On 29 March 1881 the General Purposes committee of the Nottingham Town Council, in effect the whole Council, met to consider a representation by the Medical Officer of Health, Dr Edward Seaton, of an unhealthy area located within a rough quadrilateral formed by Upper Parliament Street, Market Street, Long Row Central and a full length Greyhound Street. The unhealthy area referred to the Council was commonly known as the ‘Rookeries’. Using the power to compulsory purchase areas ‘unfit for human habitation’ available through the Artizans’ and Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act, 1875 Seaton had progressively declared parts of the town ‘unhealthy areas’ in an ongoing attempt to improve the general well being of the town.
After due consideration of Seaton’s broadside the Health Committee recommended its adoption and subsequently the General Purposes Committee agreed.
The Health Committee reacted quickly to the Council’s decision to clear and redevelop the unhealthy area between Upper Parliament Street and Long Row (Central). They advertised an invitation for architects and others to submit plans for the utilisation of the area. Two prizes of 50 and 25 guineas were offered for those whose plans were judged first and second in order of merit. During May 1881 full details were sent out to those responding to the invitation. The initial deadline for a submission was 1 August but it was later extended to the beginning of October. By the final closing date nine entries had been received.
Whilst the entries for the architectural competition were being assessed the Town Clerk, Samuel Johnson was drafting a proposal by the Improvement Committee on the ‘Siting of an intended Central Railway Station’.
The document was circulated to members of the General Purposes Committee and at their meeting held on 3 October 1881 they resolved “That…it is desirable that, in the interests of the town there should be a joint Central Railway Station, and that it is the duty of the Council to facilitate any proceedings which may be taken for the purpose of establishing such Station. That a Memorial be sent…to each of the following Railway Companies, namely, the Midland, the Great Northern, and the London and North Western, requesting them to take into consideration the desirability of cooperating for the purpose of establishing a Central Railway Station according to the plan produced…” This plan prepared by the engineers T. Greenhalgh Walker and Edward Parry M.I.C.E., who was also the County Surveyor, envisaged using the ‘Rookeries’ and more for the location of the station, in total about 10 acres. More precisely the site would be a 300feet band from Parliament Street to Long Row, stretching west to east from Market Street to Heathcoat Street. Further eastwards a viaduct would be constructed to affect a linkage with the existing rail network.
A Council committee was appointed to carry the project forward. No response from any of the three railway companies has ever been officially recorded nor even a suspicion of a reaction traced. The only additional reference comes on 5 December 1881 when on the recommendation of the General Works [etc.] Committee the extension of the tramways would be deferred until the location of the central railway station had been settled.
In the end the clearance and redevelopment of the ‘Rookeries’ was achieved not by the architectural competition – although the prizes were awarded* and the site partially cleared – but by the plans drawn up by the Borough Engineer, Arthur Brown, the King and Queen Streets Y scheme, which was finally approved on 7 October 1889.
The Council’s next direct involvement with railways occurred on 1 February 1886 when the Estates Committee suggested, successfully with modifications, that the Council should assist the proposed branch line, the future Nottingham Suburban Railway, by contributing to the cost of the (Parliamentary) Bill. The thrust of the Great Central Railway across, over and under Nottingham was even further ahead.
However, supposing one or other of the railway companies had built a central station according to the plans submitted to them. Think of the buildings that are valued today that would either have been demolished or just not built.
One legacy of one architect in particular would have been dramatically reduced, Watson Fothergill, or as he was known until 1892, Fothergill Watson.
Express Chambers, his newspaper offices on Upper Parliament Street (1876) and probably his Nottingham and Notts Bank on Thurland Street (1882 and earlier) would have been demolished. His own office at 15 George Street (1895), Furley and Co shop and offices, now T.S.B., Lower Parliament Street (1896), Jessop’s old department store King Street (1895), and E. Skipwith shop and Queen’s Chambers Long Row and King Street (1897) would not have been built.
Other buildings that would have gone include T.C. Hine’s Corn Exchange, Thurland Street (1849-50), R.C. Sutton’s Parliament Street Methodist Church (1874), and the Broadway Cinema, then the Wesleyan Chapel, by S.S. Rawlinson (1839).
There would have been no need for a Victoria Station, so no Victoria Centre. The Elite Cinema from Adamson and Kinns (1921) would never have been erected, similarly the Prudential Assurance building, King Street by Waterhouse and Son (1894-6), the Argos Catalogue Shop, Lower Parliament Street, built for Buckoll King fruit and vegetable wholesalers (1900) and the National Telephone Exchange George Street (1898), both by Albert Nelson Bromley.
