This website focuses on two highly distinctive buildings in the centre of Nottingham: the "Castle" and the Council House. These two symbolically charged landmarks are linked by a series of monuments and memorials. Some of these are also addressed. The places and spaces under discussion directly concern issues of history, heritage, identity and power. It is our intention to introduce some of these themes through these tangible examples whilst allowing room for differing interpretations and associations.
The internet can be considered to be an alternative public realm. We hope therefore that this website will enrich and enliven the real artefacts and spaces about which we speak.
The following text comes courtesy of English Heritage:
Public Sculpture in Nottingham
Nottingham Castle serves as the main focus for this introduction to the city's public art and architecture. There is a notable collection of sculptures in and around the Norman castle's steep sloping grounds. On the northern façade of the Castle is a large stone relief coat of arms of the Duke of Newcastle who rebuilt the ruined Parliamentary stronghold as a mansion in the 1670s, and a much- disfigured equestrian portrait of the first Duke (c. 1680), carved in the round by Sir William Wilson (1641-1710). This was vandalised at the time of the Reform Bill riots. Near here is a plaque marking the spot where Charles I raised the Royalist standard on 22 August 1642, marking the beginning of the English Civil War.
Since 1878, the Castle has housed Nottingham Castle Museum and Art Gallery - the first municipal museum of its kind outside London. An earlier School of Art, established in 1872 by the Town Council, had been housed in the city's Exchange Buildings, Old Market Square (replaced in the 1920s by the Council House). The first exhibition attracted 131,995 visitors, after which the museum's committee members stated: 'the Exhibition is daily teaching, in addition to other great principles, admirable lessons of order and self respect ... mainly due to the refining influence which works of Arts and Sciences have on the multitudes who assemble to study them.'
The statues and memorials in the streets and parks of Nottingham illustrate this notion that art is intended to both decorate and educate. They reveal the history of the city: its role in various conflicts from the Civil War to the Great War and beyond; local heroes; industry and technology; history and legend. Look in the Arboretum, Waverley Street; the historic Lace Market, and along the pedestrianised Albert Street. The Memorial Gardens, on the Victoria Embankment, has a statue of Queen Victoria by Albert Toft (unveiled 1905) which stood in Old Market Square until 1953.