Shuttlewood school demolished

In early 2021 we looked at the Shuttlewood schools complex noting that the former senior school of 1907 was to be demolished. It’s perhaps worth noting, then, that this school building has, in fact, been knocked down over the last few weeks.

The 1907 Shuttlewood Schools before demolition. They were used as a senior school.
The site of the now demolished Shuttlewood schools. To the right is the still operational Brockley Primary and Nursery Schools. Picture taken on 8 November 2022, just following completion of demolition.

Situated on Clowne Road (B6418) near to Bolsover the now demolished building was at the northern part of the schools’ site – the southern part is occupied by Brockley Primary and Nursery School, which is still very much open. This southern part of the complex (opened in 1927) is listed grade II – as a good example of the work of ground-breaking Derbyshire Education Committee architect GH Widows.

The now demolished building was not listed and had not been used for teaching since 2007.

You can find out more about the history of the school buildings by following the link here.

Shuttlewood school demolished Read More »

Hasland and Chesterfield books nearly sold out

Both of our ‘Chesterfield Streets and Houses’ and ‘History of Hasland…’ books are likely to become out of print in the next few weeks. If you are thinking of buying a copy, we’d advise you to do so as soon as possible.

We believe copies are still available at the Chesterfield Visitor Information Centre (near the Parish Church) and at Waterstones in the town. Each book costs £20. At the moment we cannot say whether there will be a reprint.

Our thanks to everyone who has supported our work by purchasing a book. We hope that you have enjoyed it.

Our next publication is likely to be on Wingerworth – hopefully available during the first half of 2023. This will build on a substantial raft of work already undertaken by well-known local historian Dr David Edwards, supplemented by further work in The National Archives and elsewhere.

Hasland and Chesterfield books nearly sold out Read More »

Storforth Lane Hasland – from brickworks to industrial estate

We’ve been looking at industries in the area around Storforth Lane, Hasland parish, in our last few blogs. We end this story with a look at how the modern Storforth Lane Trading Estate came about and its immediate predecessor – a brickworks.

CJ Saunders, taken from his obituary in the Derbyshire Times, 31 October 1925. According to the article ‘He came to Chesterfield in 1879, as engineering manager of the Monkwood Colliery, at Barlow, now extinct, and some years later went into partnership with Mr. Naylor at the colliery and brickworks at Brockwell. On Mr. Naylor’s death he took over the business, and, as the colliery showed signs of being worked out, devoted his energies to the brickworks. Later he opened the works in Storforth Lane, of which he was managing director when he died’.

In 1898 Charles James Saunders (1853–1925), who had a brickworks on Brockwell Lane (in Newbold), adjoining his home at Brockwell House, incorporated his business as C.J. Saunders & Co. Ltd, with capital of £1,4000 in £10 shares.

The new company was to take over the Brockwell Lane works as a going concern and build a brick and tile-works at Storforth Lane. The works stood on the north side of Storforth Lane immediately to the east of the Midland Railway, from which it was served by a siding, whereas the Brockwell Lane works (which closed in 1914) was never rail connected. Part of the site had previously been occupied by the spoil tips and miscellaneous works of Storforth Lane colliery. Clay was got from pits adjoining the works.

Saunders was chairman and managing director; the other directors were P.H. Chandler and John Saunders; and the other subscribers were Reuben Wragg, a slater, Edward Mitchell and his son Arthur Edward, chartered accountants, F.A. Walker, solicitor, and C.W. Rollinson, architect.

The promoters took all the shares and there was no public offer. The shareholders were largely identical with the syndicate which at about the same time developed the ‘Hasland Building Estate’, the grid of streets between Storforth Lane, Hasland Green and Hasland Road, and the works were probably established in part to supply materials for the new houses.

The company was reconstructed in 1921 and in 1931, a few years after Saunders had died, the works were offered for sale, including the kiln and other buildings standing on a 25a. freehold site, the siding and a loading dock, tools, stores, stock in trade, goodwill and all the remaining clay. Portions of the land were let to a variety of tenants, producing a yearly rent of £91, and the worked-out clay pits were being used to tip refuse by Chesterfield corporation. The company appears to have remained in existence for a short time after this sale.

