Lotherton Chapel is a small building dating to the 12th century that is next to Lotherton Hall in Leeds. It fell into disrepair until 1913 when Colonel Gascoigne, the then owner of the Hall, had it refurbished to be used as a family chapel, though it is still Church of England property.
The Britannia Panopticon in Glasgow began life as the Britannic Music Hall in the late 1850s. Items on the bill included dancing girls and comic and ballad singers and it was also a popular haunt for prostitutes. A Mr and Mrs Rossborough took over to clean things up and revamped the interior and increased the range of acts.
Opened as a shopping centre in 1992, this impressive looking building with some gorgeous detailing and intricately designed towers was built between 1895 – 1899 and used to be the main Amsterdam post office building.
This is another monument that stands in a recess of Exchange Flags. The statue is a memorial to the members of the Liverpool Exchange Newsroom who died during the First World War and depicts soldiers ready for battle and a nurse tending to a wounded soldier. Britannia is above overseeing events.
For my birthday back in May we paid a visit to Burghley House and Gardens (the Garden of Surprises and the Sculpture Garden will feature in future posts). Built to impress, the house was the work of William Cecil, 1st Lord Burghley and Treasurer to Elizabeth I and is still home to his descendants today.
St Leonard’s is the parish church of Rockingham Village and sits just below the walls of the castle – it is open to visitors on days when the castle is open to the public. There was probably a chapel inside the castle in the 11th century and in the 15th century a church on the site of the present building was destroyed in the Civil War; the present church dates to 1650.
A Grade II listed building Exchange Flags is an office complex and restaurant space in the centre of Liverpool’s commercial district. The name of the building reflects the city’s history in regards to slavery – cotton traders and brokers would meet here to do their buying and selling and exchange a form of business card, hence the name.
George John Vulliamy, the superintending architect of the Metropolitan Board of Water, created these electric lamps that stretch along the Thames in 1870. Although they are referred to as dolphins – possibly because they are supposed to be modelled on dolphin sculptures that are part of the Fontana del Nettuno in Rome – they are actually sturgeons.
After our visit to Canons Ashby we were looking for somewhere to visit to break up our drive back to Nottingham and decided that Rockingham Castle was the perfect choice. It’s still a family home and is only open on certain afternoons throughout the year, so always check the website and pre-book tickets (adult £14.00) if you plan to visit. It’s also worth noting that photography is not allowed inside the building itself.
MOSTYN Art Gallery – the building on the right in the below picture – is a contemporary art gallery in Llandudno, Wales. The history of the gallery begins in 1895 in Conwy with the Gwynedd Ladies’ Art Society. They asked the philanthropist and photographer Lady Augusta Mostyn to secure new premises for them and this building became the home of the society from 1901 to 1903. Women were not permitted in the male artist’s societies so this is possibly the first art gallery dedicated to exclusively exhibiting work by female artists in the world. Interestingly that wasn’t the original intention of Lady Augusta who wanted it to be a space for local people to use (many of the Society members were actually based elsewhere in the UK) and eventually the Society was asked to leave.
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