As well as the other walks in May and June, tickets are now available for another special date with added Afternoon Tea or Cream Tea at Debbie Bryan in the Lace Market on 8 May starting at 10am.
Tickets are available here for a Watson Fothergill Walk, plus either full Afternoon Tea or Cream Tea at Debbie Bryan’s wonderful shop and tearoom in the Lace Market. The Walk starts at 10 am on Sunday 8 May and concludes at the shop around 12noon in time for tea, cakes, scones and all the usual Debbie Bryan treats (available in Vegan, Vegetarian, Gluten-Free or Regular options).
April is getting booked up with several private walks, talks to local groups and new ventures with primary school pupils and students looking at history and tour guiding. Thanks everyone for spreading the word!
The Carrington Crawl for Ukraine sold out – donations clocked up at over £390 – huge thanks to everyone who donated or enquired about the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. You can still donate here.
There are some tickets available for the Debbie Bryan Watson Fothergill Walk on 8 May, start 10am, now with the option of Afternoon Tea or Cream Tea after the walk, tickets here.
Lucy will be giving an illustrated talk on Fothergill’s Buildings in Mansfield live and in person at Mansfield Central Library on 10 May 2022 at 2pm. Tickets are £3 each and available from the library or via this link on Eventbrite.
Fothergill Watson (as he was then) was born in Mansfield in 1841 and many of his early buildings came about through his connections in the town. The illustrated talk looks at Fothergill’s family, the buildings that he designed in the town that remain, including houses, shops and the Cattle Market. There will also be a chance to discover some of the buildings that have been demolished.
STOP PRESS! This walk is now sold out! Thank you to everyone for your generous donations! There will be more walks coming up in the Summer and meanwhile please continue to help with donations to the Disaster Emergency Committee (DEC) Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.
One of my favourite Watson Fothergill houses is Clawson Lodge, on Mansfield Road. It is currently home to the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, the Nottingham branch of the Association For Ukrainians in Great Britain. It’s where my walk, The Carrington Crawl culminates, and everyone there has been very helpful, providing drinks and allowing access to the building.
The guided walk will take place on 2nd April 2022, at 1 pm starting outside St Andrew’s Church at the junction of Mapperley Road and Mansfield Road. TICKETS
Please “pay what you can” for a ticket and I will donate all proceeds of this walk to the Ukraine DEC Appeal. Please note that Eventbrite “donation” tickets can only be bought one at a time, if you wish to make one donation to cover tickets for more than one person, please email Lucy to arrange further tickets.
More Watson Fothergill Walks coming up in the coming months. Make sure you’re on the mailing list to receive emails with the latest news.
The first public walk of the year will be a collaboration with Debbie Bryan’s Lace Market Tea Room. Tickets include afternoon tea, with many dietary options available including Traditional, Vegan, Vegetarian and gluten-free.
The walk starts at 10 am on 10 April 2022, arriving at Debbie Bryan on St Mary’s Gate at 12 noon.
Tickets are £38 each – includes a two-hour walk followed by a full afternoon tea.
Tickets are now available for a Cream Tea option priced £22 each with the same array of dietary options.
“Lucy is a super guide and we had a great time, also learned a lot! Not least to keep looking up!”
Prompted by a question about this building on the Nottingham Hidden History Facebook page…
This building on the corner of Bridlesmith Gate and Victoria Street was a bit of a mystery… Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Ever since I noticed the details in the frieze above the first floor on this building I’d been wondering what the symbols, which on close inspection are an N and C overlapping and a club like you’d find in a deck of cards, could signify.
The frieze in more detail. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
When researching my Hine Hike tour, looking at the buildings of Thomas Chambers Hine, an architect whose work in Nottingham was prolific between the 1850s and 1870s, slightly predating that of Watson Fothergill, I found out more.
Along with the frieze, there are also monogrammed iron grills on the Bottle Lane side of the building.
More hidden letters in the grills on Bottle Lane. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
So what does it all mean? This rather elegant building was originally built as The Nottinghamshire County Club, set back from the road to allow the members to alight from their carriages. It was designed by Thomas Chambers Hine and his Son, George Thomas Hine who he had recently taken into partnership. The club opened in 1869.
