Client Nottingham City Council
Project Repair, Restoration, Conservation and
Historic Landscape
Location Nottingham
Services Architectural Design, Conservation and
Restoration, Lottery/ Grant Bid Advice
Wollaton Hall and Park is Nottingham City’s most distinctive historic site, with the dramatic and instantly recognisable silhouette of the Hall perched high above the surrounding park. There are wonderful views of sweeping grasslands, tree lined avenues radiating from the centre, extensive woodlands and a picturesque lake. Wollaton Hall and Park is a unique country estate, now surrounded by the City of Nottingham and a mere three miles from the very heart of the city centre. There are more than five hundred acres of landscaped deer-park, with herds of red and fallow deer roaming free within the park boundary walls. These deer herds have been a feature of the park since the first enclosure in the middle of the fourteenth century.
The Hall is one of the finest example of an Elizabethan Renaissance House (Listed Grade I) designed and built by the Robert Smithson (also the designer of near by Hardwicke Hall) for Sir Francis Willoughby. The house was later restored and repaired by the architect Sir Jeffry Wyatville. The estate was purchased shortly after the First World War by the City Council and has been enjoyed as a public park since that time. The house has housed the Natural History Museum for much of that period and more recently the Stable Block has been developed as the Transport and Industrial museum. Wollaton is a site of importance for nature conservation with a wide and varied list of flora and fauna, a site of considerable archaeological interest and with over thirty listed structures. There are a great variety of park and garden buildings including an early cast iron camellia house, a Doric temple, a boathouse on the lake and three ice houses.
