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'. Nottingham occurs in history, soon after the withdrawal of the Roman government, under the strange name of 'Tigguocobauc' - which is said to mean 'Cave Dwellings'. The site was occupied by a British Tribe called the 'Coritanii' who had a settlement in the district where St. Mary's Church now stands and who there excavated habitations in the soft sandstone. Nottingham is still full of caves, the cellarage of the lower portion of the town being hewn out of the solid rock. During the middle ages these cellars had an interesting influence on the trade of the town for it was found that excellent ale could be matured in their equable temperature; so Nottingham became famous for its 'Nut Brown Ale'; and it was only when the discovery was made that the water of Burton-on-Trent was better for brewing that Nottingham lost its priority in this respect. Many of these excavations were used as dwelling places down to modern times; among the last so used was a row of thirty-one houses the rear chambers of which were hewn in the rock; they were known as 'Sneinton Hermitage'. They are recalled by Mr. Hammond's drawing, and very charming appear the old houses with their quaint bow windows set as a 'trap to catch a sunbeam'. They were pulled down to erect the great stone wall that rivets the London and North Western goods yard in Southwell Road. Image and descriptive text taken from 'Nottingham Past and Present', published in 1926.