Heritage

Heritage  2025

Visit to Nottingham Playhouse.

• Nottingham Playhouse is a theatre, it was first established as a repertory theatre in 1948 when it operated from a former cinema in Goldsmith Street.  Directors during this period included Val May and Frank Dunlop. The current building opened in 1963.
• The architect of the current theatre, constructed as an example od Modern architecture, was Peter Moro who had worked on the interior design of the Royal Festival Hall in London. When the theatre was competed, it was controversial as it faces the gothic revival Roman Catholic Cathedral designed by Augustus Pugin. However, the building received a Civic Trust Award in 12965. Despite the modern external appearance and the circular auditorium walls, the theatre has a proscenium layout, seating an audience of 770.
• During the 1980s, when concrete interiors were out of fashion, the Playhouse suffered from insensitive “refurbishment” that sought to hide its character. Since 1996, it has been a Grade II* listed building and in 2024, the theatre was sympathetically restored and refurbished with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.
• The sculpture Sky Mirror by Anish Kapoor was installed between the theatre and the adjacent green space of Wellington Circus in 2001 at the cost of £1.25m (equivalent to £2.6100.00 in 2023). It is one of the main features of the 160 seat Djanogly Terrace and in autumn 2007 won the Nottingham Pride of Place in a public vote to determine the city’s favourite landmark.
• In 2019, Nottingham Playhouse was named The Stage Regional Theatre of the Year, and in 2023 named UK Theatre’s Most Welcoming Theatre for its access work.

• Venue: Nottingham Playhouse.
• Date: Monday 17th February.
• Cost: £8.
• Time: Meet at Slab Square, in front of the Council House. The tour begins in Playhouse at 11.30am.
• Transport:
• Departing Venue:
• Booking open at December ’24 meeting.
• For further details contact: Claire Wilkie.

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Visit to Whitby

Encircled by the wild North York Moors and edged by a spectacular coastline with the highest cliffs in England, this area is one of striking beauty and character. Breathe deep, feel free and relax. With stunning scenery and quaint towns and villages, as well as history and tradition, superb local food and world-famous festivals. “Whitby is a seaside town in Yorkshire, northern England, split by the river Esk. On the East Cliff, overlooking the North Sea, the ruined Gothic Whitby Abbey was Bram Stocker’s inspiration for “Dracula”. Nearby, is the Church of St Mary, reached by 1299 steps. The Captain Cook Memorial Museum, in the house where Cook once lived, displays paintings and maps. West of town is West Cliff Beach, lined with beach huts.

• Venue: Whitby.
• Date: Monday 2nd June.
• Cost: £20.
• Time: Depart Morrison’s Woodhouse 7.3-am.
• Transport:
• Departing venue: Whitby 4.00pm.
• Booking open at April Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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Visit to Cusworth Hall

