The Exchange building in Nottingham was the city’s first shopping centre, opened in 1929. Found next to the Council House the Christmas decorations and tree have been of the same pretty design for around five years now but it’s worth a quick walk through if you’re visiting the nearby Winter Wonderland.
Tis the season for a lot of Christmas themed activities on the blog. Nottingham Winter Wonderland is back after a slightly disastrous attempt to return during the height of COVID. Lots of the familiar stalls have returned including delicious looking food offerings, several bars and the ice rink, though this year this has been expanded to include The Sky Skate, a covered terrace and ice path above the market, the only one of its kind in the UK, and which was proving very popular. [The official website linked above has better pics than I’d manage]. Winter Wonderland opened on November 15 and runs until December 31.
On Monday I had a lovely lunch with a friend at The Cosy Club, Nottingham. She’d asked me to pick the venue and I chose here because I’ve always been fascinated by this building which is just around the corner from the Market Square in the centre of Nottingham. The Cosy Club, a chain of restaurants, moved in at the beginning of 2020, and then promptly had to close because of COVID. However they’ve now reopened and seem to be doing very well judging by how busy it was (we managed to get a table in the bar area without booking, but absolutely book in advance if there’s a larger group and at dinner time). Prior to this the building had been vacant for nearly 20 years and as you’ll see they’ve done a great job of restoring it to its former glory.
I spent the first few days of this week visiting with a friend including a day trip to Bath’s Christmas market. We had been before, a few years before COVID, but only spent a limited time there so on this trip we wanted to get there early and enjoy a full-ish day making a dint in our Christmas shopping. It was easier to drive rather than take the train, particularly with the train strikes and we knew that Bath has a very efficient Park and Ride system, with several sites available around the city. Parking is free, you just pay for the bus ticket (we paid £5.40 for two adults, other combinations of fares are available) and the buses are regular and take about 10 minutes. The weather was extremely foggy which, while making for a slightly eventful drive home, also made for some atmospheric photos, especially later on in the day when the lights started to come on.
Abbey House, located at 219-229 Baker Street, London contains part of the central tower and a section of the façade of what was the headquarters for the Abbey Road Building Society (now Abbey National) from 1932 until 2002. The Art Deco styling of the building was designed by J. J. Joass and is original, the rest of the building was rebuilt as residential and commercial units as well as underground parking.
The area that is now Regent’s Park once belonged to the monks of Barking Abbey until Henry VIII dissolved the monastery and turned it into a hunting park. In 1835 it became a public park on the instructions of the future King George IV who at the time was the Prince Regent (ruling in place of his mentally ill father George III until his death in 1820 when he became George IV). That’s why the park is The Regent’s Park, but hardly anyone ever calls it that.
On my most recent visit to Woodthorpe Grange Park I went to have a look around the Plant Shop and saw that the Tropical House was open. I haven’t been inside for probably at least a decade because it has had some very odd opening hours, but now I see they are keeping it open at the same time as the shop, so Monday-Sunday 10-4. There’s been a nursery (in the flower sense!) at Woodthorpe since the 1920s and the flower displays that adorn the city during the spring and summer and for the Britain in Bloom and other competitions in Nottingham are grown here; the shop sells off excess stock as well as locally produced gifts.
Daunt Books is a chain of independent bookshops founded by James Daunt with the Marylebone branch being the first acquisition. It was bought by Daunt in 1990 – before that it was an Edwardian bookshop built in 1910 which claims to be the world’s first custom-built bookshop. It’s one of those places that turns up all the time on best bookshops in London lists and as I happened to be walking past it on my most recent trip to London I decided to pop in and have a look for myself.
On 27 November 1982 Elton John performed the inaugural concert at the Royal Concert Hall and to celebrate its 40th anniversary they opened up their doors today (12 November 2022) for a free open day which included backstage tours, music performances and an exhibition on the construction of the building and past performers. It proved very popular, more so than I think the venue was expecting. I got there at just after 10am and joined an already long queue and it took about 40 minutes or so to snake through the building to the start of the tour but it was very good natured, I got chatting to strangers as we waited and the staff were lovely and very organised.
This church is the parish church of Liverpool and is also referred to as the Sailor’s Church, for its relationship to the Mersey and its shipping. There’s been a place of worship on the site for more than 750 years.
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