I (Lucy Brouwer) was invited on to BBC Radio Nottingham to talk about the Watson Fothergill Walk to DJ Dean Jackson (standing in for Alan Clifford) on the afternoon show and you can listen again here at about 3:08 (after Cher!).
I talked about Watson Fothergill’s office, the Gothic Revival, and what to expect on the Watson Fothergill Walk…
The latest dates for my walks can be found here on Eventbrite.
More dates for my walks are now booking as follows:
The Hine Hike, an evening walk exploring some of the Nottingham buildings of the Victorian architect Thomas Chambers Hine, will take place on Wednesday 5th June 2019, starting at 6pm. Tickets are £12, available here.
There will be another chance to join me for The Watson Fothergill Walk on Wednesday 12th June 2019, starting at 6pm. On this walk we will see some of Nottingham’s most striking Victorian buildings, designed by the architect Watson Fothergill (a.k.a. Fothergill Watson). Tickets are £12, available here.
The next opportunity to join me for the Debbie Bryan Edition of the Watson Fothergill Walk (including drinks and cake) will be 30th June 2019, 1pm. Tickets are £12 and can be found on Eventbrite: here.
All those dates are in one place on Eventbrite here.
Tickets for my talk on Watson Fothergill and Thomas Cecil Howitt (architect of Nottingham’s Council House) at Nottinghamshire Archives, 10 May, 2019 2.30pm are available here.
My talk on TC Hine at West Bridgford Library on 25 June 2019 is now sold out. If you would like me to talk to your group about Watson Fothergill or TC Hine (similar format to the walking tours, but with photos and without the walking!) then please get in touch.
I am also available to take small parties (between 6 and 20 people) on walks to suit your group. Interested? Email me to discuss your needs.
As the walks have been selling out (thanks everyone!) I’ve added a new date for the evening edition of the Watson Fothergill Walk. This one will begin at 6pm on 16 May 2019. Tickets are available here.
Join me to explore the distinctive buildings of this most singular Nottingham architect. The walk starts at Nottingham Tourism Office by the Council House and concludes at Fothergill’s pub, itself one of Watson Fothergill’s buildings, by Nottingham Castle. Tickets are £12.
There are still just one ticket left for The Hine Hike on 14 April, starting at 10am. Join me to discover some of the Nottingham buildings of architect Thomas Chambers Hine.Tickets are £12 and include a drink and a cake at Debbie Bryan at the conclusion of the walk (approx 2 hours).
Finally, Nottinghamshire Archives have invited me to talk about Watson Fothergill and another great Nottingham architect, Thomas Cecil Howitt on 10 May at 2.30pm. I will be looking at Fothergill’s buildings that are close to Slab Square and also The Council House and Exchange, which celebrates its 90th birthday, having opened on 22 May 1929. Tickets are £5 and include an opportunity to examine archive materials relating to both architects.
Can’t make any of these dates but still interested? Sign up for my mailing list to receive news of new walk dates as soon as they are confirmed.
I’ve been asked to give a talk at Nottinghamshire Archives. To mark 90 years since the opening of the Council House, that impressive symbol of civic pride at the centre of Nottingham, I’m going to be talking about two of Nottingham’s favourite architects, Watson Fothergill and Thomas Cecil Howitt and looking for links between them.
I will be giving an illustrated talk mostly looking at Fothergill’s buildings around the Market Square and T. Cecil Howitt’s Council House and Exchange Arcade which opened in 1929.
There will also be chance to examine archive materials relating to the two architects and their buildings.
The event is on 10 May 2019, 2.30pm. Tickets are £5 each, available from the archives via Eventbrite. There are a limited number of free tickets for FONA (Friends of Nottinghamshire Archives) members.
Meanwhile there are still a few tickets left for my Thomas Chambers Hine walk, The Hine Hike, on 14 April 2019. Tickets are £12 each and include a hot drink and a cake at Debbie Bryan at the end of the walk.
There is still time to join me as part of Debbie Bryan’s special Mother’s Day programme of events (31 March 2019. I will be leading a short tour of the architecture of The Lace Market, and your ticket includes a cream tea or afternoon tea (vegan and gluten free options available on request) at Debbie Bryan. Tickets here.
I will be adding more dates for The Watson Fothergill Walk soon, so sign up to the mailing list to get them as soon as they are announced.
I’ve had such a great response to the walks so far – thank you everyone who has booked or spread the word! I have a number of new events coming up…
Sunday 31st March, 1pm – Mother’s Day Heritage Tour a short look around the Lace Market, followed by a choice of Afternoon or Cream Tea at Debbie Bryan. Tickets available here from Debbie Bryan.
Sunday 14th April, 10am –The Hine Hike. I will be offering another chance to join me for a tour of the buildings of Thomas Chambers Hine. This time the walk includes tea (or coffee) and cake at Debbie Bryan. Tickets £12 on sale now.
