Last week I attended the launch (via Zoom) of the new edition of The Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire, commonly known as The Pevsner Guide.
The hefty new edition of The Buildings of England: Nottinghamshire.
You can watch the interview with Clare Hartwell, who has throughly revised and updated the Nottinghamshire guide, on Five Leaves Bookshop’s YouTube channel.
As you can see the new 2020 edition (bottom) has somewhat expanded on the previous editions! (the 1997 reprint of the 2nd edition, and the pocket-sized Penguin from 1951).
The Pevsner Guides are pretty much the bible for anyone doing research on architects and architecture and I’ve now got all three editions of the Nottinghamshire book, as well as Elain Harwood’s Nottingham City Guide.
The edition of the Nottingham city guide that I regularly use for researching my walks. As you can see, I’ve bookmarked a lot of buildings!
Nottinghamshire was the second county of England that Nikolaus Pevsner covered when he originally put the guides together in the 1950s. The guides have evolved from pocket-sized paperbacks to hefty hardbacks that offer a summary of the architecture of each county.
The first edition also features Southwell Minster on the cover, but the book was considerably cheaper and more portable!
Much as I wish they were a little more portable, the new one is more than double the size of the last edition and weighs almost a kilo, it is really worth taking them with you on your travels (or perhaps making appropriate notes before you set off). I wonder, have Yale University Press considered making an online version available to purchasers of the book? It would make a fantastic app! (So far there’s only a Pevsner Architectural Glossary available).
Plenty of bookmarks in this, the 2nd edition, that I bought second hand at the much missed Jermy & Westerman bookshop.
Something of Pevsner’s eccentricity may have been lost – indeed in his first Nottinghamshire edition he attributes the bank in Newark to “Fothergill & Watson”, Fothergill’s name change being the source of no end of confusion! – but as a basis for discoving more details about the architecture around you, the guides are completely indispensible.
The new edition has been lavishly illustrated with photographs, the majority of which are by Martine Hamilton Knight. Here’s Watson Fothergill’s Office (as well Papplewick Pumping Station and Trent Navigation Warehouse in Newark)
For more on Pevsner listen to this excellent BBC Radio 4 Programme, Pevsner: Through Outsider’s Eyes (I’m off to listen to it again).
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.
Previously, I began telling the story behind the building of The Bodega on Pelham Street. These days it’s a popular music venue and bar, but it’s been through several image changes over the years… I spoke to Alan Clifford on BBC Radio Nottingham about the building.
While it’s nothing to do with Watson Fothergill (as far as I know!) this building has opened up some interesting avenues of research and I’ve found myself scouring archives, reading about the social history of the English pub and obsessively asking people if they remember drinking there in the 1970s and ’80s…
Part one of this blog left off in 1904. The Bodega was listed as a Billiard Saloon, and seems to have departed from the Bodega Company’s Wine Bar model. The First World War hit the English licensed trade hard, with opening hours dramatically reduced, “treating’ (i.e. buying drinks for other people), giving credit and the long pull (serving more than the correct measure to attract custom) were all made illegal. (The minimum drinking age of 18 didn’t come in until 1923, and children could still buy alcohol from pubs to take home to their parents as long as it was in stoppered containers!) The war also pushed up the price of drink, and it stayed up, while the actual strength of drinks fell. For more on this and all things PUB, read The Local: A History of The English Pub by Paul Jennings. (By the time you read this I’ll have taken it back to the library...)
The 1915-16 Kelly’s Trade Directory of Nottingham lists Bodega Wine Co. Ltd. at 23 Pelham Street, trading as Bodega for the Bodega Wine and Spirit Merchants. Thomas S Poole, of 48 Harlaxton Drive is the manager. (Their phone number, Nottingham 1880, stayed the same into the 1940s.)
Robert Banks Lavery, the original owner of the Bodega Company, died in 1915 leaving his fortune of £13,2723 (approx. £ 15,049,738.89 in 2019) to various Catholic charities. The Bodega Company share price fluctuated after the war, but the business seemed to be steady around the country.
In March 1916, the Aberdeen Daily Journal reported that The Bodega Company had been admonished in the High Court by the makers of a certain beef drink, for passing off Oxo and “other meat preparations” when orders were placed for Bovril. The defendant denied the accusations but the injunction was passed and The Bodega Company paid costs.
1921 was a particularly bad year for the company’s share price, as the country recovered from the war.
In 1927, at the Nottingham Bodega, there was one of a spate of fires, leading to the Nottingham Evening Post headline: “Incendrism suspected!” Barrels of oil from the Nottingham Perfumery Co. caught fire in the passage. The branch is called The Bodega Hotel at this point, and a Mr Dominic is the employee who telephoned for the fire brigade, averting any serious damage.
