Our new Hasland VCH spin-off book is to be published at a launch event on the evening of 15 June at the Devonshire Arms, Hasland.
The book will be the first authoritative account of this large parish.
Until 19th-century boundary changes, the township (later civil parish) of Hasland (near Chesterfield) included not just what people think of as Hasland today but also Corbriggs and Winsick, Grassmoor, Birdholme and the St Augustine’s end of Boythorpe. It formerly included much industry on Derby Road. We’ve recently been featuring some of the many varied subjects covered in the book in our blog. You can rad more about why Hasland has been chosen for our first township based spin-off book in our blog.
With colour plates, of just over 200 pages, A4 in size, we think that this will be a landmark publication in the history of the area. The book will be available for £20 at the meeting. We also hope to make it available in Waterstones bookshop in Chesterfield and by post from the publisher (additional postage of £5 will apply).
The launch event, which is free to attend, will be held on Wednesday 15th June starting at 7.30pm in the function room at the Devonshire Arms, Hasland. To find out more about the launch event visit our events page.
The final part of our concise overview of the Chesterfield tube works is presented in this blog. It’s an edited version from our forthcoming VCH spin-off book on Hasland, with some new information added about the concern’s more recent years.
This 1950s map shows the tube works facility on either side of Derby Road. In 1956 the works occupied over 16 acres on a site of 36 acres. The premises towards the top (northwards) of Byron Street are that of Bryan Donkin & Company. (Ordnance Survey , 6-inces to 1 mile, sheet SK37SE – A, 1968.Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, National Library of Scotland – Map Images (nls.uk)).
The1950s saw a programme of programme of modernisation and expansion. In 1950 a new factory to make small cylinders from steel tube was opened (the Alma Works). For a time the company was the largest producer of cylinders in the world. A new hot mill for weldless steel cylinders was opened in 1955.
In 1956 the works occupied over 16 acres on a site of 36 acres. By that date the company had made over 8 million cylinders for compressed and liquid gases for use in shipyards, steel mills, mines, aircraft, hospital and many other locations.
The largest of the presses at the Derby Road plant was installed in the 1960s, remaining in use until the site closed. In these years products included the traditional range of seamless steel cylinders for all kinds of gases, hot- and cold-drawn seamless steel tubes, seamless steel headers for boilers and superheaters, seamless steel water and steam boiler drums and pressure vessels, and stainless steel drawn and extruded tubes.
In 1962 the Tube Works occupied 50 acres, had over 2,000 employees, and produced 2,000 tons of cylinders a month. The works had its own St John Ambulance unit, medical and dental surgeries, and a large sports and social club with its own premises at Bank Close, off Hasland Road. In 1963 the stainless steel businesses of Accles & Pollock and Talbot Stead were amalgamated to form TI Stainless, to which the stainless division at Chesterfield was added in the 1970s.
In 1974 new forging plant was installed at Derby Road for the manufacture of industrial cylinders. The company also made tubes from sterling silver for ICI which were used in photographic processing.
This September 2005 view shows how the large shed-type structures that were part of the Tube Works dominated the Derby Road part of the town. This photo was taken from the top of The Pavements car park.(Courtesy Philip Cousins).
In 1970 the company claimed to be the world’s largest maker of precision steel tubes in sizes up to 660 mm. in diameter for automotive, nuclear and others.
In 1987 the stainless-steel portion of the business, now known as TI Stainless Tubes, was acquired by the Sandvik Group and was renamed Sterling Tubes Ltd. Investment of over £2m. in new plant followed and around this time the company was exporting over 70 per cent of its output. In 1976, 1982 and 1987 the company received the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement.In 2001 Sterling Tubes’ Chesterfield and Walsall manufacturing sites were closed.
TI Chesterfield’s letter stamp, proudly proclaiming that they were ‘tube and gas cylinder makers to the world’. (Collection Philip Cousins).
1988 saw the remainder of the business, TI Chesterfield, purchased by United Engineering Steels, a joint venture by the British Steel Corporation and the GKN Group, and renamed Chesterfield Cylinders. In 1995 the plant became part of BSC Forgings Division, which two years later was bought by United Engineering Forgings. In 2001 it was taken over by EuroCylinder Systems of Germany who sold the specialised cylinders business to a management buy-out in 2004. The former high volume manufacturing division for standard cylinders appears to have been closed. The surviving company’s name was changed to Chesterfield Special Cylinders (trading as Chesterfield Cylinders). The company had to relocate, achieving this by a move to Meadowhall in mid-2005. Just before the move to the new premises the company updated its logo to CTCO. This resurrected initials first used, it was claimed, in 1927 as a cylinder head stamp, for Chesterfield Tube Company. Housing now covers the entire main entire site, with a leisure park having been built in then late 1990s on the former site of the 1950 new factory (Alma Works).
The new Cinema World complex is under construction on the site of the former TI Chesterfield’s Alma works in early 1998. The gates in the foreground and the lamp standard are remnants of the former works entrance. Not only was a manufacturing facility once here, but also a well-equipped apprentice training centre. (Collection Philip Cousins)
End of an era. Discarded industrial cylinders make a sad sight looking over their probable birth place, then being cleared for housing. An April 2006 view. (Courtesy Philip Cousins).
