs that the Brigadier added to correspond to a list of buildings “with which he may have been concerned whether as architect or renovator”.
The Brigadier typed out a ‘generous’ list of his grandfather’s works – 39 buildings, all but one of which are demonstrably by Fothergill. The problem comes from another fifty-odd projects that were handwritten onto the list. Ellenberger was not claiming them all for Fothergill but many of them have become firmly associated with the architect.*
These include, among others, several house in The Park Estate (Edale, which proves to be by Thomas Chambers Hine; Brightlands – now Adam House which was actually built for Samuel Bourne by Arthur George Marshall; and several houses on Hope Drive and Peveril Drive).
After the success of his lecture on Fothergill, Mr Tighe became a passionate Fothergill-Spotter and began to see them almost everywhere. Many of the photographs on Picture Nottingham that include the generic Watson Fothergill biography seem to originate from this period (indeed many are credited to Mr Tighe or are from what looks like the same batch marked c. 1964). This combination of attributions, and the way the keyword search on the site works, would seem to be responsible for the proliferation of these images to various social media platforms.
Indeed, I have found buildings by Fothergill’s assistant, L.G. Summers in Duke Street and the corner of Cedar Road that are cited as Fothergill’s on Picture Nottingham and other buildings that bear more resemblance to Summers’ later work.
As for the ones I have been sent recently – I think that the Lenton Boulevard houses (pictured above) are likely by Brewill & Baily. (See the latest Pevsner Guide To The Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire, p. 503) The Nottingham-based partnership of Arthur William Brewill (d.1923) and Basil Edgar Baily (1869-1942) were working in Nottingham during a similar period to Watson Fothergill, and there are bound to be some similarities in the material they used and their overall architectural influences. Other houses on Lenton Boulevard were photographed for Mr Tighe and to me, these feel like they are among some of his more wild guesses.
115 Lenton Boulevard, attributed to Fothergill but I’m very doubtful about this one. Photo: Google Street View. BUT IS IT A FOTHERGILL?
Number 115 Lenton Boulevard retains its attribution to Fothergill even in the latest Pevsner Guide. If anyone has any more information on any of these buildings, the pedant in me would like to straighten out the records!
Former Leenside Police Station, Canal Street. Photo: Lucy Brouwer NOT A FOTHERGILL!
Another Fothergill attribution that persists (due to how often photos of it are posted online) is the former Leenside Police Station on Canal Street. Despite red bricks and a turret, this is not listed in Darren Turner’s Catalogue at all. It was actually built by the City Engineer’s Department in 1901-2.
The Trent Bridge Inn. Photo: Wikimedia NOT A FOTHERGILL
The Trent Bridge Inn, another building whose shape might suggest some connection to Fothergill is in fact another ringer, having been built by William Bright (1888-90) with additions by Thomas Jenkins (1919). (Some info on The TBI and other Nottingham buildings that have become Wetherspoons pubs via Nottingham Civic Society.)
Building at corner of Wilford Crescent East. Photo: Chris Pyke-Hendry. Some features might point to L.G Summers but does anyone have any more clues? IS IT A FOTHERGILL???
The building near Meadows Library (above) photos of which were sent to me recently remains a mystery. To me it has some 1890s characteristics that might point in the direction of L.G. Summers, but as we have seen, a lot of building took place in the city around this time and there’s no evidence to substantiate who the architect might have been (not so far anyway).
Hardwick Road, photo: Lucy Iliffe
The actual Fothergill among the photos at the top of this blog (also above) is at the corner of Hardwick Road and Hartington Road, in Sherwood. Apparently some renovation is currently taking place. Built in 1890 as a villa on what was then called Cavendish Hill, for Mr Thomas Gallimore – who worked for Smith & Co Bank at the Long Eaton branch (itself designed by Fothergill). Gallimore also seems to have been a friend of L.G. Summers (Summers was present at Gallimore’s funeral in 1935). So even when we say something is a Fothergill, it shouldn’t discount the work of his chief assistant! You can see from the patterning of the bricks, the shape of the features like the windows and the chimney that this house resembles other known Fothergill’s more closely than any of Mr Tighe’s hopefuls that I’ve mentioned here.
