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Earlier this year, the Nottinghamshire HER completed its five-yearly audit. This audit, conducted in partnership with Historic England, analyses how effectively local Historic Environment Records (HERs) are being maintained and improved. It also helps to identify areas which could be improved upon in the future.

The audit looks at four key areas in particular: Content and Coverage, Data Standards and Security, Access and Engagement, and Infrastructure (Service Delivery). It looks at the quality of our records, how often we engage in public outreach, how maintain and protect our written and online records, as well as many other aspects.

We are delighted with the results of our recent audit. Across all four areas, we consistently received top marks, with very minimal suggestions for improvement. It signifies that the Nottinghamshire HER is currently amongst the highest rated in the country! This is a great achievement for us and one we are all very proud of.

The HER is a valuable tool for local planning and development, but also for the Nottinghamshire community. It helps to provide protection for heritage sites/features and helps to connect the local community to their local environment and landscapes. So we are over the moon that our hard work and dedication to improving the Nottinghamshire HER and engaging with the local community is being recognised.

We look forward to working on further enhancing the record and improving access to our resources to ensure we maintain a dynamic high-quality service.

If you would like to explore the results of all audited English HERs, you can interact with the map published on the Historic Environment website here (scroll down the page a little if you’re struggling to find it). Alternatively, you can read our audit summary for yourself here.

Above: A summary of our audit results

This wonderful articles comes from our Summer 1999 Heritage Newsletter:

The summer months are an appropriate time to catalogue the air photograph collection held in the HER. Cropmarks appearing in the fields of the county at this time of year can add greatly to our knowledge of Nottinghamshire’s past. Often these cropmarks reveal sites and features that cannot be discovered through other types of investigation. Cropmarks show as variations in colour which highlight areas where the crop has grown or ripened at different rates. So how have peoples’ activities created these cropmarks?

There are two types of cropmark that can form (see illustration above). In the first case, a buried feature, such as the remains of a wall or foundations of a building, can affect the make up of the soil in that area and cause it to be better drained. This means that the crops in this area are receiving less water than those in the rest of the field. Therefore, they grow slower and ripen quicker. These buried features show as yellow lines of ripe crop in an otherwise unripe green field.

Secondly, features cut into the ground, such as ditches and pits, usually retain more moisture than the rest of the surrounding crop due to the nature of the material that has filled the features over time. The material washed into the holes tend to contain more organic material than the surrounding soil and so holds more moisture. This means that the crops will grow quicker in the spring and show as darker green lines in a green field. Then, as the crop ripens in the summer, the plants over the ditches have more water and are later to ripen, showing as green lines in ripe cereals.

Cropmarks can give us a wealth of information about archaeology of many different periods. Aerial photographs of cropmarks in the Muskham area, for example, show vast areas of land marked out with complex field system and possible settlement sites that may date from the Iron Age and Roman periods. We would know a great deal less about the county’s past if it were not for this perspective from the air.

This wonderful article was first published in our Summer 1998 Heritage Newsletter:

We owe much to the Ancient Greeks and the Romans, even in Nottinghamshire (the Greeks they didn’t get a far as Britain in their conquering days – too cold for their sunny dispositions). But did you know, for example, that we owe them for the columns that adorn many buildings around us?

The Greeks originally used columns to make their public buildings more majestic such as their temples and government offices. How many of us have seen pictures of the glamorous Parthenon in Athens? It can be said that the Ancient Greeks refined the systems of the orders originally begun by the Egyptians and arrived at works of architecture of rare beauty.

What constitutes an order? It’s the entire column, consisting of the base, the shaft, and the capital, plus the entablature above, meaning the areas above the column including the frieze. Each order is slightly different. Please remember, these are Greek orders, and are different again from the Roman orders, as the Romans later copied the Greek ideas.

The simplest of columns is the Doric order. This order has no base and the column shaft as placed immediately on the top step of the building. It has a fluted shaft, tapering towards the top, with a simply curved capital under a square block. The frieze has divisions, known as triglyphs and metopes, one often decorated with sculpture.

The Ionic order is further enriched with sculpture. The capitals are the most recognisable features, ornamented with four spiral projections (known as volutes or ears), arranged to exhibit a flat face on the two opposite sides of the capital. The entablature is either left plain or decorated with a continuous sculptured frieze.

The Corinthian order was the most decorated, the capital being ornamented in a variety of ways, usually with figures or foliage plus similar volutes to the Ionic order.

And why are these so important to English architecture? In the late eighteenth century, travel to Greece and Rome became fashionable and a deep interest in the ancient forms of architecture arose. This was also influenced by archaeological discoveries at this time, such as at Pompeii, and by the removal of the Elgin Marbles from Athens to London, where the noble simplicity and serene grandeur was admired and therefore copied. The resulting form of architecture is known as the neo-classical style.

