Arkwright Building, Nottingham Trent University

The Arkwright Building on Shakespeare Street is a former university college, public library, technical school and natural history museum, now part of Nottingham Trent University. It was designed by the renowned Bradford architectural practice Lockwood & Mawson and built between 1877 and 1881. The building required substantial structural repairs and was closed from 1883 to 1890. Rear additions were made in 1893, 1932 and the mid-20th century.

The building is constructed in ashlar and yellow brick with ashlar dressings and banded Westmorland slate roofs. It is designed in the Gothic Revival style and features a plinth, string courses, pierced balustrade and cast-iron crests to the main roofs.

The symmetrical main front faces Shakespeare Street with nine bays by five bays, enclosing a central block flanked by narrow courtyards. The main range comprises two storeys plus basement and attic rooms over nine bays. Projecting centre and end bays feature elaborate gables with spire turrets. The ground floor is lit by traceried windows whilst the first floor has arcaded windows. The central entrance bay contains an arched triple doorway beneath gables, with three traceried windows above.

The side ranges have eight windows with canted bay windows in the fourth bay and gabled dormers. The end bays contain two windows with a single traceried window above. Pointed arched windows throughout feature shafts and linked hood moulds.

The left return fronting South Sherwood Street has a corner block of four windows with a canted corner turret and spire. At its centre is a projecting range of four windows with side bays of three windows under a clerestory roof. A projecting block with doorway and sidelights and hipped roof sits beyond, followed by a 1932 addition in matching style with three windows and buttressed gable end. The right return mirrors this arrangement, with a mid-20th-century footbridge attached to the right-hand block. The rear elevations are simpler in treatment, predominantly in brick, and include a square factory chimney with polychrome bands.

The interior retains significant original features. A central entrance hall features elaborate pointed arched arcades on two sides, with a cast-iron open well stair contained in the right arcade. Landings with wrought-iron balustrades line two sides, the right landing arcaded. A panelled hooded chimneypiece in medieval style is also present. An arcaded first floor corridor extends to the right. The lecture theatre has been altered in the 20th century but the original roof is likely to survive above a recent suspended ceiling. Late 19th-century fireplaces remain in some rooms. Further staircases serve the wings, whilst an entrance vestibule in the right wing features a short staircase with marble and alabaster balustrade. Arcaded corridors towards the rear contain round wooden columns, and some ground floor rooms retain cast-iron columns.

A former chemistry laboratory at the rear represents an early example of this facility type, with a wooden queen post roof and smaller adjacent rooms featuring high wooden ceilings and panelled skylights. First floor rooms in each wing have elaborate steel trussed clerestory roofs. An early 20th-century addition contains a segment-arched hall on the first floor.

This is a very fine and elaborate example of late 19th-century Gothic Revival architecture by an internationally renowned practice. Although the small central spire has been lost, the building is otherwise extremely well preserved externally. Additions and rebuilding following Second World War bomb damage have not diminished its significance, and a substantial number of impressive internal spaces and original features survive alongside the original plan-form.

The Arkwright Building is the most prominent and architecturally important public building constructed in Nottingham by the Corporation during the 19th century. It holds historic importance as a landmark in the architectural history of educational provision in England. The building is unique in bringing together three cornerstones of Victorian educational thinking: the further education college, the public library and the museum. It was the first municipally funded college of further education to be built in England. The building has been central to the development of both of Nottingham's universities and represents the single most important educational building in the city. The internationally renowned writer D.H. Lawrence attended University College here between 1906 and 1908.