Dunkirk Inn, Nottingham

Originally the Dunkirk Hotel, this public house was built on the site of an earlier Victorian pub of the same name. 1966-67 for W. Stone Ltd, Cannon Brewery, Rutland Road, Sheffield. The architects were Melling and Ridgeway AARIBA, a well established Sheffield partnership that survives as the Melling Ridgeway Partnership and which still carries out work on pubs and restaurants. The steelwork was by W.H. Blake & Co. An application was made on the 8th June 1966 to demolish the existing Victorian public house on the corner of Montpelier and Claude Roads and to build a new pub as the rear of the site. The old public house was extremely large, rectangular and of three storeys, French Renaissance in style with a pair of high crested mansard roofs, suggesting a larger and possibly earlier version of the Grove on Castle Boulevard from 1887. Internal lavatories were installed by Eberlin & Darbyshire in January 1947. The replacement public house survives behind car parking and trees with a Western-theme. It was built of red brick, now painted white, with concrete cladding panels to Claude Road:"interesting elevations" was the comment from the City Architect's Department. The designs were approved on 29 July 1966. The interesting feature of the elevations may have been heir asymmetry, for the right-hand bay is set forward of the left, and the roof is a softly folding monopitch containing projecting dormers lighting up the upper storey. The left-hand bay contains the public bar, for which plans show bench seating and a defined area for darts. The larger lounge to the right is also shown with bench seating, wrapped around along the longer wall where it formed a snug area. The plans show a basement boiler and cellar underneath the public bar, accessed from a long chute in the car park, which may be a survivor from the old pub. The interior today is quite different from the plans and may have been altered, although the bar fronts and backs themselves look original. The main entrance facing West leads into a large lounge with a service area at the rear and the lavatories on its left. A door next to these, now blocked, leads into the public bar, which also has a service counter at the rear of the space. All the built-in furniture has gone but the projecting section of the lounge area is raised and houses a pool table (Elain Harwood / Historic England).

Nominated as an Asset of Community Value by the Nottingham Branch of CAMRA on 10th February 2016. ACV registration rejected by Nottingham City Council (9th June 2016) on the grounds that the Dunkirk Inn 'did not further the social wellbeing or interests of the local community'.

[Nottingham City Council, Dunkirk & Lenton Ward / Nottingham South Parliamentary Constituency]