Nottingham University

The Trent building at Nottingham was designed in 1922 by the little known Edwardian architect Morley Horder.  Horder set up practice in 1890 and carried out a number of simple country houses in the vernacular tradition together with some congregational churches before the Great War. His largest commission being for Cheshunt Theological College in Cambridge, now a school. After the war, in partnership with Briant Poultner, he got to know Jesse Boot through designing chemist shops for him, and as benefactor of the university Boot appointed him to do this building and lay out Highfields Park. The Trent Building has a very straightforward Edwardian classical palace front facing south across the Park, and the courtyard continues the theme of repeated square headed Georgian style windows. But the tower is altogether more adventurous, and is not only very slender and flat topped, but tapers, in the way of entasis on a classical column or Lutyen's Cenotaph which had just been unveiled. Before the Trent Building was completed Horder won the competition for the London School of Tropical Medicine in 1925 with Verner Rees, another tour de force in Portland stone. Later in the 30s he carried out  Darbishire Quad at Somerville.