Tucked away down a side street in St. Ann's, you may not recognise the name 'The Vine', but it's one of the city's last examples of a corner-door pub. The curved door opens directly out on to the corner of Handel street.
The pub was once a former Home Ales pub which was one of Nottingham's biggest and most recognisable breweries. Home Ales, officially Home Brewery, was one of the city's most recognisable beer-makers until it closed in 1996.
Read more: New plans for 'great British classic' at former Big Mike's Artisan Cheesecakes shop
The brewery had around 400 pubs across Nottingham at the time it was closed and sold to Scottish and National for £123 million, then later sold to Heineken.
It is unclear when it was built but records show that in 1868, the Vine Inn was a fully licensed establishment under landlady Mrs M Bates. In the 1960s, it was run by the landlady Myra and her son, Alan, who are well remembered locally.
A plaque on the side of the building reveals that it has been an inn since 1876 and that Home Brewery bought the premises in 1896. The premises would have had stables at the side and a smithy. A smithy is another term for a place where a blacksmith worked. There were several inns like this across Nottingham, including The Flying Horse Inn on Cheapside and The George on George Street which would have been coaching inns.
Amazingly, the building has an uneven floor which is still unchanged, even today. There are more examples of corner doors on buildings that aren't pubs. The old Marathon Knitwear building on the corner of Hartley Street and Radford Road also had a curved door when it was built in 1883.
It is tempting to say it's part of Sneinton because of its proximity to the market, but it actually comes under St.Ann's. Handel Street underwent many changes post-war and the pub was one of the many in that area prior to that. Sadly, as a lot of St. Ann's changed in the 1960s and 1970s, a lot of the pubs were demolished, leaving just the Bath Inn and The Vine Inn remaining.
Coincidentally, The Bath Inn also has unusual features in that it was revealed to have been built in an Egyptian revival architecture in the 1920s. The features include tall columns that are an interpretation of Eygptian temples which are based on bunched reeds with lotus leaf motifs at the top.
There are also corner double band shapes which are based on palm fronds and ‘cavetto’ eaves cornice, which is a shape used to cap Egyptian Cornices." The Egyptian-inspired design is thought to have been inspired by the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb in 1922 and can be seen across interior design and homewares. However, The Bath Inn is one of the very few buildings in this style left in England.
In a twist, the excavation of the tomb was funded by a wealthy Englishman named Lord Carnarvon. Carnarvon funded Howard Clarke's expedition to the tomb but he also was a landowner in Nottingham from 1866 to 1923. He owned land in both Bingham and Gedling.
According to a historian, the Vine pub and The Duke of Devonshire pub on Carlton Road both put in applications to upgrade the facades around the same time as the Bath Inn. Although neither ended up as grand as The Bath Inn.
Chair of Nottingham Civic Society, Hilary Silvester said: "These pubs are an important feature of the urban landscape as they reflect the social history of the city. It shows both the social and architectural history of the city."
Read more:
- Tributes paid as Nottingham satirist John Bird dies aged 86
- Woman found dead in Nottinghamshire home as police and ambulance called
- Knife found after 'disturbance' at Nottingham city centre pub
- Top Gear hosts 'broke on-site speed limits' at Notts power station
- The latest M1 news from Nottinghamshire Live