Please note that the photographs in this blog will not appear in our Hasland book.
The old Hasland parish covers a wide area of Chesterfield, including the once heavily industrialised Derby Road. One of the biggest industrial concerts in the township was the works Chesterfield Cylinders. ‘The tube works’ as they were known is the subject of this blog.
We’ve condensed text from our forthcoming VCH spin-off book on Hasland, to present this shortened history of the companies which once occupied the prominent sites on either side of Derby Road.
An aerial view of Chesterfield Tube Works in 1958, showing its enormous extent by that date. In the background the former Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast Railway is disused but the formation remains intact; to the right the former Midland Railway main line passes beneath it. (Courtesy Picture the Past/Derbyshire County Council).
The works are established
The development of land on either side of Derby Road to the south of the town by the engineering industry began in 1897 when Augustus William Byron, a prominent Chesterfield land agent and businessman, promoted the Universal Steel Tubes Company (Ehrhardt’s Process) Ltd to make weldless steel tubes for naval vessels, exploiting the UK rights to a German process.
Chesterfield was chosen for the new venture because of its central position in a traditional iron and steel making district and the availability of fairly cheap labour. An 11-acre site on the west side of Derby Road about half a mile south of the town was acquired, on which buildings covering 3½ acres were erected, known as the Universal Works. There was with rail access via the Brampton branch of the Midland Railway.
In 1899 Byron’s firm announced the sale of freehold building land adjoining the works, noting that arrangements could probably be made with the purchaser to lease 50 houses erected on the land to the Universal company, presumably for workmen and their families.
The original company failed in April 1901. In November that year the business was reconstructed as the Universal Tube Co. Ltd. There was a further reorganisation in 1906, when a syndicate of London financiers, purchased a tube-making patent from a Balfour Frazer McTear, an engineer employed for a time as a manager by the Universal company. The syndicate established the Chesterfield Tube Co. Ltd. The new company took over the existing business as a going concern
Chesterfield Tube remained independent until 1929, when it was absorbed into Tube Investments Ltd, a combine established in 1919 to reorganise the industry.
Products and expansion
The Chesterfield plant was initially equipped with ‘Ehrhardt’ machinery, delivered in September 1898, and also used the Pilger process. The company faced a number of technical problems in its early years, some of which were overcome by extruding the tubes. In this period it produced boiler and economiser tubes for the Admiralty and small tubes for locomotives and other applications. Shell forgings were made during the Boer War. After the reconstruction of 1906 the company, with about a hundred employees, initially concentrated on boiler tubes and other small diameter products but from 1907 expanded to make weldless steel tubes. It also made weldless steel cylinders for oxygen and carbon dioxide.
During the First World War the Chesterfield plant employed about 1,500 men. New forging presses and hot- and cold-draw benches were installed. The company’s contribution to the war effort included aircraft tubing, light oxygen cylinders for aircraft, explosion vessels, torpedo tubes and over 2.5 million shell bodies.
The interwar period
After 1918 pre-war products returned and diversification into new lines, including weldless steel rectangular and square section headers for boiler plants in power stations took place. Progress was made in the manufacture of cylinders for the storage and transport of permanent and liquefiable gases.
After the company became part of Tube Investments in 1929 the Chesterfield works concentrated almost entirely on weldless steel cylinders, tubes and forgings up to 6 in. in diameter. It also pioneered the production of hot- and cold-drawn stainless-steel tubes.
In 1935 the company installed an extrusion press, thus becoming the first commercial extruder of stainless steel in the world and the main supplier of stainless-steel hollows to other companies in the TI combine engaged in cold drawing.
A heavy tube department was established in 1938, equipped with a 5,000-ton vertical hydraulic piercing press, enabling it to produce large stainless and carbon steel tubes up to 24 in. diameter. The works then occupied some 10 acres.
An attempt in 1933, pioneered by the Tube Company and Bryan Donkin, to introduce compressed coal gas as a means of propulsion for cars and lorries was unsuccessful because of the lack of filling stations and the taxation of road vehicles by weight.
The Second World War
During the Second World War Chesterfield Tube produced for the Royal Navy high pressure air vessels and air firing reservoirs, boiler drums for corvettes and frigates, heavy forgings for shells and more than 6,000 torpedo air vessel bodies. More than 4,000 tons of the company’s seamless steel steam pipes could be found in almost every ship the Navy launched during the war and afterwards. The small tube department’s contribution included over 12 million feet of aircraft tubing, including tubes for the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine and for fuselage spars, as well as tank axles for the Army and munitions for all three Services.
In 1941 the company occupied 29 acres on Derby Road, including 13 acres of workshops. After the war the company continued to concentrate on stainless steel tubes, almost all of which went to two other TI companies for cold reducing or cold drawing to smaller sizes.
We’ll continue our brief overview of what was by now TI in our next scheduled blog. You’ll be able to read a much fuller history of the site in our Hasland book, due out in June 2022).
A pioneer school for ‘delicate children’, home to Chesterfield’s richest woman, built by Chesterfield entrepreneur TP Wood, hospital annexe and now a school and home to model railways. Brambling House at Hady, just within the old parish of Hasland, certainly has an interesting history which we explore in this blog.