I think what this really goes to show is that Nottingham is full of interesting buildings that are worth noticing and I hope it encourages you to go Fothergill-Spotting on urban walks! I’m still digging into the stories of the buildings that people have told me about and I’m always interested to hear from you if you live in a Watson Fothergill house or an interesting Victorian-era property that might be connected to the other architects of the period.
You can contact me HERE and sign up to the mailing list for the latest news on the return of the Watson Fothergill Walk in summer 2021.
*For more on this story, see the chapter “The Awkward Squad” in Fothergill: A Catalogue of the Works of Watson Fothergill, Architect by Darren Turner. Available from Five Leaves Books.
While I’m still available for walks (Covid-19 regulations permitting) as private bookings and I have gift vouchers on offer (if you’d like to have a walk to look forward to in 2021), I’m also trying to research more buildings for future walks and talks on the architecture of Nottingham. But I get so easily distracted…
I was thinking about a photo that I’d seen online, but could not remember where I’d seen it. (The constant stream of content on social media makes it tricky to pin down sources.) But, a few tweets fired at some contacts proved that I hadn’t imagined it, here was the picture:
Thanks Nottinghasm who originally found the photo in one of the Iliffe and Baguley Victorian Nottingham books which feature images from the illusive Nottingham Historical Film Unit. These books, published in the 1970s, are scattered around Notts Libraries Local History shelves…
A photo of the construction of the railway from Nottingham Victoria Station, the construction of which had caused the demolition of Watson Fothergill’s original office on Clinton Street. The photo shows Fothergill’s 1896 Furley & Co building, which now house Lloyds Bank on the corner of Lower Parliament Street and Clinton Street West (it features on The Watson Fothergill Walk).
The corner of Clinton Street West, from the opposite angle. Photo: Lucy BrouwerThe front of the building on The Watson Fothergill Walk. Photo: Dominic Morrow.
A flurry of further tweets uncovered a higher quality version of the railway construction photo:
Clinton Street railway cutting 1899. A clearer version of the photo. Thank you Mike
And another photo of railway work next to a Fothergill building turned up. This time the Nottingham and Notts Bank on Thurland Street, which is visible on the left hand side of this picture:
Thurland Street Railway Cutting (circa 1899) Thanks to Nottinghasm and Nigel for bringing this one to my attention. This is the reverse angle. Thurland Street Bank on The Watson Fothergill Walk. Photo: Alison Cussans.
Nigel King, who is a photographer himself, then ran the Clinton Street photo through a colouriser on the My Heritage website and this brought out some remarkable details!
Here’s a colourised version – you can just see the signage on the side of the Furley & Co building. Thanks NigelYou can even see the workmen! Thanks Matt
So you can see how a bit of research can turn up some great views of Nottingham’s past, but also how it’s very easy to get thrown off course! It’s also very difficult to credit photos correctly, the original books are full of such treasures.
When I first started working on tours – back in Glasgow, researching material for Walking Heads’ Clydeside Promenade – one of our contributors was journalist Peter Ross. I remembered Pete from my early forays into student journalism and so I’m always pleased when he has a new book out.
His latest, A Tomb With A View: The Stories And Glories of Graveyards, is available from 3 September 2020, it’s had rave recommendations from Hilary Mantel, Ian Rankin and Robert Macfarlane among others and I’ve been lucky enough to read it in advance.
In the book, Peter explores his own fascination with graveyards and looks at stories of people and places in cemeteries around Britain and Ireland. There are great chapters on Highgate in London, Greyfriars in Edinburgh and an in depth look at the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The relationship between ghost story writers and their graves is explored. He traces remarkable lives as well as forgotten ones, and as always with Peter’s journalism, personal stories are the heart of what he writes about.
