An A-Z of Architects of Loughborough
For a complete list of the A-Z posts
please head over to the bloglist.
Oh how difficult it has been to find suitable stories to tell for letters towards the end of the alphabet! If it weren’t for the fact that I am blogging about architects who have some connection with Loughborough, I might have chosen to write about Mr Yates and his walk to Nottingham, or the YWCA building on Great Central Road that has just been demolished, or York Road with its Larkin connection, or Young Pilsbury and Young. Or, perhaps yew trees? Ah, yew trees, often to be found growing in churchyards …
Short story of architects Bellamy and Hardy
Bellamy and Hardy both worked for William Adams Nicholson in Lincoln: Bellamy was apprenticed to Nicholson from 1841, and Hardy was the chief clerk to Nicholson. Apprenticeship completed, Bellamy moved as assistant to architectural practices in Liverpool and Manchester, but upon his marriage he returned to Lincoln where he established his architectural practice around 1845
Meanwhile, Hardy also left Nicholson’s practice and worked with an architect in York, but when the architect died, Hardy sold the practice, returned to Lincoln, and teamed up with Bellamy, a partnership, which lasted until March 1887, when the practice was dissolved by mutual consent. The majority of their work was the design of public buildings like corn exchanges, cemetery chapels, and non-conformist chapels, centred around, but not solely in Lincolnshire. Bellamy’s architecture was elegant brick and tile in the Italianate style, and Pevsner is said to have remarked that Bellamy delighted in building “palazzos in streets decidedly unsun baked”.
Bellamy and Hardy were the architects behind a couple of Loughborough’s interesting buildings. I wrote about one, the Leicester Road cemetery chapels, in ‘Loughborough in 50 Buildings’:
“The government’s first Public Health Act (1848), which permitted the creation of local Boards of Health, received Royal Assent, following a second national outbreak of cholera. A series of Burial Acts were also passed, culminating in the Burial Act, 1854, allowing town councils to create Burial Boards, such boards being responsible for establishing parish cemeteries.
Loughborough Cemetery was created following the passing of the Burial Acts, the chapel being designed by architects Bellamy and Hardy of Lincoln in the popular Gothic Revival style, and built by John Sudbury of Loughborough.
At a ceremony in July 1856, a procession, including members of the Burial Board, which comprised many well-known local men, including Edward Chatterton Middleton, Edward Warner, Beauvoir Brock, and Henry Toone, walked from the Town Hall to the cemetery, where Edward Middleton laid the foundation stone for the chapels.
Expansion at the end of the nineteenth century was followed by the creation of a new cemetery in 1947, and in 2017 further expansion has been proposed. Remedial and conversion work was carried out on the deteriorating chapels in 1993 and they are now home to the Cibes Lift Group.
According to Pevsner these are the best cemetery chapels in the country.”
Since that time, the new cemetery, off Watermead Way has been created, and there are new companies working from the cemetery chapels off Leicester Road.
The
other building designed for us by Bellamy and Hardy was the magistrates’ court
off Wood Gate. Although I’ve always loved this building and its history, I’ve
not researched it much detail. However, I have mentioned it in previous blogposts, and shared some pictures of the inside, taken during a performance
of a play to commemorate the Zeppelin attack on Loughborough.
.JPG)
Cemetery chapels on a grey day!
What follows is a selection of
buildings designed by Bellamy and Hardy
Note: this is a selective, not a comprehensive listing.
____________________________________
*Loughborough cemetery chapels 1856
*Loughborough Magistrates’ Court 1859
*Corn Exchange Hull 1856 (now a
museum)
*Ipswich Town Hall
____________________________________
Basic facts
Name:
Pearson Bellamy
Parents:
Nicholas Pearson
plumber & glazier & Elizabeth (Edwards)
Date
and place of Birth: 1822
Louth
Spouse: 1 Caroline Ann
Penistan 1845 (d.1850); 2 Elizabeth Ingoldy 1850
Children:
1 Arthur 1846-1868;
Albert Edward 1848; Lucy 1849. 2 Annie Elizabeth; Kate; Cecilia Mary; Ada
Death:
1901
Places
lived: Melville
Street Lincoln; Carholme Road Lincoln; Weston Lodge South Park Lincoln;
Tentercroft Street Lincoln
Place
of work/Offices: 11
& 29 Broadgate Lincoln
****
Name: John Spence Hardy
Parents: John a silversmith and Ann
Date
and place of Birth:
1814 Preston
Spouse: Mary Ann Hartley, m 1844, d.1849
Children: Margaret 1845; Mary Ann 1846
Death: 1892
Places
lived: Melville
Street Lincoln; York;
____________________________________
I’m taking part in the April A-Z Blogging Challenge!
____________________________________
Posted by lynneaboutloughborough
With apologies for
typos which are all mine!
_______________________________________________
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