Brambling House, April 2019.
Our spin-off book on Hasland will give a concise account on Brambling House, which is situated towards the top of Hady Hill, Chesterfield. (Historically it was just inside the large parish of Hasland). But our account will be fairly concise, as with all such VCH accounts. But you’ll find it has been meticulously researched. This means anyone who wants to add to the story can do so, aided by the full footnotes. Here we’ll trace Brambling House, with the aid of text in our Hasland book, but with a little more added history and photographs and minus the footnotes.
Brambling House is built
This carved datestone is set above one of the ground-floor windows. TW – is for TP Wood, along with the date of the house – 1877.
The house was built in 1877 on a previously unoccupied site at the top of Hady Hill, for Thomas Philpot Wood (1840–1911). He was a Chesterfield wine and spirit merchant, a business which he inherited from his father, also Thomas Philpot Wood, of Boythorpe House. The younger T.P. Wood was the grandson of Capt. John Wood RN of Brambling House in Ickham (Kent), from which the house in Chesterfield took its name. Wood added an aerated water manufactory to his father’s business.
Wood also became chairman of William Stones Ltd, the Sheffield brewers, and a director of J. & G. Wells Ltd, the Eckington colliery owners. He was educated at Chesterfield grammar school (whose governing body he later chaired) and at Düsseldorf. Wood became a town councillor in 1863, an alderman in 1871 and was mayor on three occasions. He supported numerous local charities. In his public life he was best remembered as the driving force behind the creation of Queen’s Park, but also pressed for other local improvements. Perhaps more famously in the Chesterfield area, between 1864 and 1905 he published a yearly Chesterfield and North Derbyshire Almanack, whose varied content reflected Wood’s interest in local history. Wood was a keen gardener and in his younger days an amateur actor.
Wood never married and lived alone at Brambling House, which had 17 principal rooms, apart from three or four servants. The house was built of brick with slate roofs, and stood in partly wooded grounds, which Wood greatly enhanced. He died in December 1911, leaving personal estate of £94,836.7
New owners of the house
Brambling House was sold (privately, it appears) soon after Wood’s death to George Albert Eastwood (1860–1934), also the head in the second generation of a successful local business and, like Wood, a former pupil of the grammar school, a prominent member of Chesterfield corporation, a generous benefactor to the town, and a bachelor. Eastwood was the son of Edward Eastwood (1826–1910), who in 1863 established a railwaywagon building and repair business, with works on Brimington Road (in Tapton). G.A. Eastwood was a town councillor, alderman and mayor (like Wood on three occasions), and was a trustee or committee-man of many local bodies. He was chairman of J. & G. Wells and a director of several other local colliery companies. Whereas his father was best remembered for his generous benefactions to the Royal Hospital, G.A. Eastwood’s two largest charitable acts were his purchase in 1912 of the Hasland House estate, whose grounds became Eastwood Park, in memory of his father, and in 1924 his gift of a site on Infirmary Road for the technical college, together with £25,000 towards the cost of the original building.
G.A. Eastwood remained at Brambling House until he died in November 1934, leaving (as his father had done) estate valued at half a million pounds. His main beneficiary was his niece Susie Blanche Eastwood, who had performed the opening ceremony at Eastwood Park in 1913 and kept house for her uncle. During this period Brambling House was frequently the venue for fund-raising events for the Congregational Church on Soresby Street, of which the Eastwoods were members, for local charities and for the Liberal Party. Miss Eastwood stayed at Brambling House for a short time after her uncle’s death.
From home to school, hospital and school
In 1936 Blanche Eastwood sold the Estate, including the house. The corporation agreed to purchase the property and convert it into a pioneer school for ‘delicate children’, which opened in 1939.
Not surprisingly the Derbyshire Times covered the opening of the school in its edition of 28 April 1939. These next three photographs are taken from that newspaper’s account.
After she sold the estate in 1936, Blanche Eastwood bought a piece of land on the opposite side of Hady Hill, on which she built a new house, Brambling 17 Cottage. Miss Eastwood, who never married, remained active in public life, as a town councillor and JP for both the borough and county, and in church work, as well as continuing her family’s tradition of generous support for local charities. She died, aged 89, in 1963, leaving estate valued at £790,396.18 At that time she was reputed to be Chesterfield’s richest woman.
But the school had a short initial life. In 1941 the school was taken over by the Ministry of Health being administered as a convalescent facility by the Chesterfield Royal Hospital’s board of management. It was designed as additional accommodation for ‘war and blitz casualties’. The facility closed in 1945, at which time 5,143 patients had been dealt with, 1,815 being members of the forces. In early 1945 a rehabilitation and occupational therapy centre was established there both for in and outpatients. In September 1944 the Princess Royal (Princess Mary) visited, meeting 80 members of the forces, most of whom had been wounded in France. It was reported that only two of these were local men.
Extract from the 1938 large scale (25-inch to 1 mile) Ordnance Survey Map. The main house is the block to the left (the hatched structures are greenhouses). The rest room illustrated above is almost certainly the longer building to the top right, surrounded, in a semi-circle, by what must be the open-air classrooms. (Derbyshire sheet XXV.7 – Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland, National Library of Scotland – Map Images (nls.uk)).
