Qualla: Nottingham Council House

Nottingham Council House: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stephen Richards, CC BY-SA 2.0. Meet me by the lions. That phrase, half-instruction and half-promise, has been part of Nottingham's dialect since the building opened in 1929 - and Agamemnon and Menelaus, the two art-deco lions sculpted by Joseph Else, are still where their creator left them, guarding the entrance to the Council House from either side of the steps. Above them rises a 200-foot dome of Portland stone, quarried from the same beds Christopher Wren used for St Paul's Cathedral. Below them, the Old Market Square goes about its business, just as it has for centuries.

Read more: Nottingham Council House on Qualla

Image: Stephen Richards | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Council House: A Dome for the Depression

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vasa1628, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Alderman Herbert Bowles laid the foundation stone on 17 March 1927, Britain had not yet tipped into the Great Depression - but the slide was beginning. The Council House was an act of confidence in difficult times. Thomas Cecil Howitt designed it in a confident neo-Baroque s...

Read more: Nottingham Council House on Qualla

Image: Vasa1628 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nottingham Council House: Little John in the Belfry

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lee J Haywood, CC BY-SA 3.0. Tucked inside the dome's belfry hangs a bell with a name and a job. 'Little John' is the affectionately-named hour bell - the deepest-toned non-swinging clock bell in the British Isles, cast in 1928 by the famed John Taylor & Co. foundry of Loughborough. When Little John strikes ...

Read more: Nottingham Council House on Qualla

Image: Lee J Haywood | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nottingham Council House: The Painted History Inside

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Vasa1628, CC BY-SA 3.0. Step through the entrance loggia and into the marble hall. Italian marble lines the walls and floor, the city's arms inlaid as a mosaic at the centre. Climb the sweeping staircase and you arrive at 'Welcome', a bronze figure with arms outstretched, presented to Nottingham by Sir ...

Read more: Nottingham Council House on Qualla

Image: Vasa1628 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Nottingham Council House: Cups and Coronations

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Sutton, CC BY-SA 2.0. The balcony above the lions has had a busy century. The Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII, later still the Duke of Windsor) opened the building from there on 22 May 1929. In 1959, Forest's FA Cup was hoisted from it; in 1979 and 1980, so was the European Cup, twice. The interior...

Read more: Nottingham Council House on Qualla

Image: John Sutton | CC BY-SA 2.0

Nottingham Council House: Critics and Lovers

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Smashman, Public domain. Nikolaus Pevsner, surveying Nottinghamshire in 1951, was not impressed. He called the Council House a 'neo-Baroque display' at a moment when modernism had moved on, and grumbled that 'Wren has to answer for much, once the connection between Greenwich and this dome (via the Old Ba...

Read more: Nottingham Council House on Qualla

Image: Smashman | Public domain