My interest was piqued earlier in the year by Peter’s tweets with photos from his local graveyard, Cathcart Cemetery. He had uncovered the grave of a Scottish architect, William Gardner Rowan, who would have been practicing around the same time that Watson Fothergill was working in Nottingham. Like Fothergill’s grave stone in Nottingham, this one was designed by the architect himself.
After finishing A Tomb With A View, I took a long delayed walk into Rock (Church) Cemetery at the top of Mansfield Road, Nottingham, close to where I’ve been starting my Carrington Crawl walks.
Gates of Rock Cemetery, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Both Watson Fothergill and Lawrence George Summers, his chief assistant, are buried there. I had seen Fothergill’s headstone on a long guided tour given by Nottingham Civic Society a couple of years ago, but I had not yet been to look for Summers. Thanks to a generous researcher, I had the plot number I needed help me find it.
I asked at the gate house for some help and James, the caretaker, looked out a copy of the St Mary’s Mount map and caught up with me at the far end of the graveyard (litter picking as he went).
Searching for LG Summers’ grave plot.
We tracked the plot number to find… a gap. There is no stone for Summers and his wife Louise (both buried here, 10 feet down according to the records). I was a little disappointed not to find a marker and snapped a picture in the hope that I’d be able to find the spot again. I can’t say I felt as comfortable in this cemetery as Peter Ross seems to be in graveyards in his book. It was slightly less daunting than it had felt on the 3 hour Civic Society tour, but no less Gothic.
LG Summers’ grave (unmarked). Rock Cemetery, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
It started to rain, but I pressed on to find Watson Fothergill’s grave. The stone he designed himself is unusual in shape and colour compared to those around it. Some people think it looks a bit like a bird table. In contrast to the lack of stone for Summers (who is understood to have been a more modest man), Fothergill makes a typical statement of his individuality with the hexagonal red granite column.
Grave of Watson Fothergill, Rock Cemetery, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
His names and death date are carved around the top in a typeface that appears familiar from his other work.
Grave of Watson Fothergill, Rock Cemetery, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy BrouwerGrave of Watson Fothergill, Rock Cemetery, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
At the bottom, I spotted this stag, perhaps a symbol of Nottingham, where Fothergill spent his working life and where most of his buildings are located.
A Nottingham stag? Grave of Watson Fothergill, Rock Cemetery, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
You can’t quite see the top of Mapperley Road, where Fothergill built his house, from here but the site is only a few minutes walk away. It would have been hard to have laid him to rest any closer.
I’d highly recommend A Tomb With A View. I was particularly struck by the chapter about the life and death of Dublin graveyard tour guide Shane MacThomais, where a friend of his sums up the secret of a good tour guide: “Make them laugh, make them cry, tell them something they know, tell them something they don’t.” And this is exactly what this book does, like a good tour it takes something you previously took for granted and makes you see it in a new way.
You can order A Tomb With A View by Peter Ross from your local bookshop (Nottingham has Five Leaves Books who are still doing orders by post). Or try Hive where you can support an independent book shop of your choice.
In support of Primary taking their talk series Tell Me Something I Don’t Know online for a special event, some of their past talks are now available to listen to on Soundcloud.
I talked about my research into Watson Fothergill’s assistant, Lawrence George Summers and some of the paths that led me to explore.
I’ve written about being on the trail of Summers before here and here.
Design for a Town Hall by Lawrence G Summers. Lithograph from The Buildings News, 1974.
The Fothergill book I refer to in the talk is Fothergill: A Catalogue of the Works of Watson Fothergill by Darren Turner, which is available from the author.
The door to L.G. Summers office, inside 15 George Street, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.Douglas Byng. Half-Brother of Louise, L.G. Summers’ wife, and one of “The Queens of England”
You won’t be surprised to learn that I enjoy watching programmes about architecture on television. A great series that presents an accessible introduction to the history of architecture is currently running on Yesterday – Architecture The Railways Built, with the wonderfully enthusiastic Tim Dunn.
