Lost Houses

Lost Houses – Spondon Old Hall

December 2, 2014 Alistair Plant

Researching the grander houses of Spondon has never been easy, simply because there have been more than a few: Spondon Hall, The Grange, The Cottage, Field and Spondon Houses, The Homestead, West and Prospect Houses. Of these only the last three survive, and not all had estates attached. Most were what is called by estate […]

Lost Houses – Wheston Hall

October 30, 2014 Alistair Plant

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I realise that knowledgeable readers will read this heading and exclaim that Wheston Hall is not a lost house at all and still stands. Yet the rather mauled remnant which survived the collapse of much of the fabric in a gale in 1952 is largely a new house which made ingenious use of some surviving parts […]

Lost Houses – The Field, Litchurch

August 28, 2014 Alistair Plant

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In its declining years, this suburban Regency Villa was known merely as 237 Osmaston Road, Derby on the thoroughfare of the ancient pre-Roman route south of Derby towards Swarkestone Bridge. This was a place which in the early 19th century was still extremely rural; one has the description by Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) of the fields […]

Lost Houses: Littleover Old Hall

June 4, 2014 Alistair Plant

There is still a Littleover Old Hall standing in our leafy Derby suburb, as any member of the community would be only too pleased to inform you. Yet the house that now acts as the centrepiece of the HQ of the Derbyshire Fire & Rescue Service, hemmed in as it is by utilitarian modern buildings, […]

Lost Houses – The Old Mayor’s Parlour

April 28, 2014 Alistair Plant

Of all the losses of large houses in Derbyshire one of the most grievous was the completely unnecessary – if not vindictive – demolition of the largest urban timber framed domestic residence in Britain of its date, the Old Mayor’s Parlour, 15 Tenant Street, Derby in 1948. By a cruel irony this was the same […]