Patrick Nuttgens Award 2021

Posted on 4 March 2021

Congratulations to Katie Crowther and Gemma Shearwood, winners of this year's Nuttgens award!

We're delighted that Katie Crowther and Gemma Shearwood, PhD students in the Department of English and Related Literature and the Department of History of Art, have won the Patrick Nuttgens Award for 2021. The Award is presented annually by the York Georgian Society to support doctoral research in the Georgian period.

Katie and Gemma will be using their awards to support their PhD research:

Katie Crowther: My thesis broadly explores women’s writing, ephemera, and country house literature across a series of Georgian properties now owned by the National Trust. By examining a range of material manoeuvres, both real and fictional, I bring together archives, objects, and manuscript ephemera to understand the rich and varied ways women lived and wrote in the country house. With the generous support of the Patrick Nuttgens Award, I will be visiting the National Library of Wales to explore papers relating to Mary Booth (c. 1682-1740), wife of the 2^nd Earl of Warrington, who resided at Dunham Massey in Greater Manchester. This collection houses a series of legal papers relating to Booth’s father, John Oldbury, including lengthy debates regarding his daughter’s marriage settlement. As no documents in Booth’s hand remain, I hope this collection will provide new insights into her early life, her relationship with the Oldburys, and the financial and legal aspects of her marriage.

Gemma Shearwood: My PhD research discusses key developments in the memorial canon of Westminster Abbey from the coronation of King Charles II at the abbey in April 1661 until the coronation of Queen Victoria in June 1838. Hence, it oversees some of the pinnacle moments in the expansion and consolidation of Britain's early imperial agenda which played a role in the social, political, and economic developments which characterise Georgian England. The uniqueness of my project lies in its consideration of the continued impact of these memorials in contemporary Britain, a topic which has become exponentially more critical in the current climate as Britain tries to establish a post-Brexit reputation and in the wake of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement which reached a crescendo in Britain around the topic of public memorials. I will be using the generous Nuttgens award to fund a much needed and long overdue trip to Westminster Abbey once lockdown restrictions are lifted.

Patrick Nuttgens (1930–2004), described by the Oxford DNB as an ‘architect, broadcaster and educationist’, was a well-known and warmly remembered figure, both locally and nationally. He was founding Director of the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies within the University of York, and successively Secretary, Chairman and President of the York Georgian Society. The Award, named in his honour and first offered in 2008, is the result of a fruitful collaboration between the Society and the University of York. It provides for a grant to be awarded annually to two PhD students researching any aspect of the Georgian period.