The Ministry of Health required the hospital’s board of management to surrender Brambling House to the county education committee, presumably so that school activities could be resumed. Surrendering the property led to the hospital management board purchasing Ashgate House and grounds (later Ashgate Hospice) for use as a rehabilitation centre.
What became Brambling House Special School was later renamed Frank Merifield school in memory of its founding headmaster.
Here great emphasis was placed on access to fresh air, sunlight and physical activities. In 1950 is was reported that upwards of 150 children might be pupils there from nine months to three years, though some might be pupils for longer. A childrens’ centre was also based at Brambling house, which was designed to help pupils having difficulty at school. The establishment closed in 1988 as the approach to special needs education changed.
Another school
In 1997 the buildings were acquired by a private primary school, St Peter & St Paul, which had previously occupied outbuildings at Penmore House, but had its origin in Old Brampton. This school is still based at Brambling House. In 1965 part of the grounds were let (and later sold) to the Chesterfield & District Model Engineering Society, which developed an extensive and very popular miniature railway at Brambling House.
Finally a bit of a mystery. This photograph maybe of one of the converted classrooms at Brambling House in use as a convalescent facility for ‘warand blitz casualties’. The original owner of the photograph formerly worked at the facility during the Second World War and there is no other reason why she should have had the photograph. Compare the similarities with the ‘rest room’ photograph above, which is equipped with sliding partitions (like the one closed in the above photograph) and similar light fittings. Two things for sure is that you’ll not find this photograph in our forthcoming Hasland book and it’s Christmas!
This post was updated on 24 April 2022 to make it clear that Brambling House was in the former parish of Hasland and to add a link to an earlier blog on the boundary of Hasland parish.
History is never ending. What is today will soon become yesterday. In this rather picture heavy blog we look at what can only be called drastic changes in just one part of Bolsover town centre – at Sherwood Lodge and its grounds, once Bolsover District Council’s grand, but in parts short-lived, Civic Centre. It’s now the site of Morrison’s supermarket and homeware shop.
1) The much loved and much extended Sherwood Lodge – once the home of Bolsover District Council but now demolished and occupied by Morrison’s supermarket and other shops. The original building is to the left.
When we published our big red book’ on ‘Bolsover and adjoining parishes’ in 2013, we wrote that the former district council offices, based at Sherwood Lodge, just off the town centre, had been vacated a year after the council announced its intention to move in 2011. The scheme developed by the council would see its headquarters move to Clowne, with the former Civic Centre building demolished and replaced by a supermarket.
2) The Civic Centre pictured in January 2013 At this time the council had relocated to Clowne, but a small part of the building was being used by the police and as a council contact centre.3) It’s hard to believe it, but this is approximately the same view as 2 in March 2022.
4)Turning further to the right from our previous March 2022 view, Morrison’s new supermarket building has been built on the site of the far right building on our photograph 2.
The district council did, indeed, move and sold its former building, but not without much controversy. Some locals didn’t want to loose the original Victorian Sherwood Lodge buildings and the grounds, for example.
To make matters worse the supermarket scheme hit problems and the old Sherwood Lodge and its more modern extensions, the largest of which only dated from 1994, became increasingly derelict.
The 1994 building was constructed as a result of Bolsover District Council’s decision, in 1992, to vacate offices it had inherited from Blackwell Rural District Council at local government reorganisation in 1974. Perhaps bizarrely the old rural district offices were situated in Mansfield (presumably as most people in Blackwell would have travelled to that town). Prior to 1994 Bolsover District Council also operated from two premises in Bolsover and one at Shirebrook.
On opening in 1994, the Civic Centre in Bolsover, provided 5,442 sq ft of office space and a suite for members. New local offices were also provided, at the same time, in Clowne, Shirebrook, South Normanton, and Bolsover itself. But the new Civic Centre was to be short-lived.
The council offices scheme aside, Sherwood Lodge had an interesting history. It was built in 1897 for Abel Sykes who was a director of the Bolsover Colliery Company. In 1958 it became offices for the old Bolsover Urban District Council. In the 1950s its grounds were the centre of the ‘Bolsover Illuminations’, which we have previously written about.
Bolsover Urban District Council was itself established in late 1894, Like its predecessor (a local board) it met in the Portland Café in a designated ‘council room’. It moved to Ivan House in 1903, but in 1911 it acquired a former chapel in Cotton Street, moving to Sherwood Lodge in 1948. At this time the county library occupied the former Cotton Street offices. These were taken taken over by the Old Bolsover Town Council after the county council had built a new library in 1976. The town council still occupy these premises.
5) The impressive entrance to the now demolished Civic Centre, in January 2013.6) We think this is a similar view today, though such are the alterations in this area that it’s very difficult to exactly determine where things were.(March 2022).7) The Civic Centre was empty for some years, as the supermarket project failed to progress. It suffered serious vandalism. The former Sherwood Lodge building was the victim of an arson attack in November 2018.
Perhaps someday someone will write the fuller history of Sherwood Lodge, its grounds and the rise and fall of the Bolsover Civic Centre. Today, anyone visiting the area will be hard-pressed to see any remnants of the former occupant’s central role in Bolsover’s governance.
