ABSTRACT
Nottingham Lace Market was designated a conservation area in 1969, one of the first batch of nine in the City and the first industrial zone in the country to be so designated. This chapter provides the results of research on the Lace Market in an attempt to enhance understanding of the role of conservation area status in its substantial revitalisation over the last thirty years. The Nottingham lace industry grew out of experiments by workers in an already established hosiery industry. As the lace industry contracted from the 1920s, and surviving companies moved their activities away from the Lace Market, much of the vacant space was occupied by a developing clothing industry. Despite its dilapidated condition in the mid 1960s, the Lace Market contained the highest concentration of listed buildings within the City – although many of these were examples of Georgian domestic architecture located on High Pavement, on the southern edge of the Lace Market.