In 1928, Slater’s Restaurants acquired Bodega. Slater’s were one of the largest catering companies in the world at this time. The million pound take over led to the company being known as Slaters and Bodega, bringing Bodega’s 30 outlets and 2 hotels into the company. Catering supplies had become integral to the operation. Bodega had previously been known for their outside catering, providing food and drink for race meetings, agricultural shows and the like. In 1931 there was a further takeover bid by Welsh firm RE Jones, but this failed.
One night in April 1931, the manager of the Nottingham Bodega, John Edward Marshall, was killed on Radford Road when a bus struck him after he alighted from a tramcar on his way home to Noel Street. A military man, he had seen action with the 10th Hussars. At least 11 members of staff from Bodega Wine And Spirit Company’s Saloon attended his funeral.
Plans in Nottinghamshire Archives show that improvements were made to the toilet facilities and the layout of the Bodega in 1933 and 1936. The ground floor now had a bar and a “cold counter”. Newspaper reports of a break-in by some young boys in 1940 refer to the Bodega simply as “a public house”.
In the 1950s, Billiards and Snooker were the main attractions of the Bodega in Nottingham, with several matches warranting newspaper reports on the games and their results.
In 1954, Slaters and Bodega were taken over by Charles Forte’s catering and hotel empire (to become Trust House Forte in later years). In 1956, JA Charles is installed in Pelham Street as the licensee.
Daily Herald, 23 December 1953. British Newspaper Archive.
Here the trail goes a little cold, as Bodega gets swallowed up into the Forte empire. But there are photographs showing what the outside of the Bodega looked like in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Bodega in 1962. You can just see the words ‘Manchester and Liverpool’ on the shield. from: Nottingham in the 1960s and 1970s by Douglas Whitworth.
By 1966 the Bodega in Nottingham was being run by Ind Coope Brewery from their Derby office. In 1967 they added the stairs to the front of the building and did some improvements to the toilets inside.
Sketch/trace of the proposed improvements in 1967, by architect G. Hakesly for Ind Coope. Nottinghamshire Archives.
Ind Coope were still running the pub in 1970 when they added an extension over both floors to the rear, containing the Ladies’ toilets upstairs and a store room downstairs.
Ind Coope were involved until at least 1983 (photos below). They had become part of Allied Breweries in 1961, merging with Ansells and Tetley Walker. Allied in turn merged with food and catering giant J. Lyons and Co. in 1978 to form Allied Lyons, then again in 1992 with Carlsberg to become Carlsberg-Tetley. I haven’t been able to find out (as yet) when Bodega left the Forte empire (as it doesn’t tend to be noted when companies are sold off).
The pub sign in 1983, harking back to the original idea of a Bodega as a wine cellar. Picture Nottingham.
Some people I’ve spoken to remember a bierkeller-feel to the pub in the 1980s. Licensing laws again have an effect on the way pubs are organised in 1987-1988, with the introduction of flexible drinking times.
Ansells, who are quoted in 1988 as the owners of the Bodega, ring the changes and refurbished the bar as Cairo’s Disco Bar… The Evening Post reported:
“ Three traditional city centre pubs are being transformed into upmarket bars for young trendsetters in a £860,000 refit by owners Ansell’s. By the end of August… Bodega will have become Cairo’s. Ansell’s plan to create a circuit of bars with style and sophistication for Nottingham’s young trendsetters – and hope they will also cut down on night-time city centre violence. … Cairo’s Disco bar, which opens around August 23, will spin the discs until 12,30am on the first floor with a bar down below. … Ansell’s regional director: “Nottingham has more class, more fashionable people with real style, than any other city in the East Midlands…”
New look for 3 city centre pubs. Evening Post 12 July 1988.
Cairo’s is remembered as being “very neon”… it also featured as a location in an episode of Central TV’s “Boon” in 1990.
By 1993 though, Ansells had refitted the bar once more, this time to become Irish-themed Rosie O’Brien’s Pumphouse, a chain with branches across the Midlands (there was another Nottingham branch in Carrington on Mansfield Road, in 2019 the pub is called Turners.)
If you’d like to hire me to conduct in-depth research and detective work into buildings, businesses, architecture or local history, please get in touch!
Earlier in the year, I was invited to talk to Alan Clifford on BBC Radio Nottingham about my walk The Hine Hike and the buildings of Thomas Chambers Hine. The programme recently got in touch with me to see if I’d like to talk to Alan on the radio again.
They asked if I knew anything about The Bodega on Pelham Street, as it is celebrating 20 years in its current incarnation as a live music venue.