To give an example as to the extent of works the Derbyshire Times of Saturday 31 March 1934 reported that the clay pit on site had a drop of 60 to 70 feet with about 16-20 feet of water in the bottom.

The Derbyshire Times of 28 February 1931 carried this advertisement of the brickwork’s sale.

In its edition of August 25th, 1934 the Derbyshire Times reported that;

‘Storforth Lane Brickworks, Chesterfield, formerly owned by Messrs. C. J. Saunders and Company, Ltd., which had been idle since the death of the founder two or three years ago, is again working full time and producing large quantities of bricks needed in connection with building developments in Chesterfield and district. A new department for manufacturing rustic and other patent bricks is contemplated for the near future. A new company has taken over the concern and is registered as Brickworks, Ltd., with a capital of £12,500 in £1 shares. The managing director is Mr. Edwin Glossop, of Ambergate. The works and kilns have been reorganised under the new management, whose main works are at Ambergate, with a branch at Twentywell – Lane, Dore. The new owners are looking forward to a long period of prosperity and are hoping to eclipse records established during the past thirty years.’

Kelly’s directory of Derbyshire states that Saunders Brickworks Ltd were operating the site in their 1936 edition. The works appears to have remained open until at least 1942, when it was being described as ‘Saunders Brickworks Ltd.’

After the brickworks closed the site was redeveloped by Edwin Marriott as Chesterfield’s first purpose-built trading estate for small businesses. A company ‘Storforth Lane Industries’ was registered in June 1956, presumably to develop and let the trading estate. Builder and contractor Edwin Marriott was the chairman of the board and permanent director, with the other first directors being Florence Bethune Marriott, Richard Edwin De Glossop and Marjorie Anne Glossop. The company was dissolved in January 2010.

Storforth Lane Brickworks shown on this map published in 1954. Note the ‘Old Shaft (Coal)’ which marks the site of the former colliery pit head. (Ordnance Survey, SK36NE – A, surveyed / revised: pre-1930 to 1954, published: 1955. Courtesy National Library of Scotland).
With the demise of local brickworks a whole raft of trades disappeared. This is just one example of a now disappeared occupation – an advertisement for a brickworks burner placed in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph of Tuesday 30 April 1929 at the Storforth Lane Brickworks.

Our previous blogs about this area – to the east and west of the Storforth Lane railway bridge – have been:

Our Hasland book
There’s lost more information about industries in Hasland, which includes the Derby Road area, along with the references to the sources used in this blog, in our Hasland book. Copies are available from the Chesterfield Visitor Centre and Chesterfield branch of Waterstones, priced at £20.

Storforth Lane Hasland – from brickworks to industrial estate Read More »

Storforth Lane colliery, Hasland

In this blog we take a look at another industrial concern, not far from the former Broad Oaks or Derby Road Ironworks. Here we take a look at Storforth Lane colliery, which occupied most of the present trading estate of that name, although the pit top was a little further eastwards.

Today’s Storforth Lane Trading Estate – once the site of a colliery, then a brickyard. The actual pit-top was situated a little to the east of the estate.

This colliery was the third sunk on the Heathcote estate – on the north side of Storforth Lane to the east of the Midland Railway. When the Heathcote estate was sold in 1874 it was said that this coal had been leased to George Senior for a term of 21 years ending in 1889 and that Senior had assigned the lease to the Industrial Coal & Iron Co. Ltd. The company continued to be listed as owner until 1878, when it was succeeded by a Dr Black.

This 1876 surveyed Ordnance Survey map shows the colliery and its connections to the Midland Railway line. Notice the tramroad which travels in an easterly direction to the pit top. (Derbyshire Sheet XXV.SW, surveyed: 1876, published: 1883. Courtesy National Library of Scotland).
The actual colliery shaft was just off the first map – to the east – as shown on this extract. The tramroad presumably travelled to it and the pithead off-loading facilities. (Ordnance Survey Derbyshire Sheet XXV.SE, Surveyed: 1877, Published: 1883. Courtesy National Library of Scotland)

The Industrial Coal & Iron Co. Ltd, promoted with a nominal capital of £150,000, paid £40,000 for Storforth Lane colliery and another £22,000 to develop it and connect the workings underground with those of the Hasland and Whitebank pits. This enabled coal from all three to be wound at Storforth Lane. This work was complete by June 1875, when the company advertised redundant winding engines from the other two collieries and a long list of other plant for sale. They also took out a new lease of a larger area of coal at Storforth Lane. At the same time, the company owned Woodhouse colliery at Woodhouse Junction on the Manchester, Sheffield & Lincolnshire Railway east of Sheffield (in Handsworth Woodhouse, Yorks.), where it also had a brickworks.