• Explore architecture, heritage, and landscape history at Cusworth Hall and Park. The beautiful Grade I Listed building set in acres of historic parkland offers spectacular views across the Borough.
  Cusworth Estate Cusworth was first mentioned as ‘Cuzeuuorde’ in the domesday survey of 1086 but there has been a settlement here for centuries dating back to the Anglo-Saxon period. Many different families had held the lands and manor but they did not always live at Cusworth.
  ‘Old Hall’ A large house is first mentioned in 1327. Robert Wrightson bought the lands and manor of Cusworth in 1669 from Sir Christopher Wray. The first surviving map of Cusworth is that of Joseph Dickinson’s 1719 plan which shows the hall and gardens covered only 1 acre with the orchards a further 2 acres. What is most significant at this time was the ‘Parke’ of some 25 acres. The ‘Old Hall’ was next to the walled gardens in the centre of Cusworth village. In 1726 the ‘Old Hall’ was expanded including altering the gardens between 1726 and 1735. This expanded the kitchen garden into the size and form we know today with the Bowling Green and Pavilion. In the period 1740–1745 William Wrightson employed George Platt, a mason architect from Rotherham, to build a new hall – the current Cusworth Hall – high on a scarp slope on the Magnesian Limestone removing the Hall, and the family, from the village of Cusworth. The ‘Old Hall’ was largely demolished in the process, many components from the old building re-used in the new.
  Cusworth Hall Cusworth Hall itself and its outbuildings are at the centre of the park enjoying ‘prospect’ over the town of Doncaster. The Grade I-listed eighteenth-century hall was designed by George Platt in the Palladian style. Cusworth Hall is handsome, well-proportioned, with wings consisting of a stable block and great kitchen. Later additions by James Paine include a chapel and library. It has decorative outbuildings including a Brew House, Stable Block and Lodge. In addition, it has a decorative garden called Lady Isabella’s Garden on the west side adjacent to the chapel. On its eastern flank the stable block and gardeners’ bothy. Attached to the bothy is a decorative iron enclosure known as the Peacock Pen.
  Cusworth Park Cusworth Park is an historic designed landscape with a Grade II listing in the English Heritage Register of Parks and Gardens. It was designed and created by the nationally known landscape architect Richard Woods to ‘improve’ the park in the style made famous by Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown now termed ‘The English Landscape Park’. Work started in 1761 laying out the ‘grounds and the serpentine river’. The land forming the existing park is 60 acres (25 hectares) – 250,000m, and was part of the much larger parkland (250 acres) and estates (20,000 acres) of the Battie-Wrightson family who owned Cusworth Hall.
• The walled garden The earliest description of the layout of the park and walled gardens is that shown on Joseph Dickinson’s plan. 1761 Richard Woods altered areas within the walled gardens. Together ‘woods’ Kitchen Garden and Green House Garden occupy the site of the orchard shown on Dickinson’s plan.
  The purchase of bricks from Epworth for the construction of the walled gardens is recorded in the New House Accounts. The garden was a compartmentalised space, however with focus on domestic production in some sections, exotics in another, an orchard, and formal flower gardens in the rest. The kitchen gardens included pine pits (pineapple house), later to become stove houses and mushroom houses. The Entrance Terrace (Upper Terrace) Old plans show a narrow-walled enclosure or ‘entrance terrace’ running east–west. The walls of this enclosure may well have been of stone or stoned faced and still, in part survives. To the south are the main components of the walled garden. Access from the terrace down to the bowling green is via a flight of stone steps. Bowling Green Described on Richard Woods plans of 1760. This is a roughly square, walled enclosure where the bowling green is surrounded by an earthed banked terraced walk. The enclosure is defined by a brick wall, which was lowered along its western side to give a view over to the Green House Garden. Summerhouse / Bowling Pavilion Built 1726. The summerhouse is the main architectural feature of the walled garden. It is of two storeys with the upper storey accessed from the Bowling Green. There is an impression of more carefully shaped quoins at the corners but it is probable that the walls were originally rendered and lime washed externally. There are windows giving views across the Bowling Green from the upper chamber and across the Flower Garden from the lower chamber. During restoration in the 1990s the upper chamber was decorated with Trompe-l’œil. showing views of imagined walled gardens at Cusworth. Flower Garden The garden was designed to be viewed principally from the higher position of the bowling green. It was subdivided by cross-paths and furnished with four formal beds. Although one of the smallest compartments, the flower garden was the most highly ornamental and tightly designed. It would have created a formal, colourful architectural space contrasting with the simplicity of the boHall Garden The function of the Hall Garden is not clear but appears to have been an extension of the decorative scheme of the flower garden. The Hall Garden has a perimeter walk and is then divided into two plots by a further, central path. Peach House This whitewash wall indicates the position of the peach house. Melon Pits Melon pits ran east–west along this area. Orchard Through the 18th century the orchard was not enclosed and remained open until the late 19th century. It was double its current size extending back up to Cusworth Lane until the northern half was sold off for housing in the 1960s.