Thursday 18th April, 6pm – Watson Fothergill Walk – Evening Edition. This is a slightly longer version of the walk, taking advantage of lighter evenings. It will conclude in Fothergill’s pub (drinks not included). Tickets £12, available now.
Tuesday 25th June, 2.30pm – On The Trail Of TC Hine. I will be giving an illustrated talk at West Bridgford Library, looking at some of Thomas Chambers Hine’s buildings in Nottingham. Tickets £3 here or in person from the library.
I hope you can join me at one of the events – sign up for the mailing list for regular updates when new dates are announced.
Thanks to everyone who has bought tickets for the walks in April and May so far, the first three walks are now sold out!
I have added another walk at 1pm on 26 May – tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/watson-fothergill-walk-debbie-bryan-edition-afternoon-26-may-2019-tickets-55825454437?aff=WFWebsite
There are just 3 tickets left for the Hine Hike Work in Progress on Sunday 17 February. Tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/hine-hike-the-buildings-of-thomas-chambers-hine-work-in-progress-tickets-55411956654?aff=WFWebsite
The morning walk on 28th April 2019 is very nearly sold out so I have added an afternoon session startng at 1pm. Tickets are available on Eventbrite price £12 each, tickets include hot drinks and cake at Debbie Bryan after the walk.
After a good look around in Sherwood, I went for a further wander and caught a bus to Carlton to see if I could find the Brewery at Mar Hill (A71). Away from the bus route, deep into Carlton, I found the building. It was originally built for Mr Vickers, in 1899. It was convereted to residential use around 2005.
From what I can find online, the Carlton Brewery was a relatively short lived enterprised. The Vickers family held the licence at The Black’s Head pub close by in Carlton in the late 1800s.
“Brewing in Nottinghamshire” has an older picture of the building and states that the Carlton Brewery was short lived. With Mrs Vickers there in 1902 and Willam (her son?) there between 1904-1906. It was sold in 1904, 1906 and 1909. It became a laundry, then a print works and then it was used as a dye works owned by the Ilkeston Hosiery Finishing Company. The sequence of these changes is not entirely clear.
Along Primrose Street are also a series of 16 terraced houses built for brewery workers. It has been suggested that Fothergill also designed these but Darren Turner refutes this: The drawings survive in Nottinghamshire Archives but there is no stylistic evidence in the design, not documentary evidence on the surviving drawings to substansiate this rumour.
For more about buildings around Carlton, there is a U3A trail to follow, with some pictures of the other buildings.
The other industrial building of Fothergill’s that survives in Nottingham is down on Castle Boulevard. I was down that way a few weeks ago, but because of the road it’s quite tricky to photograph. The Paper Warehouse (A59), on what was then Lenton Boulevard was built for Simons and Pickard, in 1893-94, the date stone reads 1894.
The rear of the building is on the canal side and has a more conventional warehouse look. This was one of the buildings for which Fothergill commissioned photographs from Bedford Lemere, and some of these can be found on Historic England’s website. There is another photo, taken from above, attached to the listing.
My next walk will be a little look around the Lace Market on 7 December 2018. Tickets are available here on Eventbrite.
If you’d like to keep in touch and hear about future walks, starting again in 2019, please sign up to my email mailing list.
I took the opportunity to have another look at the Ukrainian Centre (A.K.A. Clawson Lodge A43) as the Sherwood Christmas Craft Fair was taking place. Not only did I see some charming work by local artists Corinna Rothwell and Eloise Renouf (among others), I also ate a nice little sour-dough pie from Small Food Bakery.
Mainly, I took a few more photos of Fothergill’s work on the house he built for Mr Doubleday (as mentioned in my earlier blog about Carrington.)
Inside was rather busy and has been significantly altered, the two downstairs rooms were full of crafy goings on so a bit difficult to see, but apart from the windows there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of original features. The house has been significantly extended and converted so, as with so many of these buildings, it remains the exterior that retains its original character.
Heading back towards Sherwood shops, I took the chance to photograph the terrace of four, three-storey houses on the corner of Bingham Road (A77). These are virtually the last project that Fothergill put his name to before he retired. They were built in 1906 with Fothergill as the client as he had previously bought up the land (next to some earlier houses he built on Mansfield Road. A46)
The timber clad gables are quite different to the earlier houses and look at lot more like the work that assistant architect Lawrence George Summers would continue to work on after Fothergill had left the office (see his later work in New Basford which is erroneously credited to Fothergill on Picture The Past etc.)