As a detective, I’m even keener than Coleen Rooney, so I couldn’t resist delving into the archives to see what I could find. This building is NOT A FOTHERGILL nor is it related to his work at all as far as I know, but I’m really interested in developing the research side of my work. Here’s what I’ve found so far…
The Bodega, now at 16 Pelham Street, but previously listed as being No. 23 was built on the site of what was previously a pub called The Durham Ox.
The Durham Ox was the starting point for mail coaches to Lincoln and Newark. It was also in this pub that the Lacemakers and Printers Trade Unions would hold their weekly meetings in the early Victorian era. In 1855, the Inn made the transition to a minor music hall, hosting what were called ‘Free and Easies’, with customers supplying their own entertainment. The New Amateur Musical Society performed regularly at the Durham Ox, the Garrick Society staged dramatic reading there, and it was said to be the most popular of Nottingham’s music hall pubs. By 1900 it wasn’t considered to be quite fit to continue to be licensed. It was bought by The Bodega Company in 1901 and demolished.
They employed experienced London pub architect George Dennis Martin to rebuild the pub. The result was light and elegant, a long graceful archway with a hanging light. Projecting through a hipped roof is an exaggerated dormer with a swollen pediment on top bearing the date 1902.
Sketch/ tracing of GD Martin’s design for “Rebuilding of The Durham Ox”, taken from plans held by Nottinghamshire Archives.
The pub was still called The Durham Ox on the plans and was labelled as having a Bodega on the ground floor and a Club Room on the first floor. The Bar was on the right hand side, and the smaller arch at the front leads to a passageway.
The Bodega Company was started by Robert
Banks Lavery (b.1835-6), a Captain in the Lancashire Rifle Volunteer Corps, who
resigned his commission in 1861. Lavery & Co Bodega Spanish Wine Cellars
was set up as a Wine and Spirit Merchant with branches in Manchester, London
and Birmingham. In 1871 the company held wholesale and bottling vaults at St
Pancras and the retail business offered – “each wine clearly and
distinctly marked at its price per dock glass, bottle, dozen or quarter cask.
The taster pays the proportionate small price for his sample 3d to 1s 3d and is
therefore fully able to arrive at an opinion of quality.”
This delightfully verbose news item sums up the “Bodega” method of doing business:
The Bodega. – Few residents in London are unaware of the existence of the wine stores of Messrs. Lavery & Co. in Glass-house Street, Regent-Street, known more similarly by its trademark, “The Bodega”, where wines of the highest qualities are retailed in the smallest quantities, either in the form of the occasional glass for luncheon, or the modest gallon for limited homesteads. This kind of enterprise, it may be said, was altogether unknown in the wine trade, and it can easily be believed that it has excited no little jealousy on the part of the old-fashioned wine merchants, to whom the infringement of the traditions of the trade could but appear to be not only heretical but mischievous. The success that has attended the enterprise of Messrs. Lavery & Co. has proved that the latter surmises were correct. In Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, and Glasgow, Messrs. Lavery & Co. have opened the same character of wine bar, and with no difference in the result. The visitor “tastes” as a matter of passing convenience, according to his humour, and, if so minded can order more largely upon the sample set before him. The success spoken of has suggested the establishment of similar stores in the City, and yesterday afternoon a few friends were invited to Nos. 5 and 6 Bucklersbury, to inspect the new premises taken for the purpose. The arrangements are similar to those alluded to, both at the West End and in the provinces, and there can be little doubt the good fortune which is rewarded Messrs. Lavery & Co.’s efforts elsewhere will not be denied them in the heart of the great metropolis, where such institutions have not only larger public within reach as regards the daily necessities of refreshment, but one the best calculated to avail itself of the economical opportunities which it is the special province of “The Bodega” and its branches to afford.
27 August 1874, The Shipping And Mercantile Gazette, London.
The Bodega’s offered “wines from the wood” and Champagne by the bottle. In 1876, Lavery took one of his Manchester competitors to court for using the name “Bodega”, alleging that as a name and method of doing business it was not in use before he opened The Bodega Wine Company.
Lavery seems to have done rather well for himself, he disolved his original partnership with Francis Alfred Nicholson in 1871, and in 1881 he was to be found at Gosport taking to the waves in his yawl and cutter. In 1882 the Royal Portsmouth Yacht Club noted that member Mr. Lavery “used to run their refreshment department”. In 1895, Lavery and fellow board member of the Bodega Company, Edward Talbot Wolesley (b. 1849) wind up their interests in the Mexican Tobacco Plantation Ltd and in 1896, Lavery and another Bodgea board member, John Henry Mortimer Scott become directors of the vendor syndicate for the Almaraz Tin Mining and Smelting Company (with interests in Spanish tin mines).
