Description guide for Nottingham city centre buildings
Please refer to the provided map (see end of document) for building locations and numbering.
There is no need to enter any buildings, all observations should be made externally.
The information in this Description Guide (including building numbering) is taken from Waltham (2006) and Horton & Lott (2005).
Building & rock material descriptions
(1) The Arkwright Building is mainly constructed using limestone blocks (“Ancaster Stone”, a type of limestone quarried near Ancaster in Lincolnshire). Built in 1877-80, the features around the main entrance frontage is relatively unweathered and illustrate the excellent freestone qualities of the Ancaster Stone limestone (i.e. the ability to chisel and shape without fracture). The building is roofed with an olive green / grey coloured slate (“Westmoreland Slate”, originating from the Lake District). The boundary wall is mostly sandstone, with repairs of coarse artificial render (coating); it also contains limestone pillars and copings (i.e. stone blocks used to cap the low boundary wall around the building).
(2) St Andrews Church dates from the 1860s, and consists of brown and red-tinted limestone (quarried locally and known as “Bulwell Stone”). This coarse dolomitic limestone was the most common building stone in Nottingham from Victorian times onwards. There are also decorative courses of grey, silty limestone (originating from the “Scunthorpe Mudstone” limestone formation).
(4) The Newton Building is clad in limestone (quarried in Dorset and known as “Portland Stone”). Differential weathering of the coping stones (i.e. stone blocks use as capping) in the boundary wall has exposed many fossils of molluscs (bivalves). Resistant coarse grained sandstone (known as “Millstone Grit”, from Derbyshire) forms the lowest courses of the building frontage.
(5) The Guildhall (across South Sherwood Street from the Newton Building) shows a good example of the freestone quality (i.e. the ability to chisel and shape without fracture) and durability of “Millstone Grit” sandstone, quarried near Matlock in 1887. A different, more fine-grained, sandstone (“Coal Measures Sandstone” from Derbyshire) has been used in the entrance steps and floor.
(37) The Express Chambers building on Upper Parliament Street is an example of work by one of Nottingham’s most well known architects. The bulk of the building is built of sandstone (“Millstone Grit”) from Derbyshire. Dolomitic sandstone (“Red Mansfield Stone”, from north Nottinghamshire) forms alternate blocks in the window arches and in the ground-floor window colonettes (decorative columns) and pillars.
(30) The former Nottingham and Notts Bank building on the corner of Pelham Street and Thurland Street was built in 1877-82, and is now occupied by All Saints and Bravissimo. The main structure is built of sandstone (“Millstone Grit” from a quarry in Darley Dale, Derbyshire), with the latest renovations using matching sandstone from a quarry in Grindleford, Derbyshire. Dolomitic sandstone (“Red Mansfield Stone”) was used for the colonettes (decorative columns), but some have been replaced with darker red sandstone (possibly the “St Bees Red sandstone” from Cumbria). Larvikite, an igneous rock, forms the Pelham Street ground level frontage (with this specific type of larvikite being “Blue Pearl” larvikite, from Norway). Above it is a course of granite from Finland (with a misleading trade name of “Balmoral Red” to aid its marketing). There are also friezes (decorative horizontal bands) carved in white limestone (“Portland Stone” from Dorset). The roof is green slate, probably from Cumbria.
(29) The former Nottingham Journal Building (now occupied by Tanners estate agents) on Pelham Street was built in 1860, mainly of brick
