Nottingham Council House is the city hall of Nottingham, England. The iconic 200 feet (61 m) high dome that rises above the city is the centrepiece of the skyline and presides over the Old Market Square.
The Council House was designed by Thomas Cecil Howitt and built between 1927 and 1929 in the Neo-Baroque style characterised by the huge pillars that circle the building along with the carvings on the facade.
It is claimed that the chimes of the bell in the dome, Little John (for many years the deepest toned clock bell in the United Kingdom, weighing over 10 tons), can be heard for a distance of seven miles.
The foundation stone (behind the left-hand lion as you approach the building) was laid by Alderman Herbert Bowles (Chairman of the Estates Committee), on 17 March 1927. The building was officially opened by the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII and the Duke of Windsor) on 22 May 1929. The total cost of the building at the time was £502,876 (£22.7 million as of 2013). By the time the bill was finally cleared in 1981, the total including interest was £620,294.
The building has staged many high profile occasions; royalty, statesmen and women and stars of the stage and screen have been entertained there and both the F.A. and European Cups have been held aloft from its balcony.
Since Nottingham City Council relocated councillors' offices to Loxley House in 2010, the Council House is seldom used for day-to-day administrative functions. From April 2011, the building also now serves as the chief Register Office for Births, Marriages and Deaths in the City.
Read more about Nottingham Council House: Exterior, The Dome, Exchange Arcade, Statuary, Architectural Criticism, Council House Tours
Famous quotes containing the words council and/or house:
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The house with no child in it is a house with nothing in it.”
—Welsh proverb, as quoted in The Joys of Having a Child by Bill and Gloria Adler (1993)