Dunston Hall, Chesterfield, has been in the news lately, as it transforms into an events venue. In this blog we take a brief look at its history and highlight what could be an important discovery.
Dunston Hall east front taken about four years ago – the hall assumed its present form in the 1820s, but has a much longer history. Itwas originally a three-storey ‘high house’ with two principal rooms on each floor. This structure can be seen embedded in the northern end of the present mansion; the right-hand side in this photograph. (Photograph sourced from ‘Right Move’).
We’ve extracted historical information on Dunston Hall prepared by our county editor, acting as chairman of the Chesterfield and District Civic Society [link – http://www.chesterfieldcivicsociety.org.uk/], for this blog. This information forms part of the society’s response to a planning application for conversation of one of the farm buildings into a function room.
The farm buildings to the rear of Dunston Hall incorporate substantial remains of what was once probably a U-shaped range surrounding a farmyard, with the Hall at its north-eastern corner. Some of them date to original construction of the hall c.1600. The conclusion is that survival of these farm buildings is unusually important and warrants further investigation.
Dunston Hall: an outline history
The property known in recent times as Dunston Hall was built c.1600 on a previously unoccupied site on the south side of a road that then ran from Littlemoor in Newbold village to Four Lane Ends in Upper Newbold. This road is represented today partly by Dunston Lane and (west of the junction of that road with the modern Dunston Road) partly by Dunston Road.
There was another house on the north side of Dunston Road almost opposite the present Dunston Hall, which confusingly was also known as ‘Dunston Hall’. This later became Dunston Old Hall and appears to have been completely demolished in the eighteenth century.
Dunston Hall was built by Richard Milnes, the son of William Milnes of Ashford in the Water in the Peak District. Richard was a lead merchant and wholesale ironmonger. He initially lived in Chesterfield, where he was mayor in 1626, and, like many successful local merchants, moved in later life to a newly built country house just outside the town. A number of such houses survive in the countryside between Chesterfield and the south-western outskirts of Sheffield.
Milnes chose a traditional design for his new house. Dunston Hall was originally a three-storey ‘high house’ with two principal rooms on each floor. This structure can be seen embedded in the northern end of the present mansion, which assumed its present form in the 1820s. Largely unaltered examples of similar high houses can be seen locally at Cutthorpe Old Hall and Barlow Woodseats, as well as further afield. By contrast, Richard’s contemporary (and fellow lead and iron merchant), Godfrey Watkinson, chose a more modern design for his new house at Brampton (i.e. what is now known as Brampton Manor). This also dates from c.1600 but has a symmetrical front elevation, divided into three large gables, an arrangement found in several other local houses of similar date and size.
Dunston Hall remained the property of the Milnes (later Smith Miles) family until recent times. The property was modernised and extended in the 1820s. A new two-storey range was added to the south of the original high house, and the two sections unified by a front elevation carried up to a common eaves-line. At the same time a small park was created around the mansion and the farming activities which would have been a feature of the Hall from when it was built were moved a short distance to the south-west, where a new Dunston Hall Farm was built.
Changes of this sort are a common feature of many gentry houses in the late eighteenth century or early nineteenth, as owners wanted a garden and landscape park, rather than a farmyard full of animals and implements, next to their home, since they were no longer directly involved in farming. Commonly, this sort of transformation meant that older farm buildings were swept away. At Dunston this did not happen and a range of farm buildings that appears to be (at least in part) contemporary with the building of the house c.1600 survived.
The farm buildings of c.1600
Dunston Hall from the 1898 25” to 1 mile Ordnance Survey Map (Derbyshire sheet XVIII.13). The building subject to the planning application is highlighted. (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland; https://maps.nls.uk/)
This survival of these farm buildings is unusual and makes the buildings that are the subject of a current planning application unusually important. We believe that the farm buildings to the rear of Dunston Hall incorporate substantial remains of what was once probably a U-shaped range surrounding a farmyard, with the Hall at its north-eastern corner.
The main evidence for this conclusion is the survival of what appear from the architect’s sections (contained in the planning application papers) to be four cruck-framed trusses.[1] The planning application Heritage Statement also refers to the survival of cruck trusses in another building[2] and to evidence that at the northern end of another building there was once a return marking the start of a range running east towards the Hall.
It is possible that there were once farm buildings on the fourth (eastern) side of the yard, south of the Hall, completing a quadrangular layout. This cannot be demonstrated from surviving remains, since the extension to the Hall of the 1820s now occupies that area. Although these suggestions can only be speculative, it is clear that what survives at Dunston today represents at least a third of a large range of farm buildings probably contemporary with the Hall.
The surviving remains have clearly been altered since they were first built, most obviously by the building up of the walls in stone and the replacement of what were probably originally thatched roofs. As well as the loss of buildings that may once have stood on the northern and eastern sides of the farmyard, part of the southern range has been completely rebuilt.
One of the buildings[3] as described in the planning application Heritage Statement and Technical Note, appears to date from 1713, the date on a keystone over one of the entrances, alongside the initials ‘R.M.G.D.’. This must refer to Richard Milnes, who succeeded his father George Milnes in 1671 and died in 1729. The two other initials are probably those of Richard’s son George and his daughter-in-law Dorothy (Newham).
