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.
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).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.
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.
The ghostly figures, in our first photograph in this blog, shed some light on a now forgotten aspect of coal mining – women’s work on the pit top.
Ghostly figures of pit-top women workers.Behind them, to the right, appears to be coal exiting the colliery top screens. These screens also employed female labour in manually sorting extracted coal and removing unwanted dirt.
At first we thought that these rare photographs (published here for the first time) might have been taken in the north eastern part of Derbyshire, possibly at a colliery of the Staveley Coal and Iron Company. We also thought that they were of the First World War period or later. The short series of plate glass negatives (of which we reproduce three), shows women engaged in pit-top work, sorting and stacking coal.
Though women were banned from working underground in the Mines and Collieries Act of 1842, following the Children’s Employment Commission report of the same year, this didn’t stop pit-top work. Nationally this was fairly common – even by 1900 4,808 females were employed against 155,829 males working at coal, iron, shale and clay mines. But it’s thought that no women were employed in the Derbyshire coalfield during the nineteenth century. This resulted in most women staying at home.
The Derbyshire Miners’ Association wanted to see ‘a total prohibition of female labour about our mines’ in response to a proposed Coal Mines bill of 1911. But this amendment to the bill was defeated, with the aid of women suffragists. This caused some consternation with one MP saying that the ’university women’ responsible for the amendment’s defeat did not understand the hard nature of the work involved.
A filled tub of presumably freshly worked coal with three women pit-top workers. This looks as though it has been sorted from from the coal screens and comprises mainly ‘slack’.Colliery buildings loom large in the background.
In 1915, following the onset of the First World War, nationally it was thought that employers and workers would be best placed to look, jointly, at employing more women on the surface (along with other measures to increase productivity).
Though reports of actual employment in Derbyshire are scant some have surfaced. For example in March 1916 the Derbyshire Miners’ Association was protesting after it was reported that ‘women workers had been introduced to certain pits in the county.’ This appears to have centred on a dispute at Waleswood Colliery. The need to replace men at work had presumably started this move. In 1916 some 12,000 men had left the pits in Derbyshire to join the army.
In some areas of the country the employment of women is fairly well documented, but in Derbyshire, with its early absence of women, it is possibly less so. Later, as coal owners were forced to consider welfare provision at the pit top, women played their role in what might be termed traditional work – occupational nursing and canteen work are just two.
Although our ‘ghostly figures’ were first thought to be possibly of Derbyshire origin, but are probably not, they do throw some light on a sometimes-forgotten part that women played in the coal industry of past years.
Neatly stacked coal at an unknown colliery. We think the other two photographs are at the same location. Where could it be and who was one of of the unsung women pit-top workers pictured here?
Sources used in this blog:
Angela V John, By the seat of their brow. Women workers at Victorian coal mines, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul (1984).
JE Williams, The Derbyshire miners. A study in industrial and social history, London: George Allen & Unwin (1962).
Derbyshire Courier 11 March 1916, 22 April 1916 and 5 September 1916.
Our thanks to one of our VCH research group members for allowing us to share these photographs. We would be interested to hear views on where these photographs might be.
Our sister organisation, the Derbyshire Record Society (DRS) is publishing a new book Church Goods in Derbyshire 1552-1553, edited by Richard Clark
Front cover of the new DRS book.
About the book
The book is concerned with the national seizure of church goods in 1553, one of the major dispossession of ecclesiastical assets during the English Reformation. It contains the surviving documents relating to their confiscation in Derbyshire, including the inventories of church goods made in 1552 in preparation for their seizure. The book also contains the indentures made in May 1553 about the retention by parishes of vessels for the administration of Holy Communion and of their bells, and the returns made from Derbyshire and handed over to government officials in Westminster. The final item in the volume is a letter from the borough of Derby to the Privy Council in 1553 about its failure to report to it about its survey of church goods there in 1552.
Details of the goods itemised in the Derbyshire inventories and indentures have been available in print for over a century and a half, but the documents, appearing here, have never been printed in full. They have previously been exploited for their interest concerning surviving church furnishings and ornaments in Derbyshire before their final seizure by Edward VI’s government. However, without a full edition of the documents presented here a review of their administrative and political significance as well as detailed and critical consideration of their contents has not previously been possible. This volume aims to rectify these omissions as well as to provide a full critical apparatus to set these documents and their contents.
Anyone is welcome to join the DRS for the launch on Saturday 16 July 2.30pm, with talk by the editor at the Imperial Rooms, Imperial Road, Matlock, DE4 3NL.
The book will be available to purchase on the day for £30 (£20 for Record Society members). If you are unable to join the DRS on the , but 16th, but would like to order a copy of the book, this can be done online or by printing and completed the attached order form.
Colleagues at our national office in London have done a great job in summarising what we do.
We aim to produce a history of every place in England, from the earliest times to the ever-moving now, in a consistent form including accounts of landscape and settlement, with buildings and archaeology.
