Nottinghamshire

Book excerpt: Full of memorable and surprising buildings, Nottingham is a county that rewards close investigation. Great medieval churches are represented by Worksop, Newark and by Southwell, with its exquisite carved 'leaves'. Of its country houses, Wollaton Hall shows Elizabethan architecture at its most fantastic, Bunny Hall the English Baroque at its most bizarre, while Lord Byron's Newstead Abbey incorporates one of the strangest of all monastic ruins. The city of Nottingham, marvellously set between hills, is crowded with sturdy Victorian and Edwardian commercial buildings, and enlivened by a strong local tradition of first-rate Modernist architecture.