On June 21 Nottingham’s Creative Quarter are celebrating the longest day of the year with their Lightest Night summer party. There will be some later than usual opening for businesses around the Lace Market area, as part of these events I will be running my Beauty in the Details Lace Market Heritage tour, a short walk around the history of St Mary’s Gate in conjunction with Debbie Bryan’s shop.
Beauty in the Details is a shorter walk, on even terrain that is suitable for those who don’t want to walk too far or for too long. This tour will be about 45 minutes in total with time for refreshments at Debbie Bryan before and after and then chance to attend the Lightest Night event at St Mary’s Church afterwards. Starts at 5pm, Friday 21 June, 2019 at Debbie Bryan Shop.
July sees the 178th anniversary of Fothergill’s birth, so it seems fitting to offer more chances to explore his Nottingham buildings on The Watson Fothergill Walk.
The next dates will be two walks on 21 July 2019:
Join Lucy to explore Watson Fothergill’s Nottingham, includes tea or coffee and cake at Debbie Bryan. Tickets here.
The first will be in the afternoon at 2pm, ending at Debbie Bryan with drinks and cake. Tickets here.
The evening walk will finish at Fothergill’s pub. Tickets here.
(Watson Fothergill’s birthday is actually 12th July but I can’t do a walk that day!)
If you can’t make either of these but are still interested in joining the guided tour you can either arrange a private walk for you and your group (minimum 6, maximum 20 people) contact Lucy for details. Or sign up to the mailing list to get the latest dates sent to your inbox.
I’m running another chance to join me for The Hine Hike: The buildings of Thomas Chambers Hine on Wednesday 5th June 2019, starting at 6pm. Tickets here.
Thomas Chambers Hine, 1813-1899, was possbly Nottingham’s most prolific architect of the Victorian Age. His work across the 19th Century ranges from overseeing the development of The Park Estate, to building the biggest lace warehouses in the Lace Market, and includes the conversion of Nottingham Castle to England’s first provincial art gallery outside London.
Explore the buildings of Thomas Chambers Hine “the father of the Midlands Architects” and his impact on the built environment of Nottingham city centre. This evening walk will take in a overview of the Park Estate, progress via Hine’s home and office on Regent Street towards Nottingham Castle. The walk will continue across the city centre to investigate some of Thomas Chambers Hine’s lesser known buildings and finish up with some of his large scale projects in the Lace Market.
This is a walk of 3km (1.9 miles) approximately 2 hours. The walk starts at Nottingham Playhouse and finishes in the Lace Market.
One of the best known building associated with Watson Fothergill in Nottingham is one that is no longer standing, The Black Boy Hotel on Long Row, which was demolished in 1970. As a few folks on the Watson Fothergill Walk have asked for pictures, I thought I’d collect together some images and thoughts on the building here.
Fothergill worked on The Black Boy Hotel throughout his career, beginning with buildings in the yard to the rear in 1869, while he was still in the employ of Issac Gilbert. The land on which the hotel was built belonged to the Brunts’ Charity. Fothergill’s association with the Black Boy would last until his retirement as the charity’s surveyor in 1910. In 1874 Fothergill worked on a carriage house or stock room, again in the yard.
The Black Boy Hotel before the central tower was built in the 1890s. Nottingham Post.
In 1878 he rebuilt part of the premises on the eastern side of the yard (Jessops shop), these were in turn demolished in 1897 when the hotel was reconstructed and Fothergill built a large department store for Jessops on King Street. In 1886 there was a more major rebuilding of the Long Row frontage and shops, as the top part of the old building had become uninhabitable. Fothergill opted to rebuild rather than restore the 200 year old building, planning 5 floors.
In 1892 he rebuilt the back wing of this part of the hotel adding a bar, a luggage room, a smoking room, a billiard room and 13 more bedrooms. The first major project to witness the reversal of Fothergill’s name to Watson Fothergill was an additional story on the stable block in 1893.
Advert for the Black Boy Hotel circa 1950s. Model of the Black Boy Hotel from Richard Upton’s exhibition, The Black Boy Hotel: Gone But Not Forgotten, at the Nottingham Industrial Museum. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer).Back view of the model, showing many additions and alterations. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer.)