George and Dorothy may have lived at Dunston after Richard bought a second house at Aldercar in south-east Derbyshire in 1703, which became his main home in his later years. This building has conventional roof trusses made up of tie-beam, principal rafters and collars, which appear from photographs in the application’s Technical Note to be consistent with an early eighteenth century date of construction.
The survival of substantial remains of such an extensive range of cruck framed farm buildings associated with a well-documented gentry house is important, since so often such buildings have been swept away when the main house has been rebuilt or a modern home farm built.
It would be unwise to claim that the buildings at Dunston are unique, but they appear to be the largest range of this type anywhere in north Derbyshire or south Yorkshire.
More than fifty years ago the late Mrs B. Bunker, in a pioneer single-handed survey which has yet to be superseded, located some 80 cruck-framed farm buildings in this area,[4] but none had more than two or three surviving trusses.
At Dunston (which Mrs Bunker was not aware of) there are at least four in one of the buildings and apparently others in a further building. The buildings at Dunston are therefore clearly of regional, if not national, importance.
Chesterfield and District Civic Society have made comments on the application, part of which contains the above history of the house. They have asked that the local planning authority (Chesterfield Borough Council) should impose some conditions on the applicant. These include:
The applicant should be required to commission and pay for a detailed survey of all three surviving buildings, undertaken by a suitably qualified and experienced buildings archaeologist, whose appointment must be approved by the county council’s archaeology officer.
The survey would include much more detailed drawings than those prepared for the planning application, and the budget should include the cost of publishing a report on the findings in the Derbyshire Archaeological Journal.
The applicant should also commission and pay for dendrochronology dating of sample beams from each of the three.
If the county council’s archaeology officer so determines, the applicant should be required to pay for limited excavation of some floor areas in the hope of establishing the original use of different parts of the building.
This is not a full list of the society’s recommendations, which can be read in the civic society’s report available to down load.
Listing
Dunston Hall and the two ranges of outbuildings were listed in 1977, when much less was known about historic farm buildings, and the use of cruck framing north of the Trent, than is the case today. Fifty years ago any cruck truss tended to be regarded as ‘medieval’, whereas it is now accepted that this method of construction continued in the East Midlands, especially for non-residential buildings, until after 1600.
One way in which this revised chronology was established was by the use of dendrochronology to date medieval and post-medieval timbers, a technique that was in its infancy in the 1970s. As far as we know, none of the timbers at Dunston Hall have been dated in this way.
[1] These four cruck-framed trusses are lettered A–D in what is described as Building A in the Heritage Statement and Technical Note which accompanies the planning application. These documents are produced on behalf of the planning applicant.
[2] Described as Building C in the Heritage Statement and Technical Note which accompanies the planning application. There is apparently evidence that at the northern end of ‘Building A’ there was once a return marking the start of a range running east towards the Hall.
[3] Building C as the described in the Heritage Statement and Technical Note.
[4] B. Bunker, Cruck Buildings: an opinion as to their origin and dating arising from a study of existing and recently demolished cruck buildings in north Derbyshire and south Yorkshire (published by the author, c.1970)
How did Hasland, Spital, Hady, Boythorpe, Grassmoor, Winsick, Birdholme and Corbriggs get their names? In this blog we’ll take a very brief look at place names associated with our forthcoming book on the former large and varied Chesterfield township of Hasland.
Let’s start with Hasland itself. This name has its origins in ‘Haselont’ (mentioned in 1129-38). It actually means hazel grove. Presumably the township could well have assumed this name which is more associated with of Hazel Grove near Stockport in Greater Manchester.
In this blog we explore the origins of the names of some of the groups of communities who made up Hasland township.As our forthcoming Hasland book relates, the development of the suburb known today as Spital began with the building (at some date between the 1830s and 1870s) of Spring Vale, on the west side of Spital Lane a short distance south of Spital Mills. The area is pictured in this Nadin postcard of around 1900. (Courtesy Lyn Pardo Roques).
Spital is quite clearly named as such due to the the leper hospital, dedicated to St Leonard, from which the modern suburb takes its name. This hospital was first mentioned in 1195.
Hady is not so clear. There’s a le Hady mentioned in 1468 and Had(e)y in 1635. It’s thought the first element may mean headland (‘heafod’). The second element may mean an island or enclosure.
The northern end of Hasland township, between the boundary with Tapton on the north and Calow on the east, the Rother on the west and Spital Brook on the south, became known in modern times as Spital (on the west) and Hady (on the east). The growth of housing on this side of Chesterfield in the 20th century led to the fusion of Spital and Hady into virtually a single built-up area.
The only place in Hasland township mentioned in the Domesday Survey (1086) is Boythorpe – ‘Buitorp’. This is a straightforward name; it is definitely Boie’s outlying farm, i.e. a personal name plus torp (farm), which still has the same modern meaning in all three Scandinavian languages.
Grassmoor‘s name is perhaps a little more complex. It could, of course, simply refer to a grass moor (rough, uncultivated land). Indeed when the area was enclosed in 1781 it was called ‘Grass Moor’. But there was a former Deincourt estate in Hasland, which, in medieval times, included Alvin Wood and Greyhirst Moor. There may have been a transition from ‘Greyhirst’ to ‘Grassmoor’, but there is no etymological (historic word) connection between the two. Greyhirst appears to have been where Grassmoor is now. There’s a 1549 mention of ‘Gresmore’, by 1568 we have ‘Grasmoore’. Alvin Wood, incidently, was definitely in North Wingfield.
