Southwell Minster is an outstanding building. It is often described as England’s smallest cathedral, but it only became one in 1884. It was a satellite minster in the Province of York: a grand church in a small and prosperous town, as at Ripon or Beverley. The nave and crossing tower are Norman, elegant and monumental; parts of the transepts, the choir and east end are equally good examples of Early English. But the real thrill of Southwell is outside: the Norman west front, unique in England with its twin towers topped by elongated pyramidal roofs. These were an original feature of the church, but destroyed in a fire in 1711 and reinstated in 1880 thanks to the evidence of 17th-century engravings.

The Priory Church at Worksop was part of a complex of Augustinian monastic buildings of the 12th century; at the dissolution of the monasteries in 1538 much was destroyed, but the west front (with twin towers, as at Southwell) and the nave escaped because they were used as a parish church. In the 20th century, the church reclaimed some of this lost heritage. A ruined, roofless Lady Chapel was restored in the 1920s by Sir Harold Brakspear as a Great War memorial, and then joined to the nave by a new transept. The nave dates from the second half of the 12th century and Nikolaus Pevsner said its decoration indicated a “baroque” phase of Norman. Subsequent scholars have argued it was heavily influenced by the French gothic of the earlier 12th century.

Nottinghamshire includes the Dukeries, where several grand families acquired chunks of Sherwood Forest with which to establish estates. This mostly happened after 1683, but the forest was already, from Robin Hood’s time, the home of Welbeck Abbey. The Reformation also put paid to that, but the land was acquired by the Earl of Shrewsbury and the building of a mansion was under way by 1608.

By the mid-18th century, the estate had passed to the Countess of Oxford, who built the famous Gothic Hall of 1747-51, its plaster ceiling a series of inverted meringues. The estate then passed to the Dukes of Portland and was expanded considerably in Victorian times. The 5th Duke seems to have had a mental illness that compelled him to build obsessively: his projects included library rooms, museum rooms and a ballroom. At least Welbeck survives: a nearby great house, Clumber, built for the Dukes of Newcastle in the 18th century, was demolished in 1938. Only the magnificent estate church remains, designed by G F Bodley and built in 1886-89, in imitation of the transition in gothic from Decorated to Perpendicular.

Some dignified town centres remind one of the ancient prosperity of the county, built not least on the shipping from the Trent. Newark, which has a handsome castle dating from the 12th century, also has the half-timbered Governor’s House and White Hart Inn, both from the 15th century, and a fine town hall of 1774-76. Nottingham has a number of well-preserved Georgian buildings, notably the Shire Hall and the Sheriff House, but also a Roman Catholic cathedral of 1841-44 by Pugin and its High Victorian Lace Market.

Both Newark and Nottingham have some of the best Victorian industrial buildings still standing, such as the warehouses in the Lace Market, and that of the Trent Navigation Company by the river at Newark. The red brick of the area makes an impressive impact when deployed on a large scale, such as in the old Hutchinson’s Brewery at Basford, the Boulevard Works at Radford and the Anglo Scotian Mills at Beeston, all built between 1883 and 1892. Also at Beeston is one of England’s greatest art deco buildings – the “Wets” building by Owen Williams, designed for Boots and built in 1931-32. It caps 800 years of fine building in this underappreciated county, and reminds us that there is style and beauty all around us, if only we choose to look.