Established in 1864, The Nottinghamshire County Club was a gentleman’s club containing billard, reading, card and coffee rooms. It also had bedrooms and “all the conveniences of a first-rate club”; there were around 200 members. Members paid a subscription and there was a reduced rate for gentlemen residing within ten miles. It was a place for meetings, a place to receive messages (for example, adverts were placed in the newspaper for items for sale and the club was used as the address to apply to). There were stewards and a secretary.
Originally there was a tourelle on this corner but it’s possible it was destroyed by the 1929 fire. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Originally the building had a tourelle on the corner but this has been removed. A severe fire in 1929 destroyed most of the club’s early records and the name doesn’t make it an easy thing to search for in a city that not only has a Notts County football team, but also NCC (Notts County Cricket) and NCC (Notts County Council)! These are unrelated to these premises.
In 1954 it was sold to the Leicester (later Alliance and Leicester) Building Society and the Club leased back all but the ground floor. Access to the first and second floors was by lift via a new entrance on Bottle Lane.
The building is featured on my Hine Hike walk looking at the life and work of Thomas Chambers Hine. I hope to run this tour again in the summer, so sign up for the mailing list for news of dates. The Hine Hike is also available as an illustrated talk, in person or via Zoom so contact me for more details to set up a session for your group.
Here’s another architect who was active around the same time as Watson Fothergill in Nottingham.
Gilbert Smith Doughty (1861-1909) came to my attention when I noticed that Fothergill was not the only architect to have his name carved on his buildings. Opposite Fothergill’s Nottingham and Notts Bank on Thurland Street you will find The Thurland Hall pub, and if the hanging basket is not too full you can find the name of the architect prominently displayed. There had been a pub here on the site of the Thurland Hall (home of The Earls of Clare) since the 1830s, but when the railway came through from the Victoria Station, the site was purchased and cleared.
Gilbert S. Doughty’s name on The Thurland Hall Pub, Pelham Street, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Perhaps this “signature” was a little nod to Fothergill’s manner of claiming his work, or perhaps The Thurland Hall was a building of which Doughty was particularly fond. Indeed, the design had featured in The Building News and it was one of the first pubs outside London to be built by Levy & Franks, one of the very first pub chains in the country, who had pioneered the introduction of catering to public houses. They bought the site and rebuilt the pub between 1898-1900. Doughty had his office close to the original pub, at 17 Pelham Street.
The Thurland Hall from The Building News, 1902 (a print currently on sale on eBay)
Born in Lenton in 1861 to Edwin Doughty, a Lace manufacturer and his wife Annie Smith, Gilbert was the second of four children. He studied at Nottingham School of Art, and as early as age 19 he lists his profession as “architect” (in the 1881 Census when the family was living at Cavendish House, Cavendish Hill, Sherwood.) In 1880 and 1883 he won Queen’s Prizes for his designs and by 1884 the trade directories find him in an office at Tavistock Chambers on Beastmarket Hill. From 1887 he was a lieutenant in the Robin Hood Rifles, by then he had moved his office to 14 Fletcher Gate and continued to live with his father and family in Foxhall Lodge, a house he designed for them at the junction of Foxhall Road and Gregory Boulevard, opposite what was then The Forest Racecourse. (The building is currently Foxhall Business Centre).
Lieut. Gilbert S. Doughty eventually became a captain in the Robin Hood Rifles. This is an enlargement of a photo taken circa 1892 reprinted in Nottingham Evening Post, 1 June 1946. British Newspaper Archive.
The first major project (apart from houses) that there is evidence Doughty worked on was The Borough Club, on Queen’s Street. The building was demolished in the 1960s, but at the time of its design in 1893, it was newsworthy. Doughty took over the project from the Matlock architect George Edward Statham (who had worked on Smedley’s Hydro) Statham died suddenly of Scarlet Fever aged 39.
