Description:
The Gate Hangs Well, on the corner of Brewhouse Yard and Castle Road closed in 1905. It was linked by a series of caves, which were carved out of the sandstone rocks behind it, to The Trip to Jerusalem Inn, which is just out of view on the left. Behind the pub are the walls and bastions of Nottingham Castle (before they were rebuilt in 1877 ?). It has been suggested that the inns here served as breweries for the Castle above, taking their water from The River Leen which ran close by (now culverted underground). Thomas Sandby, the famous Nottingham artist did an illustration in 1741 which shows the area in detail, including trees, Rock Cottage, chimneys and the Gate Hangs Well public house
The artist is 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'.