Find out more about The Black Boy Hotel and the buildings of Watson Fothergill that are still standing in Nottingham on The Watson Fothergill Walk, tickets available for 12 June, 6pm and 30 June, 1pm.
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.
Watson Fothergill Walk Evening Edition: 12 June 2019, tickets 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.
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.
The Hine Hike
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.
Mother’s Day Heritage Tour
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.
In my last few blogs I’ve been looking at the life and work of Lawrence George Summers who was Watson Fothergill’s assistant and an architect in his own right, albeit a somewhat less flamboyant one.
The last installment left off in New Basford, from where I walked back to Sherwood Rise. I passed Fothergill’s Norris Homes and further down Berridge Road at the corner with Cedar Road I found a large three storey block which originally comprised Five Dwellng Houses and a Shop (LGS16). Summers didn’t sign the drawings but there is evidence that he worked on them in 1902. The client was Mr George Hayes.
The corner of Berridge Road and Cedar Road, with traces of the 1902 building. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.The shop front still visible on the corner of Cedar Road, but building heavily altered. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
Over on the other side of Mansfield Road, into Mapperley Park can be found what is likely to be the latest building to be signed off by LG Summers. The house built for Mrs Eleanor Ellenberger (Watson Fothergill’s 4th daughter) on Thorncliffe Road (LGS29).
The house on Thorncliffe Road that LG Summers built for Fothergill’s daughter Eleanor Ellenberger. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
The date stones are marked 1930. Given that plans were submitted in 1929 after Fothergill’s death in 1928, it can perhaps be assumed that the house was built with his inheritance.
The date stones 19 & 30 at Thorncliffe Road. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
Of all the houses built by Summers that I’ve found so far, this last one seems to show the least of Fothergill’s influence, but by the 1920s fashions in architecture had moved on considerable from the Gothic and Vernacular styles that were interpretted in the work coming out of the George Street Office in the late 19th century.
Gables and varied roof lines still feature in Summers’ late work. Photo: Lucy Brouwer. Unusual corner windows make a handsome feature on Mrs Ellenberger’s house. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
In 1894 Eleanor Fothergill Watson Fothergill (as her maiden name became when her father had his moment at the deed poll) married the German-born (but naturalised British) violin teacher Georg Hieronymus Ellenberger (1862-1918). They lived in Nottingham at Lindum house (at the corner of Burns Street near All Saints Church from at least 1899) and towards then end of his life they lived in Ecceleshall, Sheffield.
Georg Ellenberger was a pupil of the violinist Joseph Joachim (a collaborator of Joannes Brahms) and was himself violin teacher to the young Hucknall-born Eric Coates around 1898. Coates would take the train from Hucknall to Nottingham for his lessons twice a week. Coates became a composer, and is probably best known for the Dam Busters March.
After Georg’s death, Eleanor appears to have returned to Nottingham. She died in 1946. It was her son, Brigadier George Fothergill Ellenberger who transcribed some of Fothergill’s family history notes (this typed document is held at the local studies library in Angel Row.)
Tickets are now available for two new dates for the Debbie Bryan Edition of the Watson Fothergill Walk. The new dates are both Sunday mornings, with a 10am start on 28th April 2019 and 26th May 2019. Tickets are £12 each and include tea or coffee and cake at Debbie Bryan in the Lace Market at the conclusion of the walk.
In the last blog I found out some more about LG Summers’ family background. This time I’m going to take a look at some of his buildings.
Starting from Sherwood, I went for a wander to find some of the buildings designed by Lawrence George Summers which are still standing in Nottingham. Around the corner from the larger blocks of Fothergill houses on Mansfield Road is a small house on Bingham Road which has characteristics easily mistaken for Fothergill, a decorative turret and a vernacular gable with brick nogging in distinctive red bricks with black timber.
Bingham Road, Built 1921. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
This garage is actually the work of Geoff Jordan who lives in a house by Summers next door! (Correction 2021 – LB)
Turret and gable at Bingham Road showing some familiar motifs. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.Bingham Road house by LG Summers, 1921. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
The house on Bingham Road (LGS25) was built for Thomas M. Basnett, a retired plumber’s merchant in 1921. See my Carrington Crawl walk for more details.