The Borough Club, next to Watson Fothergill’s building for Jessops. Photo: Flickr
Other work includes additions to CW Judge’s bakery at 59, Mansfield Road (work occasionally mistaken for that of Fothergill). In 1899 Doughty added a refreshment room (for a long time the building housed Encounters restaurant).
The Northern Renaissance style of The Borough Club survives in some of Doughty’s other city centre work including 5-9 Bridlesmith Gate (1895) Built as a showroom for furniture shop Smart & Brown, the upper floors are now occupied by Waterstones.
The former Smart & Brown furniture store, now Fatface and Waterstones, Bridlesmith Gate, Nottingham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
In a pinch, the central in the decoration of the Smart & Brown storefront might be Gilbert Smith Doughty! Photo: Lucy Brouwer
There are also two blocks of Flemish-inspired shops on Derby Road, but perhaps the most well known is the long gable range of City Buildings, Carrington Street (1896-7), with its prominent clock tower, a building known to many as the former Redmayne and Todd sports shop.
City Buildings, Carrington Street, recently renovated. Photo
Doughty lived at several addresses during his time in Nottingham, often buildings he had worked on, or close to them. In the 1901 census he and his wife May Edgcombe Rendle can be found as guests at the Portland Temperance Hotel on Carrington Street, opposite City Buildings (Incidentally, in the same census a former Fothergill assistant, architect John Rigby Poyser can be found in the Gresham Hotel, just the other side of the Carrington Street Bridge. More on these hotels in Alan Bates’ article for Nottingham Civic Society).
In 1902, Doughty lists his address as Greetwell, a house on the newly developed Manor Park estate in Ruddington (this land had been in the hands of the American industrialist Philo Laos Mills, for whom Doughty had worked on warehouses in the Lace Market, The Mills Building Plumtre Street, 39 Stoney Street and 47 Stoney Street.) Doughty’s contribution, Greetwell is still there although the house name does not survive.
Greetwell, Manor Park, Ruddington. Academy Architecture 1901, Source: Internet Archive
The Mills Building, Plumtre Street, Nottingham. Photo.
Doughty’s final Nottingham address in 1908 was a house he had built in 1905 on Private Road, Sherwood. Although the trade directories have yet another address for his office, in Prudential Buildings in the 1910 edition, by then Doughty and his wife had already left town.
How they came to be living in Prebend Mansions, Chiswick is not known, although this would have been close to his wife’s family in Brentford. This is the last known address of Gilbert Smith Doughty – he died suddenly in December 1909 in rather unfortunate circumstances.
After attempting to give a gift of a pair of gloves to a barmaid in The Roebuck pub on Chiswick High Road, Doughty was refused a drink of gin and angostura by the landlady and left the worse for drink. He was taken home and put to bed by the porter, but in the course of events hit his head on a mantlepiece (oh what irony as a design for a mantlepiece was one of his earliest achievements, gaining plaudits in 1879 while at Art School).
His wife found him dead and later at the inquest she noted that he was a heavy drinker and that the previous year he had “been sent away to a home for a time in consequence of his drinking habits”. In his article for the Civic Society, Alan Bates speculates that alcoholism might be the cause of Doughty’s somewhat patchy career, perhaps it was the reason for resigning his commission in the Robin Hoods in 1896, perhaps even the reason for the Doughty’s departure from Nottingham…?
You can read more about Gilbert Smith Doughty via The Nottingham Civic Society, where the venerable Ken Brand’s article is available in their archive. More work has been done by Alan Bates to fill in the gaps, a PDF featuring his article is available here.
The next Watson Fothergill Virtual Walk event will be an illustrated online talk, via Zoom, on 8 February at 7pm. Ticket holders can watch live or have access to a recording after the event. Tickets are available on Eventbrite for £5 (plus a small booking fee).
I’ve been working on this for a while, looking for stories about Fothergill’s family who lived in Mansfield and the buildings he designed for the town in the early part of his career. Several buildings still remain but they might not be as obvious as the ones we are familiar with in Nottingham City Centre.
