The Wetherspoons Hunter, The Joseph Else, Episode 31

Nottingham born Joseph Else was Principal of the city’s School of Art during 1923-39. As well as the famous lions guarding the entrance to the Council House (in front of the pub), he was also responsible for the frieze representing the old industries of Nottingham. Else also sculpted the figures in the triangular pediment and the four groups around the base of the dome.
Almost within touching distance of the Wetherspoon freehouse, the two stone lions guarding the entrance to the Council House have been a popular meeting place since the city’s best known civic building was completed in 1929.
The lions were sculpted by Joseph Else, Principal of the Nottingham School of Art, 1929-1939. Else was also responsible for the figures in the triangular pediment above the entrance and the four groups of figures around the base of the dome.
Joseph Else was by far the most high profile principal of the Art School. Born in Nottingham in 1874, he worked as a lace designer’s assistant by day, and studied art and architecture in the evenings. In 1900 he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art, and after some minor appointments became second master at Nottingham, soon becoming its principal.
Else promoted art as essential to the design of everything in the environment, from major buildings to everyday objects. His ideas were epitomized in his own life, where he sought to re-create the ‘ancient bond’ between sculpture and architecture, developing a civic style that became widely known as the ‘Nottingham mode’.
Else was an enemy of abstract and expressionist art, and tried to stem the tide of what he called ‘inartistic abnormalities’. The ‘modern movement’ he belonged to and believed in was the English one that looked back to William Morris, not the international one led by iconoclastic mavericks like Picasso.
In the early 1800s, high food prices and a low demand for hosiery products led to outbreaks of ‘Luddism’. The houses and factories were attacked by the forces of ‘General Ludd’, a pseudonym derived from Nedd Ludd, a Leicestershire framework knitter said to have broken knitting machines in protest.
On the façade of a building in Pelham Street- only a short walk from this J.D. Wetherspoon pub- is one of two plaques in Nottingham commemorating the Scots-born playwright J.M. Barrie. He worked in Pelham Street during the early 1880s as a lead writer for the Nottingham Journal. His home in Birkland Avenue also bears a commemorative plaque.
Barrie is best remembered for Peter Pan, said to have been thought up during a picnic at Clifton. Another famous Barrie character is the resourceful butler the ‘Admirable Crichton’.
Born in 1860, the tenth child of a weaver from Kirriemuir, Barrie studied at Edinburgh University, where he wrote his first newspaper articles.
After his spell in Nottingham, he moved to London, where his first play, The Houseboat, was produced in 1892.
Fame and success arrived in the early 1900s with Peter Pan, What Every Woman Knows, Quality Street, and The Admirable Crichton. Barrie was knighted in 1913.
Another world-famous writer, Lord Byron, stayed for a short time near here in St James’ Street. The future poet lived there in 1798. He and his mother then moved into the ancestral home Byron had recently inherited at Newstead Abbey.
Joseph Else was born in Nottingham in 1874. He began his career as an assistant in a lace designer’s office, studying painting and sculpture in the evening at the School of Art.
After a scholarship to the Royal College of Art and a period teaching sculpture in Belfast, he returned to Nottingham where he became Principal of the School of Art in 1923.
Else proved to be a tireless campaigner for the importance of art and design in everyday life. He met with trades people to help forge stronger links between industry and the college’s students.
As a sculptor he gained national recognition for his work and collaborated with local architects and builders on the decoration of several of the town’s major buildings, including that of the Council House.
He was responsible for the figures on the pediments which were designed to depict the activities of the city and the values the city upheld- for example- “justice” shown at the centre of the figures.
The first railway reached Nottingham in 1839. The New Midland Railway Station (shown here top centre) was built in 1905.
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