Origins: A Dirt Track Becomes a High Street

New Whittington barely existed before 1855. The census of 1851 records a population of just 874 for the whole of Whittington parish. By 1861 that figure had leapt to 2,839 — nearly all of those newcomers drawn to the collieries, ironstone mines, and steel works that had opened in rapid succession in what would become New Whittington. The High Street, at the centre of it all, was then little more than a dirt track with a few horse-drawn carts trundling along it.

West Staveley Colliery & The Ballarat

The colliery that triggered New Whittington’s growth stood on the High Street itself, on land now occupied by Avimore Close and Highland View Road. It was started around 1855–56 by a company of wealthy businessmen from the Barnsley area, including Thomas Harrison (colliery viewer), Joseph Cantor (linen manufacturer), and William Muschamp of Gateshead (coal owner). To house their incoming workforce, the company bought or rented as many buildings in the village as they could find — including Crown Yard, a farm they converted into around nineteen dwellings.

By 1861 the colliery was operating under the name E. M. Baimbridge and Partners, with Thomas Emerson Fenwick — a Durham man — as their resident agent. Fenwick lived at Poplar Villa on Wellington Street, a house specially built for the colliery manager. A committed Wesleyan, he began the Wesleyan movement in the village, holding services first in a colliery building, then in a room above the Wellington Hotel, before enough funds were raised to build a proper chapel. He left around 1870 to manage a colliery at Old Whittington.

The colliery declined from around 1879. The whole site was sold in 1905 to George Dunlop, a Bolsover haulage contractor, who rented the land as allotments. Miners from the village continued sinking footrels on the site to recover coal as late as 1928. The spoil heaps survived well into the 1950s beside Devonshire Avenue.

On a small piece of land fronting the High Street, a printer named Wilfred Lettall established the Ballarat Press — a wooden, green-painted building producing local pamphlets and small books from the late 1920s until around 1970. The curious name Ballarat, applied to this whole triangle of former colliery land, almost certainly comes from the Australian gold-rush town whose own mines opened in the 1850s at virtually the same time as the West Staveley Colliery. George Dunlop’s house on the site was named Ballarat House; a cottage there is still called Ballarat Cottage today.

The West Staveley Brickworks, Pottery & Isaac Hardy

As the village took shape, a brickworks opened to supply the thousands of bricks needed for the new streets. By 1861 it was operating under Joseph Gadsby of Leicestershire and his son; the Calladine family,

 also from Leicestershire, worked alongside them. Around 1870–71 the works gradually shifted to pottery, and by 1879 directories listed it as the West Staveley Pottery with Isaac Hardy as earthen ware manufacturer. (The picture shows Isaac with his wife Mary)

The Wellington Hotel, 162 High Street

Built around 1857–60, by William Higginbottom, the Wellington was one of the earliest public houses in the new village, possibly funded by the West Staveley Colliery Company. It had a large stable and coach house at the rear, above which was a sizeable clubroom used over the years by many of the village’s societies. The first landlords combined pub-keeping with other occupations; one was a fitter at the colliery.

The most celebrated landlord was Joseph Frances Gilbert, who took over around 1924 with his wife Harriet and served behind the bar for more than forty years. He dressed the part — short white smock coat, collar and tie, short-cropped curly hair that seemed never to age. In the 1920s he was also known as a singer, performing regularly at the Oxford Picture Palace in the days when the cinema combined silent films with live acts.

The Coffee Rooms, Reading Rooms & Library

Today associated with Wellington Street, this building predates that road entirely and still carries a High Street address at the rear. It was probably built around 1856–57 as the largest private house in New Whittington — a fine residence with a handsome Westmoreland slate roof — for William Higginbottom, a coal owner and railway contractor. In 1860 he owned the ironstone mines on Glasshouse Common, with ore transported along the tramway John Dixon had constructed in 1790. This will be the same William Higginbottom that built the Wellington)

By 1861 the house had changed hands, becoming home and surgery to William Henry France, a surgeon born in Staveley in 1834. The 1871 census gives a vivid picture of his household:

France died in June 1875 at just 41. Within a few years the house had been taken over by the local council, and in December 1878 it opened as the Coffee Reading Rooms and Library, well stocked with books through the generosity of Miss Swanwick and Miss Aldam. The first manager was Thomas Redfern, also a grocer; the librarian was Edward Redfern, an assistant schoolmaster.