The company’s performance, compared with promises in its prospectus, was criticised by a shareholder at a half-yearly general meeting in August 1875. In March the following year the directors stated that, since Woodhouse colliery needed more capital to develop, the company had either to issue further shares or sell Storforth Lane colliery. In November 1876 a Sheffield builder petitioned for the company to be compulsorily wound up, which the directors indicated they would oppose.

In May 1877 the Chancery division ordered the sale by private tender of all plant, machinery and moveable items at both the Woodhouse and Storforth Lane collieries. The latter failed to sell and was put up for auction two months later.

The colliery was taken over in September 1877 by a newly formed Storforth Lane Colliery Co. Ltd, whose secretary in May 1878 absconded with the company’s books and papers. In August that year Dr Black, described as the lessor of the colliery, successfully applied to be appointed receiver. This was after the company had been summoned for not paying wages due to its men. It was stated then that the colliery had closed a month earlier.

In January 1879 the company, in a notice signed by a director named William Thomas Barrett, convened a meeting at which members resolved to wind up voluntarily, but a month later the court ordered the company to be compulsorily wound up.

Black, who may have been the main figure behind the company, seems to have tried to keep the colliery open for a few years. Soon after Black died in 1886 the plant at Storforth Lane was put up for sale. The colliery may have been restarted yet again, since in 1896 a business named the Storforth Lane Colliery & Derby Road Brickworks was advertising the sale of bricks, a steam engine, boiler and other equipment. It was certainly out of use by 1914, when part of the site was occupied by the Storforth Lane brickworks of C.J. Saunders Ltd.

The colliery was clearly denoted as disused on this 1897 revision. (Ordnance Survey Derbyshire XXV.10, revised: 1897, published: 1898. Courtesy National Library of Scotland).
By the 1921 6-inch Ordnance Survey map the former colliery site was now the site of a brickworks (Derbyshire Sheet XXV.SW Revised: 1914, Published: 1921. Courtesy National Library of Scotland).

Other collieries nearby

The Wingerworth Iron Co. operated a colliery at Boythorpe in 1854 and another named White Bank in 1855–7, of which the latter may be identical with what were described as Whitebank collieries Nos. 1 and 2, worked by the Industrial Coal & Iron Co. Ltd, in 1874 but not thereafter. There was a fire at the company’s 12 Whitebank pit in 1873. The colliery lay on the west 13 side of the Midland Railway north of the siding leading to Wingerworth ironworks. It was also called Derby Lane colliery and is recorded under that name in 1883, operated by the Industrial Coal & Iron Co. Ltd.

Our final blog in this series will look at the site’s subsequent use a brickworks, before its adaption into the present industrial estate.


Our Hasland book contains full source references for this blog.

You can learn more about other properties in Hasland in our book – ‘A history of Hasland including Birdholme, Boythrope, Corbriggs, Grassmoor, Hady, Spital and Winsick’. It’s on sale at the Chesterfield Visitor Centre and Waterstones in Chesterfield, priced at £20 for 206 pages with illustrations.

Our Hasland book

This post was slightly edited on 31 October 2022 to make it clear that the pit-top, including the single shaft to the colliery, were eastwards from the Storforth Lane Trading Estate.

Storforth Lane colliery, Hasland Read More »

AGM reviews successful year

Our 2022 AGM, held at Matlock’s Imperial Rooms on the 1 October, was able to review a successful year for VCH in Derbyshire.

Our 2022 AGM in progress.

The meeting heard that highlights of the year included the successful launch of our latest spin-off book on Hasland and successful sales of both this publication and the earlier ‘Chesterfield and Streets and Houses’.

Finances were also reported to be in good shape, by our Treasurer Cathrin Wharton. Membership numbers are relatively stable.  