In addition had the ‘Rookeries’ been replaced by a central station and its approaches, another unhealthy area of 13 acres within the bounds of Lower Parliament Street, Glasshouse Street, Woodborough Road, and Melbourne Street/Milton Street having 1,300 houses, 20 public houses, and the Union Workhouse, would have survived – but for how long? The core of the present City Hospital was built to replace the Union Workhouse so what extra hospital provision would have eventually been erected? Would the close proximity of a large Victorian railway station have influenced T. Cecil Howitt’s choice of style, neo-Baroque, for his Council House?
Ken Brand (September 2003)
*The first prize in the architectural competition of 1881 was awarded to the partnership of Robert Evans and William Jolley, both former pupils of T.C. Hine, under the pseudonym of ‘Sweetness and Light’. Hine and Fothergill Watson both entered the competition but were unplaced.
I have invited Stephen Best to use his encyclopaedic knowledge of railways to speculate about:
The Great Northern Railway Derbyshire Extension of the 1870s, running as it did along or outside the eastern and northern edges of Nottingham, had not provided the borough with a new town-centre station. This was in contrast to its path through Derby, which had resulted in the addition of a new and fairly central G.N. station in Friargate. Nottingham’s most central stations were, therefore, still in Station Street and London Road. Did the Corporation want to remedy this?
In addition to the proposed rail connections to the east of the envisaged Central Station, other lines in tunnels would have been constructed to connect with the Great Northern at Bulwell, and the Midland Railway at Radford.
Many stations in cities and important towns were used by trains of two or more companies. Very often this was by means of running powers, enabling one company to run trains over another’s line, and into its station. In fewer cases stations were jointly owned: for example, at Carlisle, Bristol, Chester, Leeds, and Manchester. In the Nottingham area, however, rivalry between the Midland and the Great Northern was intense, and would continue to be so. 1882 saw the opening of the Great Northern Leen Valley line in direct competition with the Midland’s Mansfield branch. These two routes, which crossed and recrossed, were always within a few hundred yards of each other. Perhaps the competition was just too fierce for the idea of sensible railway co-operation to take root in Nottingham at that day, and the proposal for a Central Station simply came at the wrong time?
Trying to guess who might have designed Nottingham’s prestigious station is a beguiling pastime. And, it must be asked, had the scheme come to fruition, surely such a prominent building would have possessed what the Midland Station has always lacked - a station hotel?
If any of the three railway companies approached by the council had agreed to build a station, it would in all probability have employed a leading architect. It is, for the sake of argument, reasonable to postulate that the legal preliminaries and investigations of consequent engineering works would have taken two or three years. So, had the Midland been the railway to build the Central Station, Charles Trubshaw might well have come into the picture. Having previously been architect to the Midland Railway’s Northern Division, he became in 1884 architect to the entire system. Trubshaw designed important stations at Bradford Forster Square (with a hotel, 1890): Leicester (1892): and Sheffield (1904.) It would have been good for Nottingham to have one of this important railway architect’s buildings.
The London & North Western Railway was never to make much of a show in Nottingham, its only line in the county owned outright being from Trent Lane Junction to Manvers Street Goods Station, Sneinton. However, one architect who had designed for the LNWR, and was still active in the 1880s, was no less a figure than Alfred Waterhouse. He had designed the North Western Hotel, opened in 1871, which fronted Lime Street Station in Liverpool. Nottingham has too few buildings by Waterhouse, but, had the Central Station ever been built, we should not now have his Prudential Building in King Street, since that street itself would not have been laid out.
Finally, there was the Great Northern. T.C. Hine’s Great Northern station
in London Road was widely praised, and the stations between Nottingham and
Grantham were by him. Would Hine, though, have contemplated designing a major
railway station after the rejection of his plans for the St Pancras Station
and Midland Grand Hotel just over a decade earlier? We cannot know. He was,
however, interested enough in the development of the centre of Nottingham
to have sent in an (unsuccessful) entry for the Rookeries improvement competition
which was also under way in 1881. It would be fascinating to know what Hines
St Pancras design had looked like, and whether it, or a version of it, could
have re—emerged as Nottingham Central Station. Might this station even
have proved to be London Road (Low Level) on a much vaster scale?
Stephen Best
September 2003
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