Description:
The advent of modern railway conditions has very much altered the aspect of central Nottingham, and in this drawing we see what this part of the town looked like before these alterations were undertaken. It shows a short street called Middle Marsh, and on the left, just out of the picture, is the corner of Broad Marsh. The turning by the lamp-post is the beginning of the steep incline called Drury Hill - in memory of Alderman Drury who owned property at the top about the year 1645. On the right is the exit from Narrow Marsh, now a particularly unpleasant district, but at one time quite a good class residential neighbourhood.
Before the days of wheeled traffic, one of the routes through Nottingham came from Trent Bridge along London Road, Narrow Marsh and up the steep Drury Hill. Straight ahead are the steps leading up to Garners Hill or as it was called 'Brightmore Hill.' On these steps in the year 1844 a very terrible accident occurred, a criminal named Saville had been executed outside the Shire Hall and an enormous crowd had witnessed the tragedy; in endeavouring to get away after the execution, panic broke out among the crowd, and a great many people were pushed down the steps of Brightmore Hill; twelve were killed and more than a hundred injured before order was restored. Just to the left of these steps is another flight which leads up to Middle Hill. This was the ancient route to the daily market at Weekday Cross.
Descriptive text taken from 'Nottingham Past and Present', published in 1926.
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'.