County editor, Philip Riden, commented that our publications strategy was now being concentrated on the spin-off titles, such as the Hasland book, with work actively progressing on Wingerworth and another volume on Temple Normanton and Calow.  He paid tribute to continued support from our members along with work by volunteers. Also highlighted was the contribution to VCH made by David Edwards which had resulted in the Wingerworth volume being substantially complete. Philip also commented that the Hasland book was nearing a sell-out position.

Our publicity officer, Philip Cousins, reported on increased social media activity and the excellent coverage achieved locally for the Hasland book launch.

Chairman Lyn Pardo Roques oversaw the meeting, with Secretary Becky Sheldon providing administration and IT support. This year, unlike 2021, we did not stream the meeting as there was little demand to do this. All existing Trust officers were re-elected.

As has been the case in previous years, the morning saw the AGM of the Derbyshire Record Society, with lunch provided jointly by VCH and the Society.

After the business meeting Award winning buildings archaeologist James Wright gave a well-received talk about ‘Late Mediaeval Great Houses in the East Midlands’. The meeting closed with questions to Dr Wright followed by light refreshments.

  • A minute’s silence was taken at the meeting following news of the death of Miriam Wood, who had been a VCH stalwart since reinauguration of the project in Derbyshire and a committee member. Dr Wood will be well-known for her outstanding contribution to local history in the county.
Dr James Wright gives his well-received talk about ‘Late Mediaeval Great Houses in the East Midlands’ to our 2022 AGM.

AGM reviews successful year Read More »

James Wright to speak at our AGM on Saturday 1 October

Award winning buildings archaeologist James Wright is talking about ‘Late Mediaeval Great Houses in the East Midlands’ to our AGM on Saturday and anyone can turn up and hear what he has to say. This is also a new talk.

Dr James Wright.

Although our AGM starts with a business meeting at 2 pm, by around 2.30 pm we hope that James will be ready to talk to us, with members of the public welcome to attend. The meeting will conclude with light refreshments at 3.30 pm

Held at the Imperial Rooms, Imperial Road, Matlock, DE 4 3NL admission is free and all are welcome to the talk. Members of the public can also attend our AGM, though unless you are a member of the VCH Trust you won’t be able to vote.

Please pop along and hear what Dr Wright, who lives in Nottingham, has to say about ‘Late Mediaeval Great Houses in the East Midlands’.

Download the joint AGM agenda from the link below.

James Wright to speak at our AGM on Saturday 1 October Read More »

From Ironworks to concrete – the later history of the Storforth Lane ironworks site

In our last blog on this site at Storforth Lane we looked at the history of the Wingerworth and Broad Oaks ironworks, with their blast furnaces, on Storforth Lane. In this blog we bring the story up-to-date.

In 1931 Tarmac acquired the site of Broad Oaks blast furnaces, which had closed in 1907, presumably with a view to recovering slag for use as road metal.

After the Second World War the site passed to Henry Boot, a firm of Sheffield building contractors, who in 1956 established Reema-Boot Ltd. They produced prefabricated concrete sections for both domestic and commercial buildings. Locally this included the mission church at Boythorpe erected by SS Augustine (now the St Francis Community Centre).

By this 1938 map the ‘Broad Oaks furnaces’ are clearly marked disused, though the network of internal railways remains, along with their connection to the Midland mainline railway. (Ordnance Survey, Derbyshire Sheet XXV.SW, Revised: 1938. Courtesy National Library of Scotland).
All the remaining buildings had been removed by the date of this map – 1951. There are remnants of the internal railway system still present at this date. Five years later Henry Boot, a firm of Sheffield building contractors, established Reema-Boot Ltd, who produced sectionalised concrete structures from the site. (Ordnance Survey, SK36 (includes: 43/36) – Publication date: 1951. Courtesy National Library of Scotland).

The process was developed by a Wiltshire company, Reed & Mallik (hence Reema) established in 1937. In 1963 it was said that nationally 13,000 Reema houses had been erected, divided between over 400 contracts.

