Stapleford - Part 2 - Imagination Required
w/e 24 August 2008
All this week's pictures were taken
with a Kodak DX6490
Although this walk around Stapleford is circular
in that it starts and ends at the The Roach, certain sections
of it do require some backtracking. This second part in particular,
will see us continue along Derby Road towards Sandiacre but return
along the same route to the Memorial Square and beyond.
We begin then with the Memorial Square on our left which is next
to the New Kent public house.
The New Kent is a fairly modern construction and has little or
no history that I can find but it appears to do a good trade
which may have been to the detriment to the much older Warren
Arms opposite currently closed and on the market for an asking
price of around £425,000. (No wonder the price of beer
is going up!)
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The Warren Arms took its name from the Warren family who owned
the surrounding land from the 1670s until the middle of the nineteenth
century. Another feature of this part of the walk is that it
requires a good deal of imagination for in the times of the Warren
family and right up until the start of the twentieth century,
the Warren Arms was the only building to stand on this side of
Derby Road.
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The next point of interest is back on the other side of the road
and is this view along Broad Oak Drive. Again a vivid imagination
is required or at least a long memory. It was here that Joseph
Fearfield's lace factory stood which later became Chambers' Pencil
Factory. The factory stood in very attractive surroundings and
earned the nickname of the "factory in a garden" but
it succumbed to the demolition crews in 1973. Chambers moved to Sandiacre and are still
in business today from a base in Long Eaton. To see some images
of the original factory these links will open new windows:-
1920s Aerial View - Factory c1913
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This is as far as we go along Derby Road and we must now retrace
our steps back to the Warren Arms (the white building just to
the left of centre above) and then continue almost as far as
the Hyper Store that we passed in Part 1. Again a vivid imagination
would come in useful here as the left hand side of the road in
this view was bounded by a wall around the Warren family's estate
backed by some large trees. To assist with that imagination these
views courtesy of the Picture The Past website should help:
Derby Road 1898 - Warren Arms pre 1900 no. 1 - Warren Arms pre 1900 no. 2
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It is with some regret that I have had to include so many links
in this part to illustrate the history and heritage of Stapleford
but such is the price of progress. We are though, so fortunate
to have such a magnificent archive of historic images available
at sites such as Picture The Past. For example the links below
are to just two of a number of images showing Warren Avenue (again
taking its name from the family) that was once the lime tree
flanked drive to Stapleford Hall.
Gates to Stapleford Hall c1900s - Warren Avenue c1910-1920
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 It is
at the junction of Warren Avenue that we leave our backtracking
along Derby Road to follow Warren Avenue towards the site of
the Hall. The avenue turns right and then left but at the first
corner is this building above that is now the Carnegie Civic
and Community Centre and the home of the Town Council. As can
be seen though when it was built in 1906 it was as a result of
the generosity of the Scottish/American philanthropist, Sir Andrew
Carnegie. To the right of the building on what is now the Centre's
car park, stood Stapleford's first fire station. This was built
three years after the library and once again we can benefit from
these archived images at Picture The Past:-
Library and Fire Station 1 - Library
and Fire Station 2
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