The rooms quickly became a hub for village life. A directory of 1895 records the following societies all meeting at the address:

A large extension was added in 1913–14, after which the whole building became the New Whittington Adult School and Club Hall. Around 1920–23, a former First World War barrack hut placed at the rear took over the library. The New Whittington Club and Institute formed in 1927–28 and ran alongside the Adult School well into the 1940s.

Springwell Row

Before Springwell Row was built, the land on the High Street opposite Stone Row had held a single cottage belonging to Charles Weston, probably dating from the early 1700s and demolished around 1857. The Weston and Vickers gravestones survive in the old churchyard; the Vickers were born in the 1690s, placing their roots in this part of the village to a remarkably early date.

Springwell Row was built around 1857–59 by the Staveley Coal and Iron Company to house miners working at the nearby Springwell Colliery. Twenty houses in all (numbered 173 to 211), with attic bedrooms let to lodgers in the early years, the terrace must have held between a hundred and a hundred and fifty people at any one time. Electricity did not arrive until the 1950s; before that, the ground and first floors were lit by gas, the attics by candle or oil lamp. The row was demolished in 1972–73, the tenants gradually rehoused over the previous two years.

“Stones have been thrown against the house and windows smashed while I have been in. I have chased youngsters away who have been throwing the stones. Some probably thought the house was empty, but I think some knew I was still living here.”
Ronald Kettle, last resident of Springwell Row, quoted in a local newspaper, c.1972

Inkerman Place & Its Characters

Inkerman Place — known to locals simply as “The Barracks” — was a terrace of houses containing four shops on the High Street, built straddling the line of an old tramway that John Dixon had laid around 1795–96. The 1871 census records it as Temperance Buildings, suggesting the name Inkerman Place was adopted after that date, probably commemorating the Battle of Inkerman of 1854. The block was demolished in 1959–60.

Nineteen houses in all — some effectively back-to-back, two families sharing a single staircase — Inkerman Place was home to a remarkable concentration of village life for nearly a century. Its most important commercial tenant was the Lawton newsagency on the corner.

The Lawton Newsagency — “There Has Been a Lawton Here for 90 Years”

James Lawton was probably among the first tenants when Inkerman Place was new. Bookseller, newsagent, schoolmaster, and rate collector, he and his wife Caroline ran the only newspaper and bookselling business in the village, delivering by pony and trap as far as Dronfield, Brimington, and Handley. He died in 1886. His wife and daughter Maud continued the shop; Maud took sole charge in the late 1920s.

As other newsagents arrived in the village, Maud’s business dwindled. The shop grew dusty and dilapidated, papers yellowing on the stand. But she kept it open. When friends urged her to retire, her answer never varied:

“There has been a Lawton selling newspapers in New Whittington for the past 90 years, and that is how it will be until I die.”
Maud Lawton, proprietor of the Lawton newsagency, Inkerman Place

It was indeed. In September 1952, a neighbour found Miss Lawton badly burned in a bedroom, her apron having caught fire from the hearth. She died the following day. The whole block was demolished in 1960.

Other Characters of The Barracks

Nelly Stubbins at number 139 brewed tea for the corporation bus crews, who dashed across from the stop between runs for a hasty cup. On busy days, with three or four buses stopped at once, the resulting scramble of passengers could cause considerable confusion about which was leaving first.

Louis Bally the cobbler at number 125 advertised his services with a sign reading “Shoes Cobbleded and Healeded” — a misspelling recalled by residents for decades, and never satisfactorily explained.

The Great Footpath Dispute of 1870

James Lawton’s legacy extended well beyond his newsagency. In 1870 he led the village’s resistance to the closure of a footpath across the estate of W. Fowler of Whittington Hall — a path running from New Whittington towards Unstone and Coal Aston, long used by local people. When Fowler blocked the route and erected an iron gate, Lawton organised the response. The Derbyshire Courier of 3 September 1870 reported what followed:

The footpaths through Grasscroft Wood and around Glasshouse that residents enjoy today owe something to that defiant evening in the late summer of 1870.