A look at one of the few buildings that Fothergill worked on outside Nottinghamshire.
I was in the neighbourhood recently, so took the opportunity to have a closer look at an intriguing building. Dunedin, now called Burnage Court, on Lawrie Park Avenue in Syndenham, South London. It’s something of a mystery how Fothergill Watson came to work on additions to this house, but I’ve done some digging to see what I can find. (As this was in 1888, it was before his name change to Watson Fothergill.)
Dunedin, now Burnage Court, Sydenham. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
I took some photos from the road, and then I knocked on a couple of doors to see if there was anyone in. Huge thanks to Ritchye for talking to me and letting me have a little look around inside her flat. (It was on the market last year and photos are still online).
The date stone on the side of the building. The carved animal at the top looks a little like the one on the Fothergill villa on Mansfield Road, but I’m uncertain if these are original features. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
There is a date stone on the side of the house that matches the date in Fothergill’s 1888 diary when he records a visit “to Littleton’s house Sydenham about additions” (quoted in Darren Turner: Fothergill: A Catalogue of The Works of Watson Fothergill, new edition with photos now available).
Certainly the red brick parts of the house and some of the details seem recognisable as part of Fothergill’s oeuvre, but “additions” points to the fact that he was working to alter an existing property, perhaps in a similar way to the work done on St Andrews House in Nottingham, where he added sections to an existing Georgian house.
A little digging uncovered a few clues. Not least this painting by Impressionist painter Camile Pissarro…
Camille Pissarro
The Avenue, Sydenham
1871
Oil on canvas, 48 × 73 cm
Bought, 1984
NG6493
https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/NG6493
Compare the view that Pissarro painted “en plein air” during his London exile during the Franco-Prussian war with the view down Lawrie Park Avenue today and St Bartholomew’s church is still easy to spot… I believe Dunedin, as it would have been before Fothergill’s additions, is the cream-coloured building near the centre of the picture.
A search of local blogs reveals that there was a house called Dunedin on the spot since around the 1860s and it was adjacent to Westwood House. The road was renamed Lawrie Park Avenue later. The clues from Fothergill’s diary entry start to make some sense.
The rest of Fothergill’s diary entry reads: “The mansion in the grounds called Westwood was built by Pearson 3 or 4 years ago. Bright red bricks with elaborate Royal and figure Carvings to all windows. The roof all of bright red tiles with turrets etc. This and the houses of the two sons lighted by electricity throughout.”
So, we have Mr Littleton, his two sons and a mansion called Westwood built by Pearson.
Mr Littleton was Henry Littleton (1823 – 1888), a music publisher who had risen in his profession to take over the Novello empire. (No relation to the performer Ivor Novello – who took the name for the stage as it was well known in musical circles). I delved into Michael Hurd’s exhaustive history of the firm, Vincent Novello & Co and Two Centuries of Soho by JH Cardwell. (available to browse on the Internet Archive).
Henry Littleton in later life, from Two Centuries of Soho by JH Cardwell 1898.
At his retirement about a year before his death, Henry had appointed his sons, Alfred Henry Littleton (1845-1914) and Augustus James Littleton (1854-1943) as directors of the firm which was then called Novello, Ewer & Co. Both sons had joined the firm aged 17, with Alfred eventually becoming the head of the firm and Augustus looking after the bookbinding and printing side of the enterprise.
Alfred H Littleton from The Musical Times 1911
Augustus Littleton as Falstaff (with sword) circa 1886, performing with the Irving Dramatic Club. (via Google images).
Henry Littleton purchased a farmhouse on the south slope of Sydenham’s West Hill in 1874, this was the first version of Westwood House. He engaged the architect John Loughborough Pearson to extend and remodel the house in red brick, with the air of a French Chateau. The house had “gables, turrets and tall chimneys sprouted everywhere. Spacious windows with heads of great composers set in stained glass medallions along with a coat of arms drummed up for Sir Henry de Littleton”. The effect was theatrical.
