Last week I went to visit Nottingham Castle for the first time not only since the pandemic began but also since they reopened after a £30 million refurbishment. Timed tickets are available online with an adult ticket priced at £13 though city residents like myself receive a 10% discount.
The Llandudno War Memorial commemorates those who died in both World Wars. It’s a large obelisk with a golden ball at the top that was first unveiled in 1922. It was designed by Sidney Colwyn Foulkes.
Built in 1877 by R C Sutton in red brick this was originally a chemist’s shop, then a restaurant and then a shop again. It is quite a striking building, designed to have a continuous shopfront with plate glass windows though right now the windows are boarded up and there doesn’t appear to be any business based there.
Now the Conservation Centre for National Museums Liverpool this was originally a warehouse built for storing rail freight for the Midland Railway in 1872. Designed by Henry Sumners it’s made of red brick with arched openings on each of the four walls large enough for freight to pass through. It was designated a Grade II listed building in 1975.
When I took photos of this building next to Russell Square it was the Hotel Russell but now it is the five star Kimpton Fitzroy London. Built in 1898 by the architect Charles Fitzroy Doll it was opened in 1900 and its terracotta decoration was apparently based on the Chateau de Madrid near Paris which was demolished in the 1790s.
Currently the address of a large Foyle’s bookshop, 107 Charing Cross, built in 1938, used to house the college for the Distributive Trades and St Martin’s School of Art.
The Guildhall and Stonebow has been the meeting place of Lincoln City Council from medieval times to the present. The term stonebow is derived from Old Norse and means a stone arch. The first gateway on the site dates from around 211AD. The Guildhall which was located elsewhere was moved to above the stonebow in 1237. The present Guildhall however dates from 1520.
The Lloyd’s building, sometimes referred to as the Inside Out Building, for obvious reasons, is the headquarters of the insurers Lloyd’s of London.
The Town Mission Ragged School in Brook Street in Nottingham was built in 1858. Ragged schools were developed from an idea of John Pounds, a Portsmouth shoemaker, who believed that poor children should have basic schooling rather than being sent out to work. The Earl of Shaftesbury then formed the Ragged School Union in 1844.
The Hunterian Museum within the University of Glasgow is Scotland’s oldest public museum. Free to enter, the museum began when William Hunter, a Scottish anatomist and physician, died and left his collections to the university. The museum first opened in 1807 at the university’s old campus on the High Street and then moved to the new campus in 1870.
