Description:
Henry Kirke White was the son of a Nottingham butcher and was born in 1785. His early contributions to the 'Monthly Mirror' attracted the friendship of Southey, and he was enabled to become a sizar at St. John's College, Cambridge.
His short life was dogged by ill-health, and he died of consumption in 1806. For some little time he resided in the house at Wilford, shown in this drawing, and was so charmed with the sweetness of the village that he desired to he buried in its churchyard, a wish never fulfilled.
Although Kirke White's name is a household word in Nottingham, his poetry is now little read. Perhaps his best known composition is his version of the hymn 'Of the Father's Love Begotten'.
Looking at this drawing it is hard to believe that so much quiet and beauty were within a very few minutes walk of the crowded activity of our great manufacturing city.
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'.