Winsick may be identified with Winwell Sick (river or stream) mentioned in 1488. The actual origin of the name is unclear.
Cameron’s three-volume ‘Place Names of Derbyshire’ is still the authoritative source for place name information, though we have supplemented it with new research for our book on Hasland.
Birdholme cannot be easily explained. Cameron in his ‘Place Names of Derbyshire’ mentions two name elements – bridd and holmr. This has been interpreted as (a) a young bird, (b) island, raised land in a marsh, river meadow. We think Cameron thought the name origin was something like ‘riverside meadow with birds’ but he couldn’t find any early forms and neither have VCH in our research. The evidence is therefore not conclusive. Holmr is most commonly thoughout of as ‘island’ (modern Holme, as in Steep Holme, Flat Holme etc.) but doesn’t fit in the the case of Birdholme (nor, for example, in Holmewood).
Corbriggs‘ origin is also unclear. It is possible that the (now unnamed) stream, over which the bridge takes Mansfield Road, could have been the ‘Corr/Caw/Carr Brook’ but there’s no evidence one way or the other. In 1630 we find a ‘Cawbridge Meadowe’. By 1840 Corbridge is mentioned. In the early 1830s Sanderson in his map of twenty miles around Mansfield named the bridge carrying Mansfield Road over the then unnamed stream ‘Corr Bridge’. So, the ‘… briggs’ bit is probably corrupted from bridge. Only part of Corbriggs is in Hasland township – the rest is in Temple Normanton.
Our forthcoming Hasland book will cover the history all the above areas. For more details about place and river names see ‘The Place Names of Derbyshire’, in three volumes, by K. Cameron.
Chesterfield and District Civic Society’s latest plaque at the University of Derby’s Chesterfield campus. (Photo Howard Borrell).
The former St Helena Girls’ High School and its architect GH Widdows is the subject of a short note we’ve compiled with the Chesterfield and District Civic Society. This blog contains details about how to access it.
Chesterfield and District Civic Society have run a blue plaque scheme in their area for many years. The plaques aim to highlight buildings and people of note and interest. Their latest addition is pictured here. It was unveiled at the entrance gate piers to the former St Helena Girls’ High School, Sheffield Road, on 7 March 2022. The premises are now the University of Derby’s Chesterfield Campus.
The school was opened in 1911. It was designed by GH Widdows – who became nationally famous as an innovator in school design. It is Grade II listed.
You can read more about the plaque unveiling, the building and its architect by following this link. This will open a news item on the civic society’s website. Towards the bottom is a downloadable pdf with more about the buildings history and GH Widdows – but we’ve also made the same pdf available below.
If you’re interested in the work of the Chesterfield and District Civic Society you can find out more on their website and follow them on their Facebook page.
In this blog we take a brief look at why Hasland (the subject of a forthcoming VCH spin-off book) was once a more extensive area than it is generally recognised as being today.
Hasland’s boundary (highlighted) as explained in this blog. This is a map taken from our forthcoming book.
What do we mean by parishes and townships?
We’ll start by explaining about what we mean as a parish.
Our ‘big red books’ are made up of chapters on individual parishes; a ‘parish’ for this purpose means an area which formed a separate administrative unit at the time of the 1831 census. In England north of the Trent, these units frequently do not coincide with the boundaries of ecclesiastical (i.e. church) parishes and so should more accurately be called ‘townships’.
The twelve townships of Chesterfield
The ‘ancient parish’ of Chesterfield (meaning the parish as it existed in 1801) was made up of twelve townships. The smallest was the borough of Chesterfield, occupying 312 acres at the centre of a parish of over 24,000 acres. The others formed a ring round the borough, including (working clockwise from the north) Whittington, Brimington, Tapton, Calow, Hasland, Temple Normanton, Wingerworth, Walton, Brampton and Newbold.
There are two other complications. In the early Middle Ages, because of the distance of some parts of the parish from the parish church, chapels were founded in several of the townships. In three cases – Brampton, Whittington and Wingerworth – the landowners who built these chapels tried to establish the townships they served as independent parishes. This was resisted by the dean of Lincoln (the lay rector of Chesterfield), as it would have reduced his income from tithes. Whittington came closest to being regarded as a separate parish, while Brampton and Wingerworth achieved a degree of autonomy as parochial chapelries.
The Church of England modernised its parochial structure in the 19th century. Brampton and Wingerworth became ‘new parishes’ and most of the rest of the ancient parish of Chesterfield was divided up into similar units.
The former Alma Inn on Derby Road, under demolition in early 1998. Situated amongst Derby Road’s heavy industry and housing, it’s some miles removed from Grassmoor, at the other end of Hasland parish. The building is now the site of the Alma Leisure Park, which took land from the closed Chesterfield tube works.
