Nottingham is a city and unitary authority in Nottinghamshire, in the East Midlands of England. It stands on the River Trent, 42 miles south-east of Sheffield and 54 miles north-east of Birmingham. The 2021 census recorded a population of 323,632 within the city boundary, while the surrounding conurbation, including the suburbs of Arnold and Carlton, has around 768,000 residents. Together with neighbouring Derby, the wider metropolitan area is estimated at about 1.6 million, making it the largest urban region in the East Midlands.
The county town of Nottinghamshire was granted city status in 1897 as part of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. In popular memory the city is bound above all to the legend of Robin Hood and the sheriff who appears as his adversary. In economic history its name belongs to lace, bicycles and tobacco: Boots the chemist was founded here by John Boot in 1849, the Raleigh bicycle company began production in the city in the 1880s, and John Player and Sons traded cigarettes from Radford for over a century. Lord Byron grew up at Newstead Abbey to the north, D. H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood in 1885, and Alan Sillitoe set Saturday Night and Sunday Morning in working-class Nottingham. The city was designated a UNESCO City of Literature in December 2015.
Nottingham Castle, on a sandstone outcrop in the western part of the centre, is a Norman foundation that now houses a museum and art gallery, reopened in 2021 after a major refurbishment. Below the castle rock stands Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, an inn with a much-disputed founding date of 1189. The Old Market Square is the heart of the city, dominated by the Council House, completed in 1929, with its baroque dome and the pair of stone lions on the front steps. The Theatre Royal on Theatre Square dates from 1865, and Pugin’s Gothic Revival Cathedral of St Barnabas was consecrated in 1844. East of the centre, Hockley Village holds independent shops and the Broadway cinema. The Victoria Centre, opened in 1972 on the site of the demolished Victoria railway station, is overlooked by the 250-foot Victoria Centre flats.
Nottingham is also a sporting centre. Trent Bridge, on the south bank of the river, is one of England’s principal Test cricket grounds; the National Ice Centre and Holme Pierrepont, the country’s main rowing and canoeing facility, lie nearby. Notts County, founded in 1862 and the oldest professional football league club in the world, plays at Meadow Lane; Nottingham Forest, twice winners of the European Cup under Brian Clough in 1979 and 1980, plays at the City Ground across the Trent. The city has three universities (the University of Nottingham, Nottingham Trent University and the Nottingham campus of the University of Law) and is served by the Nottingham Express Transit tram system and by Nottingham City Transport, the largest publicly owned bus operator in England.