Our histories include histories of landownership from Domesday Book (and earlier) to the present, economic and social histories, the history of religion and local government using original sources. As well as our ‘Big Red Books’ (which look at a number of places), VCH Shorts (which describe individual places) and much more, we also have a smart-phone App, ‘A History of England’s Places’.
You can find out more by visiting the VCH’s national pages and, of course, browse our Derbyshire pages on this website.
If you would like to help us in Derbyshire visit our ‘Get involved’ website page.
The evening of the 15 June, saw a successful launch for our new book on the history of Hasland.
Philip Riden, VCH County Editor, talking to a packed audience at the Devonshire Arms during the launch of a new book about Hasland’s history.
Launched at the Devonshire Arms in the village, it was a capacity audience of over 60 people who attended the event. Our County Editor, Philip Riden, explained about what VCH does and gave a brief overview of the history of this formerly large parish, which used to comprise Spital, Hady, Boythorpe, Grassmoor, Winsick, Birdholme and Corbriggs.
The beginnings of the township, its growth, economic history, religion, education, landownership and local government were amongst topics covered. Large-scale industry like the former Chesterfield Tube Works got a mention, along with the less well-known story of local mining and the Broad Oaks furnaces near Storforth Lane were mentioned.
Priced at £20 the book is of some 200 pages, with colour illustrations and maps. The A4 sized hardback book should hopefully soon be available at Waterstones in Chesterfield and the town’s Visitor Centre. It is also available from the VCH by using an online order form at https://bit.ly/HistoryofHasland and from Hasland Coop.
The Trust’s first publication in this VCH spin-off series, Chesterfield’s Streets and Houses, is still available. The next spin-off book should be an account of Temple Normanton and Calow.
Our thanks to everyone who attended and to the Devonshire Arms for providing the venue.
Philip Riden, Derbyshire VCH County Editor, far right, with some of the volunteer group who have contributed to the new book on Hasland. Holding the book, centre, is Lyn Pardo Roques, Chair of the Derbyshire VCH Trust.
No apologies for advertising our nee Hasland book’s launch on 15 June, in this blog.
Pop along to see us at the Devonshire Arms, Hasland, starting at 7.30pm. There’s no admission fee and you’ll be able to hear our county editor Philip Riden, give a short account of the book and the formerly extensive parish of Hasland. You’ll also be able to purchase the book if you want to.
Our Hasland book cover, by kind permission of Derbyshire County Council, features Spital House. Our last blog looked at this now disappeared property.
Published on behalf of the Derbyshire Victoria County (VCH) Trust, the book represents hours of research by a group of volunteers, under the guidance of VCH county editor Philip Riden. They have been busy researching the history of Chesterfield for around 20 years. Although this is the second publication as a result of this work, it is the first to look at an actual area of Chesterfield and the north eastern part of the county – and more are set to follow.
The book looks at Hasland’s history through the ages, charting the many communities that once made up its historic area – Spital, Hady, Boythorpe, Grassmoor, Winsick, Birdholme and Corbriggs. The beginnings of the township, its growth, economic history, religion, education, landownership and local government are amongst topics covered. Large-scale industry like the former Chesterfield Tube Works gets a mention, along with the less well-known story of local mining, the Broad Oaks furnaces near Storforth Lane and many others.
Philip Riden described the history as the fullest account of the history of Hasland published so far, and the first ever attempt to write the history of Grassmoor or Birdholme. He commented; ‘Our work on Hasland was well progressed, and so we thought there was a need to bring this together and publish it. Hopefully, local people will find the book of interest. It’s really an interim account of the township as we aim to produce a volume of the Victoria County History for the area.’
At some 200 pages with colour illustrations and maps, the A4 sized hardback book will be available to purchase at the launch and afterwards at Waterstones in Chesterfield and the town’s Visitor Centre and from the publisher Merton Priory Press (mertonpriory.co.uk). It’s priced at £20 (plus postage and packaging).
Philip Riden comments; ‘We hope that by publishing our research it will herald a new understanding of the area’s varied past. All VCH accounts are well-researched, fully indexed and have copious references, so that anyone interested can look up our sources and research things further if they want to’.
The Trust’s first publication in this spin-off series, Chesterfield’s Streets and Houses, is still available. The next spin-off book will be an account of Temple Normanton and Calow.
Our colleagues at our VCH central office at the Institute of Historical Research remind us that Royal Jubilees have a special place in the history of our project. The Victoria County History was dedicated to Queen Victoria and was intended as a lasting celebration of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897. On Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee, in 2012, that royal dedication was renewed.
In 2013 we published our first big red book since 1905 and 1907. Our 2013 book was amongst the first to carry our revised dedication to Her Majesty in her then diamond jubilee year.
Congratulations to Her Majesty on her Platinum Jubilee.