This week’s episode looks at St Pancras Station, one of my favourite London buildings. The station was built by the Midland Railway and the adjoining hotel’s architect was Sir George Gilbert Scott.
St Pancras Station, 2019. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
As the programme discussed, the station was built using materials brought to London from the Midlands – Butterley Iron from Derbyshire, Mansfield red sandstone, Minton tiles from Stoke on Trent and Nottingham bricks.
St Pancras Station, 2019. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
These bricks share their distinctive orange colour with many of Watson Fothergill’s Nottingham buildings, and G G Scott is one of the architects celebrated by Fothergill on the facade of his George Street Office.
Detail from the front of the George Street Watson Fothergill Office. Photo: K.F. Onion Watson Fothergill’s Office, George Street, Nottingham. April 2020. Photo: Dan Simpkin
Looking at the details of the hotel at St Pancras, which was completed in the 1870s, it seems very probable that it was an influence on Fothergill, who would likely have travelled through it on his regular trips to London (to visit art galleries and to see cricket matches at Lords).
St Pancras Booking Office, now a bar. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
I took some photos last time I was in London. I also went for a drink in the hotel and got to explore the interior, which is fantastic. I think there it’s very likely that Fothergill would have admired the materials used and also the quality of the work, the flamboyant details and the overall beauty of the building. The carved stones, red bricks, sculpture and gothic flare are all recognisable features that Fothergill uses in his Nottingham buildings.
Half way up the cantilevered staircase of the Renaissance St Pancras Hotel. 2019. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Architecture The Railways Built continues on Tuesdays and Saturdays on the Yesterday channel, or on demand on UKTV player. Other episodes look at Kings Cross Station, the “Derby Gothic” style of the Midland Railway on the Settle to Carlisle line and much more.
For more on the building of St Pancras, I’d recommend architectural historian Simon Bradley’s short but thorough book, St Pancras Station.
The Watson Fothergill Walk is currently on hiatus due to Covid-19 restrictions, but you can purchase gift vouchers to redeem against bookings for future walks.
For a while now I’ve been working on a walk to look at some of Watson Fothergill’s domestic archtecture, and I’m happy to say that The Ukrainian Cultural Centre at Clawson Lodge have invited me to bring the new tour to their building on Mansfield Road, Nottingham.
A chance to go inside Clawson Lodge, a house designed by Fothergill on Mansfield Road.
Presenting The Carrington Crawl: a look at houses by Fothergill and his chief assistant Lawrence G. Summers in Mapperley Park, Sherwood Rise and Carrington, finishing with a chance to visit Clawson Lodge, where tea and coffee will be served.
The first of these new walks will take place on 4 April 2020, starting at 1pm.
A NEW WALK FOR 2020 from the producer of the Watson Fothergill Walk and the Hine Hike.
The Carrington Crawl: Victorian
Nottingham’s most flamboyant architect not only helped shape the city centre
with commercial landmarks, he also designed dwellings. Explore some of the
domestic architecture of Watson Fothergill and his assistant Lawrence G.
Summers with tour guide Lucy Brouwer. Discover more about the buildings, those
who built them, and the lives of the people who lived in them.
This walk will begin at the junction of Mansfield Road and Mapperley Road, outside St Andrew’s Church, it will then look at some of Fothergill’s houses in Mapperley Park, including the site of his own family home, continuing to Sherwood Rise, then return to Carrington to finish, after a walk of approximately 2 hours / 3km, at Clawson Lodge on Mansfield Road, where tea and coffee will be available.
Participants are asked to come prepared
for appropriate weather eventualities and to wear footwear suitable for city
walking.
Meet for 1pm start on Mapperley Road near the junction with Mansfield Road, outside St Andrew’s Church, Nottingham.
Advanced booking is essential as places are limited.
