April 2021

Though we don’t directly mention it in our VCH accounts of Bolsover there was a successful attempt by Bolsover Urban District Council (UDC) to hold its own illuminations in the town. This must have been a welcome diversion from the post-war gloom of the period. We cover this largely now forgotten event in this blog.

Bernard Haigh tells the story in his ‘More Bolsover remembered’ book. Apparently, the illuminations started by accident after the parks superintendent of the UDC, Arthur Lord, discovered some old cable that had been used to illuminate Bolsover Castle. In collaboration with Councillor Jack Spray (a talented cartoonist and shown at work in our second photograph), who drew some pixies, a couple of beds at Sherwood Lodge were illuminated.

By 1952 the illuminations were much bigger both in size and draw – all in the grounds of Sherwood Lodge. Between 1952 and 1957 almost half a million people had been attracted to see the spectacle. Visitors included a group of Blackpool’s own illumination organisers, who were suitably impressed. There was a final public appearance in 1973 at the Bolsover Festival.

The illuminations featured a series of displays including fairy tales, Robin Hood and his Merry Men, Roundheads besieging Bolsover Castle, sporting and ghost scenes. The photographs here show a couple of examples. All our pictures here are courtesy of Bernard Haigh. There’s a further photograph on Picture the Past – https://picturethepast.org.uk/image-library/image-details/poster/ptpd004946/posterid/ptpd004946.html, dating from 1953.

Lest you might think that the UDC of the period was preoccupied with trivial things; as recorded in our VCH Bolsover books, by 1959 the UDC calculated it had built 89 houses on Oxcroft Lane, 272 on the Castle estate, four at Stanfree and 343 on the Moor Lane estate, all since 1945. But as a whole Bolsover was despoiled by the impact of industry – particularly coal mining and Coalite. As we state in ‘Bolsover, castle town and colliery’ , despite the UDC’s efforts the district appeared ‘grimy… its economy dependant on one industry’, which was, of course, coal.

In those years of the Bolsover illuminations a little light was no doubt shone into the lives of the those who attend the transformed Sherwood Lodge grounds.

Newbold features in our latest draft text, uploaded to our Derbyshire Victoria County History Trust website. You can find this here.

Our two photographs are taken from the 1932 ‘Chesterfield Education. A record of four years of experiment and reconstruction’ book. This was published by a justifiably proud Chesterfield Corporation following reorganisation of the town’s schools.

Highfield Hall, then recently converted into an infant and junior school, features in the first photograph. The second shows a plaque which was originally fixed to the old Wheatsheaf inn on Newbold Road. When this old building was pulled down and replaced by the more recent Wheatsheaf the plaque was taken inside. Fortunately, it still survives, outside the recently built Cooperative store which has itself replaced the newer Wheatsheaf.

You can find out much more about Highfield Hall (from page 34) and other properties and estates in our draft text, but our education section is yet to come. We welcome comments by contacting us.

Draft text is very much work in progress. It’s written by our county editor, following research by him and our volunteer group. You can find out more about how our draft parish history text is structured here.

If you are interested in supporting our work, you are very welcome to join us here at the Derbyshire Victoria County History Trust.

We are currently concentrating our efforts on the Chesterfield area, having undertaken research which has been published on Bolsover and adjoining parishes.

You can find out more information on our activities at our website and by contacting us.

In normal times we run a weekly term-time research group in Chesterfield, which brings together a small friendly group of interested people under our County Editor Philip Riden. We also hold summer guided walks and usually hold an AGM, with a speaker on some topic of interest to those interested in the county’s history. Members of VCH also receive a free copy of our publications (but not back copies) and a periodic newsletter.

Our blogs and Facebook posts give some indication about the sources we use and the research we have undertaken. Membership of VCH is available from £5 a month, which automatically enters you into our monthly prize-draw. We are a registered charity.

The Victoria County History makes use of a wide range of sources in our attempt at a new history of local communities. One of the forgotten aspects of Chesterfield’s claim to be the ‘Centre of Industrial England’ was the amount of in-house magazines produced by locally based companies for their employees. They can make an excellent source for both local, company and family history. Many are available in local studies libraries.

We feature just a few examples on this page. Our first is the front cover of January 1962’s Staveley News. Produced by the Staveley Iron & Chemical Company, the cover shows ‘…one of Staveley’s stockyards has as a background the neat block which houses Foundries laboratories and offices and the research department. Just behind are the roofs of foundry buildings…’

The second is Trebor Sharps’ Working Together, from Winter 1973. The front cover features Chesterfield’s ‘Maeve McGoaty at the hopper that feeds the wrap machine wrapping Trebor mints.’ In addition to the Chesterfield facility, at this time the Trebor group had factories at Woodford, Forest Gate, Maidstone and Stratford, their own printers (who printed the magazine) and overseas distributers. Their magazine covered all these locations.

Broad Oaks was the magazine of the Markham & Co. Ltd., named after their engineering works at the bottom of Hady Hill. Like most other company magazines, it not only featured latest corporate news, but also such things like social events, sports and employee news. Our third extract is from the magazine of spring 1967. It’s a page showing the children’s Christmas party – an annual event at many companies during the period. We wouldn’t use this type of information in VCH, but it does seek to outline the ‘other things’ lost that the closure of large employers in the Chesterfield area and elsewhere has resulted in. Also lost were numerous sports-grounds and welfare facilities. The Staveley company and GKN were particularly noteworthy examples in the Chesterfield area of facilities that are no more.

In-house employee magazines can be an excellent source for tracing the development of local companies. For the family historian, many also contain photographs and other information on long-serving employees, even marriages and deaths. Take our final scan from the same January 1962 Staveley News. It features the retirement of three employees. One wonders if this photograph or the information in the article has survived or is available anywhere else?