The second complication arises from the progressive extension of the boundaries of the borough of Chesterfield, which until 1892 were the same as those of the township. The borough was extended in that year; again in 1910 and 1920. This marched roughly (but not exactly) in step with the expansion of the built-up area. The final boundary alteration in 1974 added two civil parishes to the borough – Brimington and Staveley. The former was part of the ancient parish of Chesterfield but the latter has no historical connection with the town.
Today, most of the ancient parish lies within the borough, although the whole of the former townships (later civil parishes) of Calow, Temple Normanton and Wingerworth, and parts of Hasland, Walton and Brampton, are in North East Derbyshire district.
Hasland’s further complications
Turning to the township of Hasland, there are further complications. Today, the name ‘Hasland’ refers to a densely populated suburban settlement south-east of the town centre. This has developed, mainly since the late 19th century, from an older hamlet at the junction at which a road to North Wingfield branches off from the historic main road from Chesterfield to Mansfield. The township of Hasland, however, covered a much bigger area (see our map above), in which several other quite distinct settlements have come into existence in the same period. The largest of these is Grassmoor but the township also includes Spital, Hady, Winsick and part of Corbriggs (the rest of which is in Temple Normanton).
Even more confusingly, Hasland is the only township in Chesterfield ancient parish to include land both east and west of the river Rother, which otherwise, from Whittington in the north to Wingerworth in the south, forms a township boundary.
Anglicans in Hasland were served by the parish church in Chesterfield until 1850, when a chapel of ease dedicated to St Paul was consecrated. This stands on the east side of Chesterfield Road about half a mile south of Hasland Green and a mile north of Grassmoor, the two villages it was intended to serve. Religious history will be thoroughly dealt with in our new book on Hasland.
West of the Rother the township included the suburb which grew up in the late 19th century on either side of Derby Road between the junction of Lordsmill Street and Hasland Road in the north and the bridge over Birdholme brook just beyond the junction with Langer Lane in the south. This settlement was simply known as ‘Derby Road’ when it first developed. But in the 20th century came to be called Birdholme. Much of the land of the township west of the A61 was used to build a large local authority housing estate in the 1920s, near the church of SS Augustine, which explains why part of the district is sometimes called ‘St Augustine’s’.
Complications with medieval manors
Lastly, it’s impossible to explain modern place-names without touching on the complexities of medieval manors within Chesterfield ancient parish.
As Chapters 1 and 2 in our book will explain, Hasland is the only township in the parish which does not appear in Domesday Book as either a manor in its own right or an outlying member of a manor. What later became known as the ‘manor of Hasland’ was in fact part of the manor of Chesterfield in the Middle Ages. This included most of the land of the township east of the Rother.
All the land on the other side of the river, and a small portion on the east as far as Hasland Road and Storforth Lane, lay within the manor of Boythorpe. In the opposite direction the lands of the manor extended to the township boundary at Boythorpe Road, but did not include the area between there and Walton Road. This was also developed for housing in the 1920s, when it became known as Boythorpe. The modern suburb, however, was not part of the medieval manor of the same name and lies entirely in the historic township of Walton.
We hope you’ve found this overview as to why Hasland’s boundaries have changed over the years. It’s mainly taken from the preface to our new book on Hasland which we hope to publish in May.
This blog looks at why we have chosen Hasland for our new book
An early mock up of our forthcoming Hasland book cover. The illustration is from a watercolour sketch of Spital House of about1800 and is reproduced by courtesy of Derbyshire County Council.
For some years our Chesterfield research group (and its predecessors) have been meeting at Chesterfield Library. Able to use the extensive resources of the local studies collection there, supplemented by work at the Derbyshire Record Office and The National Archives (Kew), their work has been drawn together by our county editor – Philip Riden – into our new book.
Research usually comprises examining various published and manuscript information into A5 sized slips (an example is shown in this blog). From there it is possible to bring together a chronological account of a parish, using various standard VCH topic headings.
Sometimes we will publish our draft text on this website. As is the case with Hasland, where work is quite advanced, we intend to publish a ‘spin-off’ book. Whether it’s draft text or a spin-off book, the aim is the same; to get our research findings out into the public domain. This is so that any mistakes or omissions can be identified. We also hope that publication makes available our research to local people interested in the area’s history. Ultimately we plan a series of ‘big red books‘ on the Chesterfield area, making further use of our research – but this is some way off. Whether it’s draft text or a spin-off book they are written following the conventions of the Victoria County History, an imprint of the University of London.
So why Hasland?
A typical A5 research slip. This one records a royal visit made to Brambling House in 1944 then an annexe to Chesterfield Royal Hospital.
We have chosen Hasland as work on this formerly large and varied parish was advanced. We also wanted to make available this research as soon as we could. For example we’ve been able to chart the history of some of the larger industrial concerns on Derby Road and at Birdholme. These include the tube works, Donkins and lessor known concerns such as the former Reema concrete system building manufactory at Storforth Lane and the Broad Oaks furnaces there. We also chart the religious history of the area, look at the growth and contraction of the parish (which at one time included Grassmoor), local schools and remnants of now disappeared important properties – such as Spital House – which is on the cover of our book.
We hope that the book will be a rounded attempt of the area’s history. It’s currently scheduled for publication in May, with a launch event in Hasland.
In a future blog we will look at how the boundary of Hasland came about.