Westwood House was not only a “noble and imposing mansion with a carriage drive and ornamental lodge at the entrance” (as it was described when it was sold in 1895), it also boasted a teak panelled music salon. It opened in July 1881 and Henry Littleton used the house to host big names whose work he published, including Dvorak and Franz Liszt .
Frank Loughborough Pearson, the architect’s son, was to marry Alfred’s daughter Cecilia Littleton and go on to work on a headquarters for Novello and Co on Wardour Street. There is a very tenuous connection to Fothergill here: Pearson worked with sculptor Nathanial Hitch, who may also have worked on the friezes on the Nottingham and Notts bank HQ.
Augustus Littleton is cited as the source for photographs in several books of the period dealing with interior design and sculpture. Indeed, the rest of Fothergill’s 1888 diary entry concerns viewing a bust of Liszt that Augustus Littleton had in his drawing room, which is likely to have been a clay model for this sculpture by Boehm.
In the 1881 census, both Alfred and Augustus Littleton and their families are listed as living in the vicinity of West Hill. Alfred at The Avenue, Dunedin House and Augustus at Laurie Park Gardens. By 1891 all the Littleton family members seem to have left the area. Alfred was then residing in Hyde Park Gardens, but several of his children were born in Syndenham.
So, it’s difficult to confirm who commissioned the work on Dunedin, how Fothergill might have been connected to the wealthy Littleton brothers and for how long they might have stayed in the house (and, indeed, if they lived in it after Fothergill worked on it). The 1939 register indicates that the house had been turned into flats by that time, with some of it empty when the register was taken.
Westwood House was to suffer a more drastic fate… It was sold off and in 1899 became the Passmore Edwards Teachers’ Orphanage, it closed in 1939 and was demolished in 1952. There is now a housing estate and a care home named Westwood House on the site.
The front of Burnage Court. Photo: Lucy BrouwerThe back of the house. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
The house is now divided into 8 flats, one was recently on the market for rent, and one is occasionally available as accommodation via Airbnb.
The building is not listed, and various alterations have been made over the years. A lot of coloured glass, which looks typical of Fothergill, remains. Looking closer at the photos, I think that Dunedin was originally made of yellow brick (typical of other houses in the area) and Fothergill added red brick elements, timber details and decorations, perhaps to compliment the adjacent Westwood House. The chimneys, the brick nogging, the timber cladding inside and the tower all make sense in this context.
If anyone knows any more about Dunedin, The Littleton family or Fothergill’s possible connections to South London please contact me. (Fothergill attended Mr Long’s School, Clapham Park School as a child and visited Upper Norwood with his wife in 1883. He later named some streets in a speculative development in Nottingham Clapham, Norwood, Brixton and Sydenham, so perhaps had some affection for the area?)
Watson Fothergill Virtual Walk: Fothergill’s Buildings in Mansfield, 8 February 2022, 7 pm. Tickets £5 +booking fee
Thanks to everyone who has taken part in a Watson Fothergill Walk this year, also to all those who have sent messages about Fothergill’s buildings – I’ve written up reports of some visits on my blog, with more to come soon! If you live in a Fothergill or have memories of working in one of the buildings, do email me!
The architect Watson Fothergill, or as he was known until 1892, Fothergill Watson, was born in 1841 in Mansfield, Notts. He had many connections in his home town and some of his buildings can still be found there.
I have been working on an introduction to these buildings in the form of a “Virtual Walk”, a new illustrated Zoom talk that will take place on 8 February 2022 at 7 pm, tickets £5 (plus booking fee). Join me to learn more about the buildings that remain and those that have been lost.
If you missed out on the original Watson Fothergill Virtual Walk, there will be another chance to join me for the Zoom version of my walking tour on 20 January 2022 at 7 pm. If you can’t attend these events “live” then a recording will be made available to ticket holders afterwards.
Meanwhile… in-person walks will be back in Spring 2022. If you’d like to cover the cost of a walk, or to purchase tickets as a gift, vouchers are delivered by email.
Meanwhile if you haven’t already, make sure your email is on the mailing list to receive all the latest news and walk dates as soon as they’re finalised!
