Ilkeston - 'Your Choice'
w/e 18 June 2006 All
this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490
I regularly receive emails that mention places in and around
Ilkeston. Several of them ask if I have photos of various places.
Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't but I usually say I'll try
and get some the next time I'm in the vicinity. I'm afraid I've
been a little lax and the number of locations requiring a visit
have accumulated on my 'Things To do' list. The time has come
though for me to resolve this and make
the effort to keep my promises. This selection then is the first
part of two where the locations have been chosen by various email
correspondents.
Steph Palmer
asked for pictures of Ilkeston's Fire Station and here it is
on the corner of Derby Road and Oakwell Drive. I would say the
building is functional rather than architecturally or aesthetically
pleasing and it now also operates as a base for the Ambulance
Service. In the smaller image (right) the training tower that
stands in the yard behind the building can be seen too but Steph
is probably too young to remember the old Fire Station in Stanton
Road. For those of us of more advanced years that building can
be seen in Stage 07 of the Ilkeston Town Walk. Click here to see it now in a new window.
Another email
correspondent, 'Seagrave265', asked about the Ilkeston Skate
Park on Manor Fields. It took me a while to track this down as
I initially thought of Manor Fields Drive which is off Derby
Road but the Park is actually situated on the playing fields
at the Abbotsford Community Centre on the Shipley View Estate.
As the crow flies Manor Fields Drive and the Community Centre
are not far apart but I think you would have to be a dedicated
skate boarder to make a special visit here on a regular basis
if you did not live close by. It is in a bit of a remote place
and even from the Community Centre it requires a walk across
a football pitch.
Just around the corner from Shipley View on the main road back
towards the town centre is the old bridge that crossed the railway
lines at Ilkeston North Station. This site is now occupied by
Ilkeston's new Police Station and the Old Station Surgery (Town
Walk Stage 26) but Bill Devey of Vancouver, Canada informed
me that his grandparents lived at 'The Homestead' just north
of the bridge on the left hand side of Heanor Road when his mother
was born in 1927. Unfortunately I have been unable to locate
'The Homestead' but it is possible the house names have changed
in the intervening years. I thought it may have been demolished
for the two bungalows but reference to old O.S. maps make this
seem unlikely as no buildings were shown on the 1899 map where
the bungalows now stand.
June Wiggins from Hertfordshire is another, like Bill Devey looking
into family history and she found that a William Auld lived in
a property at The Triangle in 1949. Mr Auld lived in one of the
properties directly in front in this view on the far side of
the green. For a bird's eye view of The Triangle in the beta
version of Windows Live Local powered by Virtual Earth, click here. The road to the right of the
green is Thurman Street which leads to Nottingham Road and to
the left The Triangle continues to the eastern end of Little
Hallam Lane.
At the western end of Little Hallam Lane is Little Hallam Hill
and John Daykin's delve into the past and his family history
led to a number of addresses in Ilkeston including two at Little
Hallam. An ancestor of John's by the name of Richard Daykin lived
in two different properties according to the 1871 and 1881 census
records which leads us to believe that, because of the dates,
they would be here on the 'Hill' rather than on the 'Lane' where
the properties did not appear until into the 20th century.
I have to
admit that I have sporadically dipped into genealogy and tried
to trace my own family roots with a varied amount of success
but it was a great surprise to receive an email from Bob Armstrong
in New Zealand. It appears we have a common ancestor in Mark
Wheatley born in 1763 and the Wheatley family occupied two of
these four houses that can now be found just off the Awsworth
by-pass. They are marked on old maps as 'Foundry Houses' and
in truth are not actually in Ilkeston at all. Being on the eastern
side of the Erewash, they are in Nottinghamshire but for the
purposes of this exercise it's not worth quibbling about.
To see the second instalment of 'Your Choice' click here.