{"id":741,"date":"2004-09-28T00:16:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-28T00:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/u75blog\/?p=741"},"modified":"2010-04-22T15:10:30","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T14:10:30","slug":"741","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/741\/","title":{"rendered":"A wedding in Nottingham"},"content":{"rendered":"

A wedding in Nottingham<\/strong><\/p>\n

Saturday morning saw us speeding north towards Nottingham for another marriage ceremony – they seem to be coming in thick and fast this year!<\/p>\n

The last time I’d visited Nottingham was back in the 1990s when I played a gig with indie\/goth\/dance outfit Melt at the Rock City<\/a> venue.<\/p>\n

I loved the venue, but the city presented an uninviting vista on a summer’s Saturday night, with loud drunks, ruffians and hotheads roaming the streets, and every bar and cafe seemingly sporting a chisel faced bouncer.<\/p>\n

\"Nottingham<\/p>\n

Returning a decade later, the signs weren’t too good: the city centre’s shopfronts had turned into a sea of bland, anytown multi-chains with corporate logos grinding down any spark of individuality.<\/p>\n

A walk through a dreadful, soulless, shopping centre dampened already-deflated spirits further, with the dull roar of air conditioning adding to the misery – whatever happened to fresh air?!<\/p>\n

Why do people put up with this kind of anonymous, depressing architecture? The people responsible for this dreary planning should be made to live in it.<\/p>\n

\"Nottingham<\/p>\n

The wedding took place in the imposing Council House, once the largest stone building built in Britain since the first world war.<\/p>\n

Opened by the Prince of Wales in May 1929, the building is dominated by a great central dome, rising some 200 feet above ground level.<\/p>\n

The tower contains “Little John” a two and a half ton striking bell reputed to be the deepest toned bell in the country.<\/p>\n

.\"Nottingham<\/p>\n

A large banner was draped over the Council House with a book of condolences inside in memory of the late, great Brian Clough<\/a>. I left a short note.<\/p>\n

We’ll never see his like again and football’s the worse for that fact.<\/p>\n

\"Nottingham<\/p>\n

The wedding took place inside a grand hall on the first floor (above is a view from the balcony), and happily, the ceremony was so touching that it managed to melt even the meanest hearts.<\/p>\n

The young couple were hopelessly in love with each other and the well attended ceremony was beautifully judged – even if they did make me mumble along to Reg Presley’s dire “Love is all Around”.<\/p>\n

\"Nottingham<\/p>\n

The wedding party moved on to the attractive confines of the (ahem) ‘castle’ grounds where I formed a far more pleasing impression of Nottingham.<\/p>\n

I didn’t feel like I knew the couple well enough to start sticking my scruffy phizog in their post-wedding poses, so I took a walk around the park, resplendent in late summer sunshine.<\/p>\n

As can be expected, the evening involved a fine wedding feast followed by large amounts of champagne and beer. Lovely!<\/p>\n

\"Nottingham<\/p>\n

Next morning, we took a walk through Lenton, an affluent, hilly suburb sporting some stunning Victorian Gothic architecture.<\/p>\n

We made our way back to Nottingham ‘castle’<\/a> (coming from Wales, I have to say I’m a but underwelmed by the thing) and enjoyed a fine coffee in the cafe after admiring the weird flower display (above) in the castle grounds.<\/p>\n

The castle affords some excellent views over the city, but not all of it is a pretty sight.<\/p>\n

Despite having some fine architecture lurking in the city, Nottingham has been blighted by hideous, loud, modern office developments which seem to bear no relation to anything around them ( the white ‘mini-dome’ thing and the new court buildings by the railway are particularly bad examples).<\/p>\n

\"Nottingham<\/p>\n

As we hastened back to catch our train, I managed to grab a quick picture of the clock tower at the splendid Neo-Baroque station, built in 1904, by A.E. Lambert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A wedding in Nottingham Saturday morning saw us speeding north towards Nottingham for another marriage ceremony – they seem to be coming in thick and fast this year! The last … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[193],"tags":[124],"class_list":["post-741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-places","tag-nottingham"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/notts01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/sQI7P-741","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1462,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741\/revisions\/1462"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}