A further foray into Carrington and eventually I find the next house on my list, on Herbert Road (LGS12). Little seems to be known about this, other than plans were approved in 1897 and the client was Mr J B Hughes.
Some interesting features in the roof line, the brick work and the windows make this house slightly more than initially meets the eye. Herbert Road, 1897. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.The house on Herbert Road is one of several that seem to have been built around the same time, but each has its own idiocyncracies. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.From the back the interesting roof layout is more apparent but the windows have been replaced. The lower roof in front belongs to next door. Herbert Road. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
The next house on the trail was on Central Avenue (LGS22), not far away. This was built for Gilbert L Summers, LG’s nephew, in 1914. Summers marked his name on the application with “ARIBA”. After Fothergill retired LG signs off with his qualification. In the 1911 census Gilbert was living at 44 Central Avenue with his widowed father Frederick (LG’s brother), his sister Evelyn and his niece (LG’s sister Lola’s daughter) Clara Richardson lived-in as their housekeeper. (It was common practice that an unmarried female member of the extended family would live-in to provide domestic help to unmarried or widowed male relatives.)
Not many original features seem to survive in the house on Central Avenue. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
Gilbert Lawrence Summers is listed in the 1911 census as a Sewing Machine Mechanic. Perhaps he was working in the family lace firm in New Basford. By 1939, when a register was taken, Gilbert appears to be living in Wiverton Road (around the corner from other Summers buildings in Berridge Road) with his wife Lily.
Many of Lawrence Summers’s buildings (at least the ones he signs off himself) were for members of his extended family in the New Basford area.
Over on Duke Street, a little further up the street from the site of the house where LG was born, are “Two Cottages” (LGS15). Built in 1899, these three storey houses stand out in a street that is now mostly light industrial buildings and modern additions.
The two cottages built by LG Summers on Duke Street. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
The cottages on Duke Street on Picture Nottingham. It is wrongly attributed to Watson Fothergill (with their standard caption for his work).
At the time, Summers was signing himself as “Architect of Corporation Oaks”. In 1881 various members of the Summers family were living on Duke Street. The numbering of the houses has changed and perhaps the old family home was demolished. His sister Lola, Mrs Richardson, and her family were living at 2 Duke Street, and his father George Summers with second wife Louisa, plus Lawrence’s younger brothers Frederick and Alexander were next door at number 4. In the 1891 census LG is living with his brother Frederick and his family at number 4, while their father, George, is at number 2 with Louisa and their 9 year old son William. Did they subsequently move up Duke Street to the new cottages that LG designed with himself as the client? In 1910, Summers applied to extend the Duke Street houses into shops (LGS21), again he himself was the client, which suggested that members of the Summers family were indeed living in the cottages. As far as I can tell these are now the adjacent property which has been turned back into dwellings. The shape of the shop fronts remain, albeit much altered.
The extension, originally shops, on the corner of Duke Street and Gawthorne Street. Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
Lawrence’s youngest brother Alexander was still living in New Basford in 1901 and is listed on the census as a Pork Butcher and Shopkeeper, so perhaps the shop was his?
Following the road, past what are now mostly motor garages in older industrial buildings, some dated 1840s and some 1870s, an indication that this area was already industrial at the time the Summers family lived here when Lawrence was a child. His father’s lace business was almost certainly here.
Down at the bottom on Northgate, it is just possible to recognise the small two storey factory (LGS3), that Summers designed for James Allen in 1882.
Northgate factory premises. A fairly basic version of the lace top shop perhaps? Photo: Lucy Brouwer.
At this time Summers is signing himself as “Architect, 11 South Parade Nottingham” (South Parade makes up the side of the Market Square that runs up the opposite side to Long Row). Summers was admitted to RIBA in 1881 but isn’t using letters after his name at this point. It is assumed he was in the Clinton Street office with Fothergill from around 1879, having also been articled as a pupil to Issac Charles Gilbert from 1869. (His studies at the Mechanics Institute and Nottingham School of Art were running concurrently).