In 1897, The Bodega Company is incorporated and shares are sold. It is described thus: “So long established that no description is necessary in the prospectus!”
1901, Standard Newspaper Advertisement. British Newspaper Archives. Some of these branches are noted on Pubwiki.
In 1901, as Edward Talbot Wolesley was buying up The Durham Ox, The Bodega Company had 10 branches in London, 3 in Birmingham and further establishments in Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, Dundee, Dublin, Belfast, Cork, Cardiff, Wolverhampton, Ryde, Wigan, Folkestone, Sheffield, Brighton and Hastings. (28 branches in all).
They provided Wine, Spirits, Liquors, Cigars and even sell their own Bodega Smoking Mixture in branded tins. The Bodega Trade Mark was protected, and the shield device (which can be seen on the front of the Nottingham building), was described as having “black letters on an orange band, crossing a shield with a garter at the foot.”
In 1901, Edward Talbot Wolesley found himself being tasked with purchasing The Durham Ox, and in 1902, GD Martin’s design was realised on Pelham Street.
Bodega shield (sketch) as it appears on the front of the building now.
The pub was licenced on behalf of Wolesley, Chairman of The Bodega Company Limited, London, at the Nottingham Sessions. “A great improvement had been effected. The building would be more open to police supervision than ever the old house was.” The upstairs Billiard Room was sanctioned as long as no side entrance was available for use by the public. Permission was granted.
1902 Advertisement for the Bexhill on Sea branch of Bodega, placed in the Bexhill on Sea Observer in December (around the same time that the Nottingham branch would have opened.) British Newspaper Archive.
In 1903, the licence for the Nottingham Bodega passed from Edward Talbot Wolesley to Cuthbert Johnson Collingwood, a bar manager for several branches of the chain, who had become Managing Director of the Bodega Company.
In 1904 the Nottingham Evening Post reported that Wolesley, former chairman of the company, had been declared bankrupt and resigned his post in 1903 over some irregularities connected to his purchase of the Durham Ox (and other establishments around the same time). He had received £9,180 in “secret commission” which was considered to be fraud!
The Bodega is listed as a “Billiard Saloon” around 1904 and regular advertisements for staff continue to appear in local papers. By 1909 there are 34 branches of Bodega around the country.
The Bodega, as it is in 2019. Photo: Lucy Brouwer
Listen out to Radio Nottingham tomorrow (8 November 2019 around 2pm) for more about The Bodega and read the next installment of this blog coming soon!
Having studied the building from the outside, the chance to have a look around inside the Offices of Watson Fothergill on George Street, Nottingham was too good to resist. Many thanks to Sarah Julian of BBC Radio Nottingham for giving me the opportunity and to the Bragas for letting me take a few quick photos and letting me talk to them about the building.
Following on from my previous blog about getting through the door to find a quote from Geoffrey Chaucer, here we go up stairs to find the offices that have been turned into a two bedroom flat.
Fothergill built his office on George Street in 1894-5 after having to vacate his previous set up on Clinton Street when the railway came through. Typically, he had been prepared for the move and bought the site on George Street. He demolished the previous building in readiness for building his office. Aged 54 at the time, he was a confident and mature architect, his office serves as a three dimensional portfolio, and a lot of his later work around Nottingham seems to have followed on from this construction. It demonstrates his capabilites to his wealthy Nottingham clients and showed them the quality to which his creations aspired.
Up to the first floor and I noticed a familiar name on the door! (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)
I managed to grab a few photos, but as well as being rather overwhelmed I was also talking to Sarah for the radio piece, so forgive the rather snatched images! Up on the first floor, the first thing that caught my eye was the nameplates on the internal doors. The larger of the two rooms bore the initials L.G. Summers (Fothergill’s assistant, co-architect but never partner, in the practice Lawrence George Summers who will be familiar to readers of this blog.)
On the other door, a suitably Gothic name plate. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)
The owners pointed out that the door with Fothergill’s name on lead to the smaller of the two rooms, they deduced that this was so that, in a building heated by coal fires, the boss would have the warmer office. It is also the office on the turret side of the building.
The fireplace in Fothergill’s office looks likely to be original. Nice Gothic ballflower detail. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)The niche above Fothergill’s fireplace has some Gothic touches surviving and the ceiling was panelled. We weren’t sure about all the wallpaper! (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)
There was a sense in the room that it would have made a cosy place to work, there was a connecting door through to Summers’ office and then the landing between them and the small waiting room that has been extended into a modern kitchen.
