In 2014 Transport for London, along with businesses and artists created an art trail to celebrate the iconic London bus. All the sculptures were to be auctioned off for charity in 2015 but at least one, Westminster Bus by Jenny Leonard, was still in place in late 2016 when I took these photos.
The Newark Museum can be found inside the National Civil War Centre and spans a few rooms with displays of items that are in some way connected to the town. The most stunning piece there must be the Newark torc, found by metal detector Maurice Richardson in 2005 near the River Trent. Made from rolled gold wires twisted into eight ropes they would have been traded or given as gifts between tribes around 200-50BC.
On one of my walks through Westminster I passed by Westminster Cathedral, one of those buildings designed to take your breath away. I didn’t have time to go inside but it has been placed firmly on my to revisit list.
One weekend in April we headed on the train to the National Civil War Centre in Newark. We’ve meant to visit since it first opened in 2015 but a recent feature on the local news spurred us on to finalise our plans. The museum is a quick 5 to 10 minute walk from Newark Castle Railway station in a somewhat unprepossessing building next to the Palace Theatre.
When exploring some of the buildings in Wollaton, Nottingham as part of September’s Open Heritage weekend we stopped off in the Admiral Rodney Pub for lunch (the food was delicious and I would absolutely recommend it).
This building in London used to house the Royal Masonic Trust for Boys and Girls, a charitable children’s organisation that still has offices further down the street.
Barley Hall is a reconstructed medieval townhouse that was originally built in around 1360 by the monks of Nostell Priory. A new wing was added in 1430 and it became the home of William Snawsell, Lord Mayor of York.
St Leonard’s Church in Wollaton, Nottingham, has been around since the 1200s and it would have fallen under the care of the Mortein and then the Willoughby families, owners of the nearby Wollaton Hall.
Watson Fothergill is one of my favourite Nottingham architects and I’ve written about him several times before. He had to move his architectural offices to George Street in Nottingham due to the building of the then Nottingham Victoria railway station (now Victoria Centre shopping centre) and this Grade II listed building was built in 1895. In 2015 part of the frontage was damaged by a truck and finally in the last month or so it has been repaired, so I went along to take photos. It says something about how well loved the building is that while I was there several people came up to me to express how pleased they were with the quality of the repair work.
Marble Arch was originally designed as an entrance to Buckingham Palace by the architect John Nash in 1827 but was completed in 1833 by Edward Blore. A well known but untrue story is that it was moved to its present site at Hyde Park because it was too narrow for Queen Victoria’s state coach to pass through, however the coach passed through the arch in 1838 on the way to her coronation without any problems; more likely it was moved as Queen Victoria and her family needed more space and the fourth wing of the Palace was built where it once stood. It moved to its current location in 1850.