The system involved casting panels the height of a single storey at the works, which could be erected on a prepared foundation with minimal use of skilled labour. The panels slotted into a reinforced concrete frame which tied the building together and ensured that joints between panels were watertight. This method could be used for buildings of up to four storeys, in which load was borne by the frame. For taller buildings the hollow wall panels were filled to provide load-bearing cross-walls. The external wall panels were cast with cavities containing half-inch thick fibreboard insulation. The floor panels were generally hollow. A final external finish to the wall panels was applied at the factory, using various materials, of which gravel proved to amongst the cheapest and most successful. In 1963 it was reported that Reema had been using a range of self-cleaning finishes in glass and china, and some experimental panels had been faced with crushed whisky bottles.

The Storforth Lane factory then had 140 workers, of whom only six were skilled – the joiners who made the wooden moulds for the panels. The factory was using a thousand different moulds, a number which the company pointed out could be reduced to 50 if local authorities would agree on standard designs for houses.

At Brimington, near Chesterfield, the Coal Industry Housing Association built an estate which used (though not exclusively) Reema houses. Originally the houses were painted white, leading to the nickname ‘White City’. To the right the light blue painted building is now one of a few that have not been pebble-dashed. Closer examination, not possible here, would reveal its system built concrete panels.
The Reema construction method was used in other buildings, such as churches, halls, etc. This is St Francis Community Centre at Boythorpe, one such example.

A contract for 2,000 houses for the Coal Industry Housing Association had been produced using only 34 moulds and two types of house. Other differences included the finish required for floors, including timber, thermoplastic, composition, granite or terrazo. Local authorities in the south preferred metal window frames, those in the north timber. In some case heating was ducted, in others embedded.

The company estimated that a factory capable of producing 500 houses a year could be built for £150,000. It had by 1963 built (or had under construction) 2,780 houses at Leeds (Yorks. WR) and between October 1959 and March 1962 had erected 1,810 dwellings.

By this 1960s map the site (centre) was well developed with buildings in use for construction of Reema structures by Reema (Chesterfield) Ltd. All remnants of the internal railway system and its links with the mainline have disappeared. (Ordnance Survey, SK36NE – A. Surveyed/Revised: 1960 to 1967, Published: 1967. Courtesy National Library of Scotland).

The company was renamed Reema (Chesterfield) Ltd in 1959, in 1975 it became Storforth Contractors Ltd, and in 1976 was dissolved.

After the works went out of use the main ironworks site south of Storforth Lane was redeveloped as an industrial estate, as it still is today.

Storforth Lane, September 2022. The railway bridge, still in use over the former Midland mainline, is to the right. The entrance to the ready-mixed concrete company is to the left. This is the site of the former transfer railway sidings for the ironworks. Reference to some of the maps in this blog will show that a railway once crossed the road in this vicinity.

A small area north of Storforth Lane immediately west of the Midland Railway bridge, originally occupied by transfer sidings for the ironworks, continues to be used by a ready-mixed concrete company.

Storforth lane, looking east. The industrial buildings and estates on the right are on the former ironwork’s site.

Our Hasland book contains full source references for this blog.

You can learn more about other properties in Hasland in our book – ‘A history of Hasland including Birdholme, Boythrope, Corbriggs, Grassmoor, Hady, Spital and Winsick’. It’s on sale at the Chesterfield Visitor Centre and Waterstones in Chesterfield, priced at £20 for 206 pages with illustrations.

Our Hasland book

From Ironworks to concrete – the later history of the Storforth Lane ironworks site Read More »

The Broad Oaks and Wingerworth ironworks

In this blog we’ll take a look at the so-called Wingerworth ironworks, later known as the Broad Oaks ironworks. Both names are a bit confusing. The name Broad Oaks was for many years associated with Markham works in Spital, but the ironworks weren’t there. Nor were they at Wingerworth. The works were actually at Storforth Lane, in Hasland Parish.

Two of the three blast furnaces at the Storforth Lane works (with the third to the extreme right).To gain some idea of their size a man to the bottom is circled. From a postcard taken around 1906. (Courtesy collection Philip Cousins)

In 1848 James Yates (1798–1881), a Rotherham ironfounder, took a lease for 20 years from Michaelmas 1846 of the ironstone under much of the Hunloke estate in Wingerworth and adjoining parishes, a smaller acreage of coal beneath the estate west of the Midland Railway, and two pieces of land at Tupton and Birdholme, on each of which he proposed to erect blast furnaces.

