Nottingham

Mr Fothergill

A discussion on Facebook about the name Fothergill reminded me of an architectural Fothergill – Watson Fothergill, a late-19th century architect who did a lot to transform the streets of the city of Nottingham. I’ve posted about Watson Fothergill before, featuring in particular the office building he designed for himself in his characteristic mix of Gothic and ‘Old English’ styles, in glowing polychrome brick. I think of him as one of the ‘local heroes’ of English architecture, one of those architects whose impact was confined mainly to one town or city but whose work was both distinctive and high in quality. Of course Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a ‘local hero’, in that nearly all his buildings are in or near Glasgow, but his impact was worldwide. I’m thinking of lesser, but still notable, talents. The Jearrad brothers, who built quite a bit of Cheltenham; the Bastards, who created Blandford Forum, virtually from scratch, after a devastating fire; the Goddard family of Leicester, and so on. Many towns have one such architect, many have more than one – Leicester has Arthur Wakerley as well as the Goddards; Nottingham has Thomas Hine as well as Watson Fothergill. 

Watson Fothergill began life as Fothergill Watson. He swapped his names around in mid-life, in an attempt to perpetuate his mother’s maiden name. But he failed to keep the Fothergill line going: both his sons predeceased him without fathering children. He worked industriously all over Nottingham and in some nearby places, designing banks, offices, at least one church, and a lot of houses. His legacy, then, is his buildings and his architectural character is portrayed in his own office building, which lays out his artistic lineage like an architectural family tree. Here’s what I wrote about it in the early days of this blog:

It’s a wonderfully Victorian mixture of advertisement and creed. ‘I can do multi-coloured brickwork, timber-framing, and intricate Gothic details,’ it says. And also: ‘I employ the best carvers and take trouble with my lettering.’ But it’s more than this. The little heads above the windows are identified as A W N Pugin and G E Street, two of the most revered Gothic architects of the Victorian period. The man who displayed mentors like these on his office façade was insisting that he could deliver the best – and that he believed in the transcendent value of Gothic architecture. Further along the front are more names – William Burges (another Goth with a flair for decoration) and Norman Shaw (pioneer of the Old English style that inspired the Arts and Crafts movement). Fothergill learned from these designers too, to Nottingham’s benefit.

In spite of the emphasis on Gothic that his choice of architectural mentors suggests, it’s the Old English style that comes through most strongly in his buildings. Colourful brickwork abounds, as do timber-framed gables, large chimneys, and ornate turrets, often poking up at different heights to give variety to the skyline. It’s intricate stuff, and much of it is not just asymmetrical, but almost hyperactive, as bay windows break free of the building line here, and turrets enliven a corner there. Daring work, in its way, but also thoroughly right for a busy, fast-moving Midland city that’s also aware of its illustrious past. Its virtue is long-lived indeed.

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Photograph, top, of whole building by Darren Turner, reproduced with thanks under Creative Common licence CC BY-SA 3.0.
Other photographs by me.

Upper Parliament Street, Nottingham

One of the landmark buildings by Watson Fothergill (see previous blog entry) is the office and printing works of the Nottingham Express. This picture shows just one corner of the building, the striking entrance, beneath its round tower. Fothergill liked towers and turrets – he knew they gave variety and eventfulness to a façade and must have relished the opportunities they provided for interesting roofs, openings, gargoyles, and so on. This one has more than a touch of one of Fothergill’s heroes, William Burges, the architect of Cardiff Castle. Burges would have admired the polychrome masonry, the Gothic arches and ornate capitals, and the generous use of sculpture on the building as a whole.

As on Fothergill’s own office, the carvings tell a story. To highlight the political stance of the Nottingham Express, he included heads of three prominent Liberal politicians: William Ewart Gladstone (who had served his first period as Prime Minister and resigned his leadership of the Liberal Party by the time this building was constructed in the mid-1870s), Richard Cobden and John Bright (MPs and leading campaigners against the Corn Laws). Both architecturally and politically, the Nottingham Express building nails its colours to the mast.

George Street, Nottingham

The architectural history books are full of the names of the great architects who changed the face of England, the big names whose work took them from one end of the country to the other. But there are also distinguished local architects, people who are known mainly for their work in a specific town, city, or area – Godard of Leicester, the Jearrads of Cheltenham, and the Bastards of Blandford Forum, for example. One of the most notable of these local heroes was Watson Fothergill, the Victorian architect who left the city of Nottingham a host of lively, original buildings. Many of them are still giving pleasure today.

This is part of the façade of Watson Fothergill’s office in George Street. It’s a wonderfully Victorian mixture of advertisement and creed. ‘I can do multi-coloured brickwork, timber-framing, and intricate Gothic details,’ it says. And also: ‘I employ the best carvers and take trouble with my lettering.’ But it’s more than this. The little heads above the windows are identified as A W N Pugin and G E Street, two of the most revered Gothic architects of the Victorian period. The man who displayed mentors like these on his office façade was insisting that he could deliver the best – and that he believed in the transcendent value of Gothic architecture. Further along the front are more names – William Burges (another Goth with a flair for decoration) and Norman Shaw (pioneer of the Old English style that inspired the Arts and Crafts movement). Fothergill learned from these designers too, to Nottingham’s benefit. Shops, houses, offices, a bank, and other buildings from his office enliven the city’s streets.