Chapels, Shops & the Market Ground

The Market Ground and Market Hall

The Market Ground, with its wooden Market Hall shown on maps from 1874–75, was the commercial heart of early New Whittington. It lay behind the Baptist Chapel — the only original building from that era still standing on this stretch of the street. The Ground appears to have been in use from as early as 1865–70, providing produce from local farms and smallholdings. The Market Hall disappears from the record after the early 1880s. Its importance to the community can be judged from a report in the Derbyshire Times of 2 October 1880:

The Baptist Chapel

The Baptist movement in New Whittington began around 1860, meeting initially in a room above a blacksmith’s shop on Handley Road. In 1882 the congregation raised £600 to build a chapel on the High Street beside the Market Ground entrance. The building survives today, used as a workshop and storage space, its exterior little changed.

The Gospel Mission

Built in 1934 and opened on 20 January 1935, this mission stood where the village swimming baths were later built. It was a timber-frame structure with asbestos panels, later renamed the Pentecostal Church before being demolished to make way for the baths.

The Miners Arms & the Bamford Family

William Bamford arrived in New Whittington around 1857–59 with his wife Ann and four sons — George, John, William, and Thomas — all miners from South Normanton, almost certainly to work the West Staveley Colliery. The eldest son, George Bamford, was the shrewdest of the family: he gradually transformed a newly built house on the High Street into the beer house known as the Miners Arms. Bamford Street was named after the family, who owned most of its land and houses.

Around 1875–76 George retired to Poplar Villa on Wellington Street — the former colliery manager’s house. The row of poplar trees that gave the house and street their name was remembered vividly by those who grew up nearby: “very tall and swayed in the wind like the masts of tall ships in a choppy sea.” They eventually became dangerous and were felled.

His brother William ran the Miners Arms for a further eleven years. The family owned the pub for just over eighty years in total before selling to the Mansfield Brewery Company in 1938. Architectural plans from 1908 alterations survive, preserved by a great-granddaughter of William Bamford, showing the extension of the rear room and demolition of a corner urinal.

The Dusty Miller Yard & Inn

This cluster of stone farm buildings on the upper High Street — demolished in the early 1930s and replaced by four corporation houses — was one of the oldest sites in New Whittington. The enclosure map of 1824 records it as a farm with a malt house, part of Henry Dixon’s estate. In 1851 the farmer was John Hollingsworth; by 1857 he was listing himself as both farmer and publican, with his establishment named The Malt Shovel.

In 1870 Joseph Cundey bought the beer house. The Cundeys were a corn-milling family of long standing in Whittington — Isaac Cundey ran the corn mill at the bottom of Whittington Hill; John Cundey had built a windmill on Newbridge Lane — and Joseph renamed the establishment The Dusty Miller in recognition of that heritage. Around 1874–75 a school for boys and girls was operating in the Dusty Miller Yard, using the old malt house building while the village waited for the new London Street school to open. The inn closed in 1937.

The Kirk Family & Their Whittington Story

James Kirk, born in Holbrook, began working at eight — turning a wheel for a ropemaker at two shillings a week. A year later he was in a cotton mill at Belper; by eleven or twelve he was down the pit with his father at Oakerthorpe. In 1860, hearing that miners were wanted in Whittington, he moved south. He lodged at Compass Farm, tried farm labouring, married in 1862, and after eighteen years as a miner opened a grocer’s shop on the High Street in 1870.

From that modest starting point he built a career of remarkable breadth: property buyer and seller, auctioneer, house agent, shareholder in the Sheepbridge Coal and Iron Company and the Staveley Coal and Iron Company. He was landlord of the Wellington Hotel in the 1880s, owned the Dusty Miller Beer House, and held the Bath Hotel. The Urban District Council appointed him Surveyor of Highways in 1871; he later became Sanitary and Nuisance Inspector and rate collector. In 1878–79 he served as Clerk of Works on the new sewage works, a project costing £14,000. He was also Senior Trustee and Treasurer of the Ancient Order of Foresters, which by the time of his death had 755 members. He lived for many years at The Poplars at the top of the High Street — still standing, one of the oldest houses in New Whittington.

His son Francis continued the family tradition: Treasurer of the Foresters for thirty years, member of Chesterfield Town Council, and a member of the Sheffield Equalised Independent Order of Druids. All four of Francis’s sons served in France in the First World War, and all four came home.