The rights of the Wingerworth Coal Co. and Clay Cross Co. under earlier leases were protected and Yates was to use the coal he mined on the estate only for smelting ironstone. Yates did not proceed with the scheme for furnaces at Tupton, possibly because the Clay Cross Co. built an ironworks not far away at about the same date. But by 1847 Yates had erected three furnaces on the west side of the Midland line immediately south of Storforth Lane.

Coal and ironstone were brought from pits on the Hunloke estate in Wingerworth on a standard gauge tramway which passed beneath Birdholme Bridge and in front of Birdholme House before running through the works to a junction with the main line. The business was known as the Wingerworth Iron Co. from the mid-1850s.

Yates was joined in partnership at the Wingerworth business by Thomas Carrington (1813–73), originally from Stockport, the brother of Betsey Carrington (1806–78), Yates’s second wife, whom he married in 1843. In 1851 Thomas, then aged 38, was living at the house on St Mary’s Gate, in Chesterfield, near the top of Tapton Lane which previously been the home of the Malkin family, with his wife Elizabeth, aged 29, who had been born in Australia, and their three sons, Thomas (9),Charles (7) and Arthur (5), all born in Stockport, and a daughter Harriet, aged one, born in Chesterfield. The chronology implies that the family moved from Cheshire between 1846 and 1850.

In 1861, by which time the family had moved to Holywell House on Holywell Street, Carrington was employing about 600 men in his ironworks and collieries, and gave a figure of 400 ten years later. In 1869 he and Yates renewed their lease of ironstone beneath the Hunloke estate west of the railway and the land on which the ironworks was built for a further 21 years.

The first 6-inch to one mile Ordnance Survey map clearly shows the ‘Wingerworth Works (Iron)’ with the presumably ever-growing blast furnace slag tip. Derby Road runs top to bottom to the left on this map extract, with Storforth Lane running centre, left to right, under the then Midland Railway mainline from Chesterfield. Note the connection with the Midland Railway. The tramway, exiting the map to bottom centre, is on its way southwards to Speighthill Colliery (near the Chesterfield end of Long Edge Lane) and another then disused colliery to the west of Birdholme House. (Derbyshire Sheet XXV.SW, Surveyed: 1876, Published: 1883. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland).

Carrington, a Congregationalist, was elected a member of the Iron & Steel Institute in 1870 and the following year was elected the first chairman of Chesterfield school board, an office he retained until he died in 1873. His effects were initially sworn at under £70,000 and later resworn at under £60,000. He was described in the probate grant as an ‘Ironmaster and Hat Manufacturer’. One of his executors was his brother Samuel Ratcliffe Carrington, a hatmaker of Stockport, suggesting that Thomas had kept an interest in a family business. James Yates (who remained resident at Rotherham) was also an executor.

Thomas’s son Arthur Carrington (c.1846–1924) became a member of the Iron & Steel Institute in 1872 and seems to have been the only acting partner in the Wingerworth Co. after Thomas’s death. He was employing 80 men at the furnaces in 1881. From about 1884 Thomas Blair, who had previously worked as a furnace manager at John Brown’s Atlas Works in Sheffield, was the manager at the Wingerworth business.

By this map revision of 1897 the works were known as Broad Oaks. In that year C.P. Markham took a lease of the works, initially through his Chesterfield engineering business, Markham & Co. Derbyshire Sheet XXV.SW, Revised: 1897, Published: 1899. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland).

In 1886 Blair gave a paper on silica and other deposits he had found in an old furnace bear at Wingerworth to the Iron & Steel Institute, of which he was elected a member in 1875. Blair supplied analyses of Northamptonshire ore to C.H. Plevins in 1887, when Plevins was considering erecting steel works on his estate at Woodford (Northants.), and may have been seen as a potential manager of the new enterprise.

After the ironstone at Wingerworth became exhausted in the 1870s (and the tramway from the works partly lifted), the company drew supplies from a mine near Burghley (Rutland). In the previous decade the company had joined other companies in a consortium known as the Midland Counties Iron Ore Co. which made unsuccessful attempts to develop the Jurassic iron ore of Northamptonshire.