Back in Sherwood, I went down Burlington Road to look for some slightly elusive, domestic Fothergills. This part of Nottingham is refered to as Cavendish Hill in the planning applications. The earlier Elberton House (A53) was built for Mr Gallimore, a clerk to Smith and Co’s Bank in 1890. Fothergill had worked on a branch of the bank in Long Eaton in 1889. Additions were made to the villa dated 1911, and these are the last known (minor) works for a private client to be signed off under Fothergill’s own name.
Close by is the Burlington Towers built in 1892 as a three-storey villa for Mr Lindley (A54) it has now been made into flats. UPDATE 18/11/18: I just received an email from the present owner of Burlington Towers, who has turned it back into one whole house. Apparently they were able to work from Fothergill’s drawings to get back to the original layout. There is a photo in the Bedford Lemere archive* from 1897 on Historic England’s website. (Elberton House also makes an appearance.)
*It turns out this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of period photos of Fothergill buildings on the Historic England site, I will keep digging for more, but so far Fothergill’s own family home at Mapperely Road and the Sherwood Rise properties have been identified.
If you would like to engage my services for a walk or a talk about my Fothergill research please contact me. Meanwhile I’m leading a short walk in the Lace Market on 7 Decemeber with Debbie Bryan providing tea and mince pies post-tour. Tickets available from her website.
The last part of this search for some of Watson Fothergill’s buildings in Nottingham lead me to Mapperley Road (after a brief stop for much needed tea at Homemade Cafe in the Pavillion on The Forest Rec.)
Up on the corner of Mansfield Road and Mapperley Road is St Andrew’s House. (A48 in the Fothergill Catalogue.) Here Fothergill designed a three storey addition to the existing dwelling, plus a single storey waiting room and consulting room on the Mapperley Road side for a Dr Stewart in 1886. Fothergill had previously noted in his diary in July 1885 that the
“stucco house corner Mapperley Road Mansfield Road sold by auction to Stewart £2,600.”
As Fothergill himself lived a little further up Mapperley Road he would have been keeping a close eye on the developments in the neighbourhood. In 1886, Dr Stewart engaged Fothergill to add ‘Three Carriage Houses with hay loft over and harness room to the rear’ (MW23). The date stone bares the owner’s initials ‘IS’.
In Fothergill’s work on the house you can see several features that he was to use in his buildings – brick nogging patterns, turrets, black woodwork and bargeboards (there’s a slight Arts and Crafts feel to the porch) and large chimneys. There’s no trace of the “stucco” he mentions in his diary.
A few inconsistencies arise: The Historic England listing for the building has the owner as Dr Smart (per Ken Brand) and “St Andrews House” is now the name for a sheltered housing project close by. After Dr Stewart (I’m going to stick with the name quoted in Fothergill’s diary by Darren Turner), this building was used as an office (from circa 1929) by Thomas Cecil Howitt (1889–1968) the Hucknall-born architect responsible for the design of Nottingham’s Council House, the Raleigh head office on Lenton Boulevard and the Home Brewery building in Daybrook. (Perhaps another blog about him later!).
Back to Mapperley Road and to the site of Fothergill’s own family home. 7 Mapperley Road (A3) was the first house Fothergill built, almost as the foundation of his architectural practice. The first brick was laid in 1871. Fothergill had carefully selected the site:
“This Autumn (1870) after searching all over town for a site we liked I bought a piece of land on the northern side of Mapperley Road in Mr Patchitt’s estate.”
The Watson Family, as they still were, moved in on 26th March 1872, though the workmen were not yet out of the house. Fothergill purchased adjacent land from Thomas Birkin in 1901, to extend as far as Chestnut Grove, where they laid out an ornamental garden and a tennis court.
Now the only trace of Fothergill here is his name and some rather ugly maisonettes with faux-classical porches.
Round the corner into Elm Bank we can find one of Fothergill’s assistant Lawrence George Summers’ surviving projects. Alterations and additions to a villa, which was for a time Elm Bank Lodge Guest House (LGS9). Work was done in 1893 for a Mr Thomas Jopling. Summers added a breakfast room, kitchen and scullery with a bedroom over. Of all Summers’ sole works, says Darren Turner, this design is the closest in style to the other work coming out of Fothergill’s office. (More on Summers in future blogs.)
The hand of Summers can also be seen in the next house I looked at, back on Mapperley Road. ‘Beechwood’ 30A Mapperley Road (A76/ LGS20) was built for Mrs HA Wilkinson in 1905. Fothergill and Summers are listed as joint architects on the project and it is one of the last projects Fothergill would have worked on before he retired.
The three storey house employs recognisable Fothergill motifs, the turret, the nogging and black woodwork, but feels more domestic in scale than some of the early villas.
And there I started to get a blister on my foot… so this portion of the Fothergill safari is over for now. I hope to explore some other parts of Nottingham and bring you some more buildings soon.
Meanwhile the walks on 30 September are now full… Sign up to my mailing list or follow the Watson Fothergill Walk Facebook page for news of more events.