The Sims Family: From Railway Worker to Industrial Manufacturers

William and Elizabeth Sims arrived in Whittington in 1850 from Wessington near Crich, William working as a railway plate-layer. He died in 1860, leaving four sons. John, the youngest, set up independently first: by 1879 he was established as a brush dealer and ironmonger at 100 High Street.

His brother Samuel developed the Exchange — a draper’s and wholesale boots-and-shoes business at 118–122 High Street, still the largest shop frontage in New Whittington today. By 1900 he held manufacturing contracts with the Star Brush Company, and from a small wooden shed his operation grew into the Britannia Works, a galvanised-goods factory between South Street and Devonshire Avenue trading as S. Sims and Sons Ltd. The firm probably employed between a hundred and two hundred people at its height. Its decline came with the rise of moulded plastic goods; it closed around 1964–65.

John Sims, meanwhile, built a reputation as a quality builder. His firm — operating from 116 Wellington Street, now the New Whittington Social Club — constructed the Wesleyan chapel in Church Street, Old Whittington (1894), and fine houses on Handley Road. His son George carried on the business. Father and son were remembered as inseparable figures around the village: “one stout and one thin, always wearing brown overalls and trilby hats,” pushing a hand cart piled with sand, cement, and tools.

Robinson’s Bakery

Mark Robinson arrived from Whiston near Rotherham in 1866, aged twenty-five, to manage the provision store at 152–54 High Street. He stayed thirty-one years, buying the premises in 1897. When he died around 1922, his son John Thomas Robinson built a new bakery on Stone Lane.

The Stone Lane bakery became one of the best-known businesses in the village. At its height, five or six blue-painted bread vans delivered across a wide area. All four of John Thomas’s sons went into baking. Walking past on the way to school, a penny would buy a fresh cake or a cream trumpet still warm from the ovens. The business closed around the mid-1960s, a casualty of modern methods and ageing equipment.

Darrell Robinson, the eldest son, had enlisted in the Royal Artillery in 1914 at twenty-four. He served nine months in France before being wounded in March 1918, suffering shell shock and gas poisoning. He recovered in a Sheffield hospital. He came home.

The Durham Family & the Crown Inn

The Durham family — grocers, butchers, and farmers — were among the most significant early settlers in New Whittington, farming land in and around the village for more than a century. Brothers Charles W. Durham and William Edward Durham, both from Alfreton, occupied adjacent shops at 74–76 High Street from around 1859–60. Charles was a grocer and farmer; William Edward was a butcher who in 1880 also served as landlord of the Crown Inn. On race days at Whittington Moor, William Edward would take barrels of beer down by horse and dray and set up a beer tent — by all accounts a consistently profitable venture.

A younger brother, Frank William Durham, trained as a joiner, set up a building firm in the family shop in 1934 and developed Brearley Street and houses on Handley Road. He purchased the condemned Crown Yard cottages, demolished them, and built Crown Close on the site. At the firm’s height he employed around thirty to forty tradesmen.

The Crown Inn at 72 High Street has changed little since it was built around 1859–60. Its first landlord was Ralph Richardson, a shoemaker who continued his trade while running the pub. Plans from 1917 survive showing alterations by Chesterfield architects Wilcockson and Cutts, carried out for the Mansfield Brewery Company to bring the toilets inside.

Crown Yard & the Constabulary

Crown Yard was originally a working farm of 56 acres belonging to the Dixon estate, converted around 1856–60 into approximately fifteen miners’ dwellings by the West Staveley Colliery Company. As many as twenty families occupied the cottages at various points. The main L-shaped block of nine was demolished from 16 August 1951 onwards. The last families were:

At the

bottom of the Crown Yard stood the New Whittington Constabulary, built around 1877–78 — a robust building of large coursed stone with a stone-paved yard two steps below the pavement. The first named constable is William Taylor in 1879; subsequent officers included Lawrence Byrne (1891), William Thomas Rose (1901), Sergeant Thomas Adams (1932), and William Potter (1934), probably the last. By 1936 the building had been let as a private dwelling, its three cells still intact with heavy original doors, iron bolts, and spy-holes — one cell pressed into use as a kitchen. The constabulary was demolished around 1954–55.