Not motoring
Boots beneficence
Gavin Stamp
Imminent arrival in certain cities is announced by the sight of a great architec- tural landmark. At Durham, of course, it is the distant view of the cathedral, as it is at York when travelling south. And at Not- tingham, coming north from St Pancras, it is the remarkable prospect of the castle over to the west that makes the town unmistakable — a great cube of stone on top of its tall earth mound. But this is no ordinary boring mediaeval castle, for the stone walls are enriched with classical columns and pediments and heavy rustica- tion. It is, uniquely in Britain, a baroque castle, rebuilt by the Duke of Newcastle in the 1670s and, as Pevsner pointed out, something that looks as if it has strayed from north Italy or Prague. Once there were interiors by Vanbrugh, but they per- ished when the castle was set alight in 1831 by the descendants of Robin Hood, angry at the then Duke for opposing the Reform Bill. It remained a ruin until the 1870s when it was reconstructed as the town's museum and art gallery — and a very good one it remains.
Nottingham is known not so much for its baroque castle but for the lace industry. It also can boast a singularly magnificent mediaeval parish church — as etched by F.L. Griggs — and a fine Roman Catholic cathedral by the great Pugin. And Notting- ham deserves a place in modern history as the birthplace of Sir Jesse Boot, that great entrepreneur and philanthropist, who first assisted his mother in running a Notting- ham shop as M & J Boot, Herbalists, in 1871. By the beginning of the next century Boots the Cash Chemists were a national chain of shops offering medicines and toi- letries at reasonable prices and now branching out with the Boots Booldovers Library. And Jesse Boot was responsible, directly or indirectly, for two more archi- tectural landmarks on the approach to Not- tingham station from the south — the university, which he endowed in 1921, and the factory buildings of the Boots company on its new site out at Beeston which Boot had purchased.
The university is marked by the stone tower of the white, classical Trent building designed by Percy Morley Horder; the Boots works, on the eastern side of the tracks, is distinguished by something almost contemporary but very different — the two large reinforced concrete and glass struc- tures of the 1930s for manufacturing wet and dry goods designed by Sir Owen Williams. That bloody-minded engineer had been knighted for his work in designing and constructing the concrete structures for the British Empire exhibition at Wembley in 1924 (including the now-doomed stadi- um). Williams had tired of making the designs of architects stand up and so had set up on his own. At Beeston, he designed the celebrated 'wets' building which was opened in 1933 and is one of the most important early monuments of the Modern Movement with its 550ft long glass curtain wall cantilevered out from a bold concrete structure. And it is much to the credit of Boots that this famous listed building has been superbly restored and modernised without altering its appearance.
I was in Nottingham two weeks ago to attend the opening of the Millennium Sculpture Garden created at Beeston by Boots. It is an extraordinary venture: 15 acres of newly planted and landscaped gar- den containing a dozen or so specially com- missioned works of art and all for the benefit of the 8,000 or so people who work on the huge site. The sculpture garden was conceived by the chairman of Boots, Lord Blyth, but the guiding force was James Knox, formerly the publisher of The Specta- tor, whose company, Art for Work, had already helped Boots commission works of art and furniture for their group headquar- ters building. I was there on a particularly enjoyable freebie, thanks to James, but my particular purpose was to see the Miltonic herm by my friend Alexander Stoddart, the commit- ted, not to say intransigent neo-classical sculptor who lives in Paisley. Sandy's herm is of bronze, some 12ft high, with the gar- landed head of the poet on top of an atten- uated pedestal which is leaning — reeling? — backwards as if from the force of the verses cut into it. It is a work full of sub- tleties I cannot discuss here, but it is as amazing as it is technically accomplished and sophisticated. But it is altogether extraordinary that a private company should have commissioned not just one but several works on this scale. They are, of course, variable in quality, but what is interesting is that they are all more or less figurative works. I much admired, too, the beautiful inscriptions carved into stone by the letter-cutter Tom Perkins, and then there is the overall design by the landscape architect Mark Lutyens who, by adding ingenious pergolas, has made Henry Tan- ner's brick D31 'amenities building' look even more like Frank Lloyd Wright's long- lost Midway Gardens in Chicago. Nottingham owes much to Boots and to Jesse Boot, and it is splendid that the com- pany continues to demonstrate that old- fashioned philanthropic ideals and the commissioning of fine buildings and works of art are not incompatible with commer- cial efficiency. In fact, they might even be a reason for it.
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