Above: Doric orders on the Roman style seat alcove at the Roman Temple Garden, Clumber Park, Worksop

Look out in the towns of Nottinghamshire, for examples of the Classical orders, both Greek and Roman, the difference mainly being that Roman orders tend not to have fluted columns. What is the most popular order that you can see?

This interesting piece comes form our Summer 1999 Heritage newsletter:

The year 1649 saw the trial and execution of Charles I, a monarch who had strong connections with Nottinghamshire during the English Civil War, especially Newark and Southwell. Centuries later, the start of the 21st century saw the climax of the anniversary celebration of events across the whole of the country, for groups involved in Civil War re-enactment – people who in their thousands recreate the life and battles of the 17th century. Events began in 1992, with the raising of the King’s Standard at Nottingham Castle, and the people of Nottingham continued to participate in events just as they did in the actual conflict, following in their ancestors’ footsteps!

Many people may have heard of Lucy Hutchinson, who wrote a famous set of memoirs describing the life of her husband John. John Hutchinson was the governor of Nottingham Castle, which was held by the Parliamentarians during the war. But as his portrait shows, he looked a long way from the stereotypical Roundhead! John Hutchinson, who lived in Owthorpe before the war, took control of the city at the start of the war and became Governor in the summer of 1643. He was also given charge of a regiment of foot soldiers. 3 companies of ‘Nottingham’ infantry took part in the Second siege of Newark, and these were probably soldiers from Hutchinson’s own regiment, based at Nottingham Castle.

Hutchinson was also present in 1646, when Newark – the last major Royalist garrison in the region – surrendered to the Scots in May. The Royalist governor at the time was Sir John Belasyse. His own personal regiment, again of foot, also took part in the summer of 1642, again from Nottinghamshire men, and also by soldiers from Yorkshire. It was part of the ‘Oxford Army’, the main Royalist field army, and fought in many of the major engagements of the First civil war, up to Naseby, in Northamptonshire, in 1645.

In various major re-enactment societies today, both these regiments still exist, Hutchinson’s being in the historically correct ‘Northern Association’ – echoing a group of counties that were brigaded together in Parliamentarian organisation over 375 years ago. Belasyse’s also exist, wearing all-blue uniforms that we know were worn by the ‘Oxford Army’, and carrying the colours that research has shown as being most likely those carried by their forbearers.

Maybe today, within these recreated regiments, there exists people who are the descendants of the soldiers of Nottinghamshire, who fought for different reasons beneath different flags, over 375 years ago!

This great article comes from our Spring 2000 Heritage newsletter:

Many of you will remember the days when going to the cinema meant a trip to the local ‘fleapit’. These were often large, impressive looking buildings that could accommodate a large section of the local community in one go. Some have been converted into bingo halls or warehouses and a few still retain their original interior decoration. The most fabulous and complete examples have been protected as listed buildings for some time now.

The cinema industry began in the 1890’s when the first shows were put on in small music halls and travelling fairs. The early films were made from highly combustible material and fires were a regular hazard. It wasn’t until the 1909 Cinematograph Act that the first ‘safe’ purpose-built buildings were constructed. By 1914, there were already some 3,500 cinemas across Britain. The ‘showman’s booth’ design was most common, with elaborate frontages behind which there would be a hall with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, panelled walls and, in more elaborate cases, a rear balcony. Names like ‘Electric’, ‘Picture Palace’, and ‘Imperial’ were typical, while the name ‘Coronation’ indicated a 1911 opening date. The Picture Palace, Long Row in Nottingham is a good example, dating to 1912, with its ornate front, decorated with marble and tile.

Following the First World War, a second generation of new larger venues were built. The Elite on Upper Parliament Street in Nottingham had an auditorium which could seat 1,500 people when it opened in 1921. Meanwhile in America, cinemas were even larger, incorporating the ‘splayed’ auditorium layout, and in 1927 the era of the ‘talkies’ was ushered in by the film ‘The Jazz Singer’. This was a time of rapid technological development and big business deals that produced the international chains like the ‘Empires’, and the British ‘Gaumonts’ and ‘Odeons’. Other Nottinghamshire cinemas from the 1920’s include the Majestic in Retford.

By the middle of the 1930’s and following the Second World War, the ‘Modern’ style came to be the one favoured by British cinema architects. Although essentially ‘international’ in style, regional variations are still visible, the Capitol in Radford is said to have Germanic influences, while the Regent in Kirkby has a softer ‘arts and crafts’ feel to it.

English Heritage have previously looked at cinemas that might be worthy of listing. They focused on pre-WWII cinemas or ones built before 1960 that have remained unaltered. Only the best examples of the nation’s cinemas were listed; for the rest, acknowledgement of their local important was more appropriate.

We already know about many of the old cinemas of the county. Here are some examples:

The Byron, Hucknall

The Regent, Kirkby

The Majestic, Retford

The Capitol, Elite and Picture Palace, Nottingham

Stanford Hall Cinema

The Strand, Market Warsop