• Venue: Cusworth Hall.
• Date: Friday June 27th.
• Cost: £16
• Time: Depart Morrison’s 9.00am.
• Transport:
• Departing venue: Cusworth 4.00pm.
• Booking open at April Meeting.
• For further details contact: Liz Wilson.

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Visit to the Rock Cemetery, Nottingham. 

Huge crosses, stone angels standing blind and silent, weathered markers for the rich and famous, the poor and downtrodden — these are the symbols of Nottingham’s historic Church Cemetery. It covers a wide tract of land, around 13 acres in total, bounded by Mansfield Road, Forest Road and The Forest Recreation Ground. It is a fascinating place to visit, full of mystery and surprises. It is also a place of poignancy and sadness, nowhere more touching than among the paupers’ graves which lie in a sandpit in the centre of the cemetery. The inscription on one of the tombstones, eroded by time and pitted with age, is heartbreaking. It bears the name Joseph Fenwick and, in the column for his age, the words “five minutes”. Nothing more. The poor little mite doesn’t lie alone. He shares a last humble resting place with hundreds of others — babies, children and adults — who all had one thing in common. They came from families too poor to give them a proper burial so, back in the early 1900s, they were placed in paupers’ graves, often 20 or more beneath one heavy grey slab. Here lies George Sheppard, whose life lasted barely an hour; Patricia Dormer who was only ten hours old; William Congden, 12 hours; Laura Hewitt, six days. Some of the names you can no longer read. In that small, sheltered area they call St Ann’s Valley, a solitary white cross stands out. Beneath one of the slabs, soldier Albert Atkins, of the Royal Garrison Artillery, was buried. Wounded during the First World War, he returned to his impoverished Nottingham home where he died in 1915 at the age of 42 and was buried in a pauper’s grave. Years later, when the Commonwealth War Graves Commission heard about Albert, they arranged to have a more respectful marker erected. To find it you have to walk down a curving path that leads to the little graveyard, 20 feet below the level of the main cemetery. It is a
tranquil spot. Two flowering trees stretch out over the burial plots which lie in the shadow of the old quarry’s red stone walls, dotted with caves and brick-built arches intended to be used as catacombs.
Thousands of commuters pass by in Mansfield Road every day, the majority neither giving it a look nor a second thought.The site of the cemetery, at the top of a hill where public executions used to take place, was once well outside the town boundary. But with population figures soaring, the Enclosure Act of 1845 allowed the city fathers to take more land, and a four-acre area overlooking The Forest racecourse, where a row of 13 windmills once stood, was set aside for burials. It was a man called Edwin Patchitt who designed the cemetery. His tomb is set on a large, grassy space. The cemetery was created on the site of an old sand mine run by a man named Rouse, and laid out around the many sandstone outcrops — hence the popular name of Rock Cemetery.

Venue: Rock Cemetery, Nottingham.

• Date: Monday (pm) 29th September.
• Cost: £10.
• Time: Meet at the entrance to the Cemetery at 2.00pm (further instructions will be given when Bookings open).
• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at July Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Venue:
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• Cost: £
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• Departing venue:
• Booking open at Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Cost: £
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• Departing venue:
• Booking open at Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Venue:
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• Cost: £
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• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at  Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Time:
• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at  Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Venue: Whitby.
• Date: Monday 2nd June.
• Cost: £20.
• Time:
• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at April Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Venue: Rock Cemetery, Nottingham.
• Date: Monday (pm) 29th September.
• Cost: £10.
• Time:
• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at July Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Venue: Nottingham
• Date: Monday (pm) 29th September
• Cost: £10
• Time:
• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at July Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Venue: Nottingham
• Date: Monday (pm) 29th September
• Cost: £10
• Time:
• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at July Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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• Venue:
• Date:
• Cost:
• Time:
• Transport:
• Departing venue:
• Booking open at  Meeting.
• For further details contact:

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Ideas for future visits

Past Heritage group trips