News - Father of Council House listed in national archive (Thomas Cecil Howitt)

A HUCKNALL-BORN architect who designed some of Nottingham's most celebrated buildings has been included in a national historical database.

Information about the life of Thomas Cecil Howitt will be featured in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Mr Howitt designed the iconic Council House in Old Market Square, Nottingham Trent University's Newton building and the former Raleigh headquarters.

He is also renowned for designing the YMCA building in Shakespeare Street, Staythorpe Power Station and the Home Ales building in Mansfield Road, Daybrook.

His entry was written by architectural historian Doctor Elain Harwood, who said Howitt's influence on the city was vast.

She said: "He is the great Nottingham architect of the 20th Century and someone the city should rightly be proud of.

"One just needs to look around Nottingham and you can see his wonderful designs.

"The other thing that sets him apart was his range of influences and styles, from homes in the 1920s through to the fantastic Newton building in the 1960s."

The Oxford DNB, which is online and available free in libraries, features famous individuals as well as 400 entries on historical groups.

Mr Howitt began his career designing telephone exchanges and shops for Boots before the First World War.

He later joined the Nottingham city engineer's department and helped develop new housing estates in the north and west of the city to tackle a shortage of houses.

In 1923 Mr Howitt proposed a replacement for the old 18th century Corn Exchange which would become the Council House. Work started in 1927 and the building was opened by the Prince of Wales two years later.

Howitt died in 1968 at a home he designed in Orston, east Notts.

From: http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Father-Council-House-listed-national-archive/story-13378748-detail/story.html

Article - Painter showed gritty reality of industry to upper classes (Rotherham)

A PAINTER who spread an awareness of South Yorkshire’s grimy 19th century steelworks with his vivid art works has been included in a prestigious national reference guide.

William Holt Yates Titcomb, who painted steelworkers in Rotherham at the height of South Yorkshire’s steel boom in the 1890s, today enters the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for the first time.

Titcomb, who lived in St Ives in Cornwall, spent several months every year in Wickersley, where he inherited a house from his father, a vicar.

It was there, in his late 30s, that he started exploring local industry in search of scenes and themes that had not been painted before.

Driven by his concern for the plight of the poor and the conditions in which they had to work, in 1895 he sat for three months in a Rotherham factory.

The two works he produced were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1897, bringing an awareness of the grim conditions of South Yorkshire’s steelworks to the upper crust of Victorian society.

The paintings - The Wealth of England: the Bessemer Process of Making Steel, and The Steam Hammer, are today exhibited at Kelham Island Industrial Museum in Sheffield.

Titcomb is one of 103 new biographies added today to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, which chronicles the lives of notable British figures who died before 2007.

Also added to the important reference work today is pre-Raphaelite Barnsley painter John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, who was born at Cannon Hall, Cawthorne.

The 19th century artist rose to fame for his work with George Frederic Watts.

Stanhope’s entry describes him as being “crazy on pictures” as a young man.

His depiction of a young woman’s descent into prostitution, Thoughts of the Past, is in London’s Tate Collection.

Although he travelled widely and died in the Italian city of Florence in 1908, Stanhope was always proud of his South Yorkshire roots. When he married Elizabeth King in 1859 he lived in Hill House, a farm cottage in Cawthorne.

His friend Lady Paget, who later knew him in Florence, said: “He looks like what he is, a Yorkshire squire.”

He was consciously a northern artist and regularly put on shows in Liverpool and Manchester, and did important work in churches near Cannon Hall, most notably at St John’s in Hoylandswaine.

From: http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/painter_showed_gritty_reality_of_industry_to_upper_classes_1_3416519