British Towns and Cities: Nottingham

“Nottingham: a magnificent town full of improbable splendours.” Why improbable? The Anglian chief, Snot, leading the Snotenga folk up the steep escarpment of St. Mary’s Hill—Snotingaham to them—some fourteen hundred years ago, and stopping to survey the broad Vale of Trent below and the warm sandstone slope behind him, might have thought its splendours pre-ordained. He had chosen wisely, and his descendants and those of their conquerors, the Danes and the Normans, built well, so that by the high Middle Ages Nottingham was a thriving centre of trade, a high stake in national politics and a favourite of Kings, both lawful and pretending. Visitors in later times liked it, and many said so. Michael Drayton, called it “that high exalted seat with rich embroyderies drest”; a susceptible visitor during the Commonwealth was reminded of “A Lady sitting delicately among the Rocks, in collem sub montibus (sic.) her chair flanked with hills, East, West and North”...