Look out for the next installment of my blog as I carry on into Mapperley Park on the trial of LG Summers…
I hope to organise a walk featuring some of Fothergill and Summers buildings in and around Sherwood, Sherwood Rise and Mapperley Park later this year – sign up to my mailing list for the latest news or “like” the Facebook page.
Some detective work looking for the rather elusive “architect’s assistant”.
I’ve been using some online archives to see if there is anything else out there about Lawrence G. Summers and after some digging I think I’ve come up with a few clues.
Starting with Ancestry.com (which is available to use for free in Nottinghamshire Libraries and is an invaluable starting point if you enjoy a bit of basic historical sleuthing), I found Summers in the census and tried to make a few dates add up. The problem with online research is that often transcription of handwriting (the speedy pen of the census taker, the scratchy hand of the baptismal registrar) is full of errors. I eventually tracked Summers down in the 1861 census – at age 6, living with his parents, brother and sister at 80 Duke Street, New Basford. (Later in his career Summers will be responsible for several building projects in Duke Street, more on these in the next blog.)
By 1871, the Summers family address has become 83 Duke Street, 16 year old Lawrence is already noted as an “architects clerk” and he has gained another younger brother. I’ve not had much luck with the 1881 census and finding L.G. in 1891 was a little harder as his name has been transcribed as “Laurence”, but he turns up living with his younger brother Frederick and his family, still on Duke Street. L.G. is 35 by now and is still noted as an architects clerk. His brother (and his father, who lives next door) are both listed as “Lace Warpers”. In a trade listing from 1899 Summers seems at last to have moved out and he is listed as “Architect’s Assistant” living at 8 Corporation Oaks (while brother Fred is now of “Summers and Son” and is still at Duke Street).
All this tallies with what Darren Turner has compiled in his book. But what of Summers the man? Who was his wife? And why does he show up as living alone as a single man aged 56 in the Gresham Hotel on Carrington Street in the 1911 census? (This one was a challenge as the whole page has been very poorly transcribed with New Basford transposed to “New Brentford” and architect read as “servant”, making it look like Summers worked in the hotel.)
To find out about a life, you often have to read about a person’s death, and so it is with Summers, the most that was ever written about him was after his funeral. When Summers died in September 1940, his death made the front pages of the local papers. The notices list the mourners (articles can be found on The British Newspaper Archive – also free to use inside Nottinghamshire Libraries) and from here I was able to narrow down the search. Summers’ wife is only ever refered to as “the widow” which seems to have been standard practice at the time. But luckily the familial relationships of the other people present were noted, so we can discover that Summers’ brother in law was a Mr Lewis Byng. More plugging away at Ancestry eventually stumps up the jackpot. Mrs Summers, nee Louise Martha Byng was married to Lawrence George Summers in 1927, when she was 56 and he was 73. This was a year after the death of her father, Joseph Tussaud Byng a banker with 12 children, and just a short time before the death of Watson Fothergill.
Lawrence and Louise appear again in the 1939 register now living together at 59 Edwards Lane. Lawrence died the following year, in November 1940 and Louise lived on until 1955, until the age of 84.
Looking at the Ancestry entries for the Byng family, one name stood out as it had also come up in searches of the Newspaper Archive with reference to the theatre… one of Louise Byng’s younger (half-) brothers was Douglas Coy Byng and as it turns out he was on the stage… in fact he was a celebrated Pantomime Dame, singer, cabaret star and female impersonator famed for his double entrendres! Here he is talking about the panto dame tradition in 1982:
And here is a performance of a comic song!
Summers’ Brother in Law Douglas Byng had a long and illustrious show biz career, both he and L.G. Summers were at J.T. Byng’s funeral so perhaps they met?
Byng was instrumental in developing “glamour drag” and played upper class female comic characters.
Next time… more about L.G. Summers’ buildings in Nottingham. If you think you might be related to the Summers family who lived in New Basford it would be great to hear from you! The family turn up in a few family trees on Ancestry, so some cousins a few times removed might be out there…