The three furnaces at Wingerworth were rebuilt in 1872 and thereafter each had a capacity of 16,000 tons a year. At least two, and in some years all three, were in blast until 1886, when the works shut down for two years. The furnaces were back in use between 1889 and 1893 but then closed again. In February 1887 cash was collected at Derby Road Iron Church and used to provide tickets which were given to married men with families laid off from the works who could use them to buy goods from local tradesmen.

The works had closed in 1907 and were disused, but were to have further use, though not for iron production, as we will see in a later blog. (Derbyshire sheet Derbyshire Sheet XXV Revised: 1914, Published: 1921. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland).

In 1897 C.P. Markham took a lease of the works, initially through his Chesterfield engineering business, Markham & Co., although they appear afterwards to have been transferred to the Staveley Coal & Iron Co. Markham, who later purchased the freehold of the site, put the furnaces back into blast, giving work to about 150 men, and also built a new pipe foundry, which employed a similar number. The furnaces were then said to have a capacity of 350 tons a week each.  After Markham took over the site it was known as Broad Oaks Furnaces, presumably because it operated in connection with Markham & Co.’s Broad Oaks Ironworks, Chesterfield.

Broad Oaks Furnaces closed in 1907. The site remained derelict for some years before it was acquired in 1931 by Tarmac, and was later used by a company manufacturing prefabricated concrete buildings. The manufacturing of iron for the Staveley Coal and Iron Company was transferred to the new Devonshire Works at Staveley, which were constructed to replace Broad Oaks iron works and significantly improve production and by-product capture, refining and sale.

We’ll be tracing the further use of the ironworks site in a future post.

The 1897 25-inch map carries even greater detail of the works, in the year that CP Markham purchased them. The three circular structures are the actual blast furnaces. The works here would have had coke ovens and at one-time, as highlighted in the text, also had a pipe foundry – presumably those buildings to the far left of the site. (Derbyshire sheet XXV.10 Revised: 1897, Published: 1898. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland).
Our Hasland book
There’s lost more information about industries in Hasland, which includes the Derby Road area, along with the references to the sources used in this blog, in our Hasland book, recently published.

The Broad Oaks and Wingerworth ironworks Read More »

A lost Hasland house

In this blog we take another look at Hasland, from our recent book. This time it’s about a now disappeared 17th-century house, sometimes called Hasland Old Hall.

A plate from our Hasland book, showing a Nadin’s postcard of what was a 17th-century house, sometimes called Hasland Old Hall. Remains of it survived until 1984, at the
junction of Calow Lane and Chapel Lane. (Courtesy Derbyshire County Council – Derbyshire Library Service)
.
A recent view of the site of Hasland Old Hall – now occupied by modern housing. (Google Street View).

Little seems to have been known about its history – the remains of the building finally disappearing in 1984. Its site is now housing.

The property appears to have been a large 17-century house, of two stories, plus attics. What looks like a large rear wing could be seen (and is illustrated above) on Calow Lane adjoining the junction with Chapel Lane.

It’s one of those unfortunate houses across the country not to have survived and was poorly recorded. Apparently there was a coat of arms on plasterwork on one of the chimney breasts on the ground floor, with a date of 1665 and the initials RS on it. A resident, reported in a 1984 Derbyshire Times article, remembered that the arms contained a unicorn, magpie, lion, oak leaves and acorns. The initials don’t appear to correspond with anyone listed on the 1670 Hearth Tax in Hasland. Not all the larger houses in Hasland can, however, be located, so it may be that this house was amongst them.

In1849 Francis Childs owned the house. It was part of a small estate of cottage property on Calow Lane and Chapel Lane – totalling 6 acres. Childs (1791/2-1857) was a farmer at Calow Oaks (in Calow) and the son of a man of the same name who farmed at Hasland. But we know nothing of the earlier owners.

Until at least into the 1950s the house was divided into tenements. But it started to collapse and was demolished. It appears to have been finally swept away in 1984.

If you can remember anything of this property we’d be very interested to hear from you.

You learn more about other properties in Hasland in our book – ‘A history of Hasland including Birdholme, Boythrope, Corbriggs, Grassmoor, Hady, Spital and Winsick’. It’s on sale at the Chesterfield Visitor Centre, Waterstones in Chesterfield and Hasland Co-op, priced at £20 for 206 pages with illustrations.

Our Hasland book

A lost Hasland house Read More »