Fireplace and parquet flooring in what would have been the small waiting room area at the back. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer) Summers’ office has been turned into the lounge of the flat. This is the larger room at the front on the first floor. The fireplace was off-centre and we couldn’t agree if this was an original feature. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)The view out the back window of the cottages in Brewitt’s yard. The one closest on the left has been incorporated into the building to make the kitchen and bathroom. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)The landing window contained some more coloured glass and what seems to be a quote from ‘The Life of Christ’ by Frederick Farrar (1874) perhaps a book that Fothergill, who had his religious moments, had read and taken to heart? (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)The staircase up to the second floor. No one seemed to know what the statue represents; it was left by the previous owner. The niche suggests there has always been some art there but was it this? Anyone know who the chap with the bells is? (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)The room in the turret, you can just see a panel in the ceiling which would have allowed you to look up into the workings and see the herringbone structure. It was currently full of insulation, but perhaps imagine Fothergill showing clients the quality of the woodwork inside his tower! (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)The door to the other room upstairs, the owner had been staying there so I didn’t get a picture of inside! Presumably Fothergill’s apprentices and assistants worked upstairs. They had a fireplace in every room. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)In the little room that had been made into the toilet, was this tiny window. The owners removed a pulley system that seems to have been for hauling bags of coal up to the top floor in order to heat the offices. (Photo: Lucy Brouwer)
It was tricky to get more photos and talk at the same time so there’s just a flavour of what the building was like inside and we didn’t get time to look in the shop downstairs or further into the yard.
The conversion seems to be sympathetic – the building was used as a solicitors office prior to being sold (at least twice) so it had been disused for quite sometime. The quality of the workmanship on the repairs is first rate. It was mentioned that Fothergill had made a sturdy structure with a stone or concrete foundation – without which, the damage that was inflicted in 2015 might have destroyed the front of the building. Bonsers have written about the restoration they carried out on their website.
I will be running more Watson Fothergill guided walks into July and August – you can find dates and details via my Eventbrite page where you can book tickets. Private tours can be arranged – get in touch with Lucy via the contact page.
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.)
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…
Research can be a tricky business. The internet offers the researcher plenty of opportunities to find pictures, archived material and other useful records… but it can also throw up its own new set of new mysteries.
For instance, the top returned result in a Google search for L.G. Summers, Watson Fothergill’s assistant and the man who carried on working at the George Street office after Fothergill retired, is a page at the Watson Fothergill website* that hasn’t been updated in a while. There’s lots of tantalising nuggets of information there, but to the researcher looking to dig deeper there is a frustrating lack of citations and references to sources.
I’ve been looking for more information on Summers, looking for more about the man who seems to have been somewhat in the professional shadow of the more flamboyant Fothergill.
As I become more emersed in searching for all things to do with Nottingham architecture, I find myself running names through different search engines and websites. After finding a coffee cup that seems to be from The Black Boy Hotel on eBay (see previous blogpost) I check back from time to time to see what else might be out there. A while ago, a search for Lawrence G. Summers and a few variations on his name, threw up a link to some pictures that I hadn’t seen before. They were prints that were for sale and eventually I tracked them down to an online print gallery.
Design for a church by Lawrence G. Summers. Lithograph from The Building News Mar 20, 1874.
Further variations on Summers’ name (L.G., Lawrence C. etc) returned more results and I couldn’t quite believe my luck. Compelled by curiosity and reasonable prices, I bought the prints. It turns out that they are lithograph pages from the trade publication The Building News and they are not copies.
Design For A Town Hall by Lawrence G. Summers. Lithograph from The Building News, Dec 25, 1874.
On receipt of the lithographs I realised they were actually pages from the magazine and I was able to look up the accompanying articles. Archives of some of the issues are online. It turns out the designs were Summers’ winning entries in competitions.
From The Building News, Mar 20, 1874.
Tracing the lithographs to the relevent issues of The Building News in online archives reveals that Summers won the “National Silver Medal Prize” for his Church design, “The highest award in the kingdom”.
From The Building News, Dec 25, 1874
The town hall, also gained the Silver Medal in a prize from Kensington (from where architecture qualifications were dispensed). This appears to have been while Summers was a student at the Nottingham School of Art.
Excited about my finds, I did another search and discovered that the other lithograph in the set had been bought by someone (who I found on Twitter) who I think works at Nottingham Trent University, (perhaps even in the Nottingham School of Art building.)
The front elevation of Lawrence G. Summers design for a town hall. The Building News, Dec 25, 1874.
More on Summers in the next blog…
Meanwhile I treated myself to having the lithographs framed:
Somewhat wonky photos of the Nottingham-themed wall in my “office”.
