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.
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).
I’m giving a talk about Fothergill and Thomas Cecil Howitt, architect of The Council House. Tickets £5
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Primrose Street side.
From the other side, now a car park.
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.
Mar Hill Brewery now Sandpiper House, stair turret.
From the other side, later period Fothergill details, heavily cleaned up in conversion.
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 Paper Warehouse on Castle Boulevard.
The date stone, 1894.
Taken when the leaves were still on the trees, October 2018.
Brick patterns and finials, very Fothergill. All photos by Lucy Brouwer.
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.
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.)
Clawson Lodge Gable
Clawson Lodge Bay Window
Clawson Lodge above door
Clawson Lodge window detail
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)
Loscoe Hill villas next door to Bingham Road houses on Mansfield Road. Date stone inbetween windows.
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.)
Mansfield Road view of the 1906 houses.
Bingham Road view of the 1906 houses. Date carved into frame above doors. Now converted into flats.
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.
Villa, Cavendish Hill
Side view of the Villa at Cavendish Hill
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.)
Burlington Towers with distinctive Fothergill affects.
Burlington Towers from the side. (all photos: Lucy Brouwer).
*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.
Fothergill Watson was born in Mansfield in 1841. Until the death of his father, he lived at a house called The Linden on Chesterfield Road. (I believe it was situated somewhere close to where the big Tesco is now). His half-brother, Robert Mackie Watson lived at the Linden until his own death in 1906.
Fothergill and his mother left Mansfield for Nottingham on the death of his father in 1852, and Fothergill trained to become an architect. He had his own office in Nottingham by the early 1860s. Fothergill’s work in Mansfield was mainly for The Mansfield Improvement Commission (a forerunner of the Borough Council) of which Robert Mackie Watson was the chairman…
I took a wander round Mansfield with my trusty copy of Darren Turner’s Fothergill Catalogue to find which buildings are still standing. The bank on Church Street (A7) has long since been absorbed into the adjacent Swan Inn.
The Swan, Church Street, Mansfield
The site of the Nottingham & Notts Bank. Ground floor altered. Photos: Lucy Brouwer
Next, I went up to the other side of the Market Place (past T.C. Hine’s Bentinck Memorial) to the other Fothergill commission of 1874, some shops and offices at the back of the Town Hall. Where Exchange Row meets Queens Walk (A8), these presently look empty. The twin gable and the pillar mullions in the windows seem to be a signature of Fothergill’s Mansfield buildings of this period.
Queens Walk, Mansfield
The capitals on the mullions are the only hint of Fothergill’s later flambouyance. Photos: Lucy Brouwer
Following the map in the book, I headed for Albert Street and almost missed the next building. I must have passed this hundreds of times but only when I looked closely did I spot the telltale hints of Gothic on no. 11. It is now a solicitor’s office but was built as a house and shop in 1875 (A11).
11 Albert Street, Mansfield. Hiding in plain sight.
Telltale ballflowers – This is a Fothergill! Photos: Lucy Brouwer
As it was lunchtime, we had a moment of inspiration! The Cattle Market built between 1876-78 (A15), the best known and most distinctive of Fothergill’s Mansfield buildings is now an Italian Restaurant – Ciao Bella – so we went to Nottingham Road for il menu del giorno.
Mansfield Cattle Market, now an Italian Restaurant.
The Cattle Market building from the opposite side. Photos: Lucy Brouwer
The toilets in the restaurant are upstairs, so you get to accend the spiral staircase in the turret. The Cattle Market stopped operating in 1987 (I can just about remember what the yard looked like before Water Meadows was built on the site). The building that is retained was the Market Keeper’s residence… this was the last job Fothergill did for the Improvement Commission.
There is one more building on Nottingham Road, and again we had to look closely to find it. The Villa (A18) is described as being two storey with attic rooms and at first we were distracted by the gloomy gothic vicarage across from the disused church on Nottingham Road, but a closer look at the map sent me back over the road and we realised that the Fothergill villa was this much plainer house, converted first into a Ukrainian Institute then used as a Family Centre, there was a removal van outside, so it looks like it is now being used as flats.
The Villa on Nottingham Road, porch not original!
Again the window detail seems to be the best sign of the hand of Fothergill. Photos: Lucy Brouwer
Finally, I decided to walk a little further out of town to find a pub that Fothergill had built for Mansfield Brewery (his Father in Law’s business) in 1876. The Kings Arms (A13) is a rebuilding of the pub previously on the site demolished at the widening of Newgate Lane. Darren Turner presents overwhelming evidence that this is indeed a Fothergill building and looking at the details around the entrance, I would have to agree.
The Kings Arms, Mansfield
The entrance to The Kings Arms, photos: Lucy Brouwer
There are a couple of other buildings of Fothergill’s still standing in Mansfield, three houses on St John’s Street (A14) built in 1876, and a house on Crow Hill Drive built in 1880 (A28) both of which he built for his half-sister Mrs Frances Page Wilson. This last is now used by the NHS and is called Heatherdene, it seems to have been Fothergill’s last Mansfield building, as the majority of his work was then done in Nottingham.
Once again the walk will conclude at Debbie Bryan with tea or coffee and cake included in your ticket. Debbie’s tea room also offers light lunches and other refreshments plus a wonderful gift emporium stocked with local crafts and unique homewares.
I am also going to be presenting an illustrated talk at Beeston Library, on 21 November at 2pm. The Watson Fothergill Virtual Guided Tour will be some highlights from the walk presented with photos in the library’s meeting room – so you can see Fothergill’s work without leaving your seat.
