Description: Thomas William Hammond 1854-1935. Born in Philadelphia of Nottingham emigres, and orphaned at the age of four, he came to England with his younger sister Maria and lived for a short while with his grandparents in Mount Street. In 1868 age 14 he enrolled in the Government School of Art. On the 1871 census he is described as a lace curtain designer, and in 1872 he was awarded the 'Queen's Prize for a Design of a Lace Curtain'. Other prizes followed and in 1877 he was again awarded the Queen's Prize, this time for the design for a damask table Cloth. Hammond was an indefatigable worker, and soon began to use his skills as a draftsman to record aspects of the changing town. He began showing his work at local venues in 1882 and in 1890 exhibited for the first time at the Royal academy. His real hobby was black and white sketching in charcoal. He drew about 350 pictures all together mainly scenes of a Nottingham he knew but which has largely passed away today. Extracted from 'The Changing Face of Tom Hammond's Nottingham' by John Beckett which is the introductory essay in 'A City in the Making Drawings of Tom Hammond'. Cur Lane is just outside the defences of mediaeval Nottingham, and may possibly occupy the site of the old town ditch. It runs parallel to Coalpit Lane, which was constructed towards the close of the eighteenth century as an easy gradient for the carriage of coal from the Wollaton pits. Even today the trees in Portland Place give to Cur Lane a singularly rural aspect, and remind us that until about 1730, the Sherwin family had a notable cherry orchard in this neighbourhood. The Black Lion Inn in Portland Place, was the rendezvous of the caucus which governed Nottingham years ago, and within its walls they unofficially decided upon the names of Mayor and Sheriff. Cur Lane runs into St. John's Street, and just about that juncture is the site of the pottery, where in the eighteenth century Morley produced his beautiful Nottingham brown ware. Image and descriptive text taken from 'Nottingham Past and Present', published in 1926.