Nottingham Civic Society - Alderman Bowles' vision

The story of how Nottingham’s Council House came to be designed by the City’s housing architect of the day, T. Cecil Howitt (1889-1968) has often been recounted.* Howitt had been working since the summer of 1922, through reasons of economy, from within the City Engineer’s Department, preparing designs for a new generation of council houses, yet was asked to develop ideas for a civic building eventually costing around £500,000.

In the autumn of 1923 Alderman Herbert Bowles, Chairman of the Council’s Estates Committee wandered into the housing department after hours and found Cecil Howitt working away – without any prospect of “overtime”.

The two men chatted and smoked together and at some point Bowles put a proposition before Howitt: ‘How would it appeal to you to put on paper a scheme for a new Exchange?’ Howitt replied ‘Give me a chance.’

Howitt later said that although the Estates Committee had allowed him three months to produce his designs, he had in fact been thinking about the site for some twenty years. This is an intriguing comment for it was almost twenty years earlier, in 1904, that Howitt entered the office of the architect Albert Nelson Bromley, the year that Bromley was engaged in supervising the erection of the former Boots flagship store on High Street to his design, the new store being to the rear of the old Exchange building.

No doubt prompted by Bowles initial specific brief, Howitt produced what was essentially a rather magnificent shopping arcade, largely influenced by the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan. In plan, the building had two arcades crossing at right angles, the one aligned north-south being shorter than that going east-west. Somewhere in the building there was provision for Council offices but these were by no means a prominent feature.

The Council correctly anticipated that, as news of Howitt’s scheme leaked out, there would be strong opposition from the excluded local architectural establishment and other interested bodies angered by the lack of any open competition for such a major undertaking. Howitt, being in effect the staff architect, came cheap without the expense of organising, running, judging and rewarding the winner of a competition! Of course the Council did not express the choice of their architect in that manner; a later report of the Estates Committee simply stated ‘Your Committee…came to the conclusion that the best way of dealing with the matter at all events in the first instance was to have a design prepared in the City Engineer’s Department…’

Rather craftily the Council, probably in secret, enlisted the help of the President of the RIBA, J. Alfred Gotch of Kettering to examine carefully the intended design. Gotch brought in his RIBA senior Vice President E Guy Dawber to strengthen the scrutiny. They generally approved the design. In a letter to the Town Clerk, W.J. Board, dated 19 January 1924 Gotch wrote ‘We were both much impressed by its high quality and considered that, subject to one or two small variations, it would be excellently adapted for its position and purpose.’ Gotch must have had some communication with Howitt and his boss the City Engineer, T. Wallis Gordon, for the letter continues ‘The variations we suggested have been worked out by the Authors, who fully concur in their adoption, and I am firmly of the opinion that the design will provide a fine and noteworthy building worthy of the site, simple and dignified in treatment and suitable for its commercial purposes.’ So it appears the alterations had been put forward and accepted and the first stage of the design was now complete.

This revision was that placed before the Council on 7 April 1924 and after earlier speculation, reported in the local papers the following day. The expected opposition did materialise. The Notts and Derby Architectural Society, the Thoroton Society, the Civic Society, and the Nottingham Society of Artists sent a deputation to confront the Council, repeating their collective request for an open competition.

The Council pointed out they had given full consideration to instituting a competition but in their opinion that was not necessary, adding that as the design had already met with the approval of the President of the RIBA and his Senior Vice President would they doubt their considered judgement?

Subsequently of course in response to the compromise reached between two opposing factions within the full Council, Howitt altered the western frontage of his design, filling in his ‘yawning aperture’ (a quote from Alderman Huntsman) with accommodation for the Council and incorporating a formal central entrance. This revision was presented to the Council in November 1924 and was essentially the design of the erected building.

One question remains, what was the appearance of Howitt’s first design that was first submitted to Gotch? It would appear that Howitt was asked to prepare a scheme for a glorious commercial shopping arcade for the retail heart of Nottingham, close to the Griffin and Spalding, and Jessop and Son department stores. The first design was, as Gotch noted ‘suitable for its commercial purposes.’

The Report of the Estates Committee with respect to the Demolition and Rebuilding of the Exchange Block presented to the Council on Monday 7 April 1924 contains the information ‘When the design was completed your Committee…gave instructions for a model to be prepared in order that they might be the better able to judge whether the Building, when erected, would fulfil all the necessary requirements. A model was accordingly made…’ After reproducing the Report commissioned from J.A. Gotch in full, the Estates Committee’s report continues, ‘Upon the receipt of this Report (from Gotch) instructions were given for the minor suggestions of the President to be embodied in the design and model and this has been done…’

There is in the Local Studies Library, Angel Row, an undated photograph of a model of a new ‘Council House’ for Nottingham that has remained unclassified for although it largely resembles the later model reproduced in Council reports and local newspapers, it does have certain differences. I am convinced that this unclassified model interprets Howitt’s original drawings.

Alas photographs are all that survive of the models, indeed some of Cyril Farey’s original realisation drawings of the Council House as built have also been lost or perhaps mislaid.

The story of the chance meeting of Alderman Bowles and Cecil Howitt after hours was that recounted by Bowles at the dinner celebrating the opening of the Council House on 22 May 1929. Maybe the discussions, arguments and general filibustering that had lasted for some eighty years preventing Nottingham from replacing its aging old Exchange did end with such a fine tale.

Ken Brand
August 2004

* Most recently in the Society’s new publication The Council House, Nottingham and Old Market Square. It is available at Society meetings, from the Gatehouse Shop, the City Information Office, and local bookshops.

ALDERMAN BOWLES’ VISION