Fifty years ago, Jim Beardsley composed a photographic record of Ilkeston streets and premises, many of which had Victorian roots. Here is just a selection of his photos (in alphabetical order)
If you wish to add your own contributions, please send them in to me … [email protected]
Albert Street
Named after Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, part of this street, where it joins to Queen Street, dates from the late 1860s. Albert had died in 1861.
“There used to be a nice foot road from Queen Street to Derby Road. The Local Board has allowed this to be illegally stopped, and they profess to have surveyed and set out a new street, called Albert Street which is quite useless and impassable”. (a letter in the Ilkeston Pioneer 1871)
The street was eventually extended in both directions, up to Wharncliffe Road and down to Nottingham Road. This photo shows the junction of Albert Street and Nottingham Road, with the last house in Chain Row on the extreme right.
Albion Place
In the past this area had several different names — the Gangway, Lee’s Yard, Glazier Lee’s Yard, Jackie Lee’s Yard — named after the plumber and galzier John Lee who had acquired the land in 1804.
Belper Street
This is the south end of Belper Street where it is crossed by Union Street. Both were declared “public highways” in 1869 by Ilkeston’s Local Board, though Union Street was developed only after 1880. The large building on the left background was originally Amos Tatham’s factory
Bethel Street
Also known as Beniston Place (after the family which occupied premises there) and ‘Little Dustpan’ (after the Beecham family ironmongery in the street), its ‘proper name’, at least from 1892, was Bethel Street after the Bethel Mission which arrived in this short street.
Burr Lane
This photo shows the east side, these houses being developed in the later Victorian period. Towards the right hand side you can see a tall concrete lamp standard, sited where the road crossed Chapel Street, and after that it became the first part North Street. On the extreme right hand side you might just glimpse the Erewash Hotel in Station Road.
Byron Street
Byron Street is on the left and Burr Lane is on the right. This is opposite to the houses shown in the previous photo. The school warning refers to children travelling to and from Chaucer Primary Schools at the bottom of Byron Street.
Carr Street
Nearest the photographer, the first section of this street, on the south side and starting at North Street, was developed in the 1860s. By the 1880s the north side section had been built. However it was only at the end of the 19th century that more houses were built to join it with the newly constructed Wood Street. As the street then crossed Wood Street it became Mill Street.
Chain Row
Originally seven houses built in the 1830s, named after the row of linked chains on posts, standing in front of them. Demolished in 1979.
Chapel Street
The chapel in question was the old Primitive Methodist Chapel, built in 1823, which stood on the bare patch of land, right foreground. The photo shows Chapel Street crossing Burr Lane (right) and North Street (left). Chapel Street continues onwards, towards what was often referred to as Lower Chapel Street.
Chaucer Street
This was first developed at the end of the Victorian period, accompanied by the building of the Chaucer Board Schools in the area, from the late 1880s onwards. The street was initially a dead-end and culminated in Shaw’s Brickworks.
Crichley Street
This name derives from the Chrichley/Critchley family who owned land had the bottom of Bath Street. The street was part of the so-called (by the Ilkeston Pioneer) “Pigsty Park“, a notorious area of the town, down North Street, and developed by builder Thomas Shaw in the 1860s.
Dale Street
This street seems to have been born out of the development of the new cemetery — Park Cemetery — now at the end of Park Avenue, when access to the new burial ground needed to be improved. This was in the early 1890s. Percy Street can be seen off the right foreground.
Derby Road
This road has had a variety of names in the past, the most frequently occurring one being Moore’s Bridge or Moorbridge Lane. The photo shows a group of houses on the west side.
Durham Street
Its previous name was Belvoir Terrace. This is how it appears on the 1871 census, with John Trueman occupying the Durham Ox Inn at number 7. He was also at the Inn “in Belvoir Terrace” in 1861. And in 1881 Belvoir Terrace continued to exist though still with houses on its east side only, by which time John’s Durham Ox Inn had mysteriously ‘shifted’ to Northgate Street !!
By 1891 Belvoir Terrace had changed its name to Durham Street with the Durham Ox now at number 23. (Although Belvoir Terrace had disappeared, a Belvoir Street had now appeared in Ilkeston).
This photo shows the houses on the east side with the Inn at the far end. The car is parked in Northgate Street.
Gordon Street
Gordon Street (and other streets leading off from it) had just been laid out by the end of the Victorian era; no houses had yet been built there. All the houses you can see in the photo are post-Victorian.
Granby Street
Here we are viewing the street from its junction with Bath Street/Heanor Road.
On the census of 1851 it went by the name of Middle Road but by 1861 Granby Street had appeared.
Grove Terrace
Also known as Spring Grove Terrace, this row of ten cottages gained a poor reputation (if it didn’t have one before) when the Blaxell Report of 1881 was published.
They stood next to the Ropewalk with the Erewash Canal as a close neighbour
Hallam Fields Road
Access to the area of Hallam Fields began to be significantly (relatively) improved in the late 1880s when the Local Board (in its last days) approved the establishment of a new road into the district. This was subsequently developed as Corporation Street which later linked with Hallam Fields Road. These houses, at the corner with Crompton Street, were some of the first to be built, from the late 1860s. Crompton Street was renamed as Crompton Road in 1979.
On the 1881 census the houses appear as North View.
Heanor Road
Established as a turnpike road from Ilkeston to Heanor from the 1760s onwards, the lower (southern) section of the road appears as Work House Hill on the 1841 Census. The houses in the photo are situated further north along the road, on its west side, an area developed from the end of the nineteenth century.
King Street
This is another part of the development of lower Station Road and the streets off either side, which occurred from the 1880s onwards. We are looking down King Street (towards the north) as it crosses Station Road — as Upper King Street becomes Lower King Street. In the distance we can see the houses of Mill Street.
At the top of King Street, on the left (west), we can see the large lace factory developed in the 1880s by the Maltby family.
Lawn Terrace
Along Pimlico and off the same lane was a collection of houses called Wheatley Row (renamed about 1910 and referred to as Dorothy, Vernon and Haddon Cottages). Most of the Row stood on the west side of what is now a large car park at the side of the Scala Cinema (the large waste area on the photo). At the north end of the same car park once stood Lawn Terrace, a row of ten similar cottages developed at the end of the Victorian period.
In the early part of that same century this had once been part of an area of fields, gardens, orchards and nurseries known as the Lawn.
Lord Haddon Road
This initially private road was formally opened on September 25th, 1895. By April of 1897 sixty lime trees had been planted along its length, to commemorate sixty years of Queen Victoria’s reign.
The photo shows Fullwood Street joining on the right foreground and Nesfield Road on the left (west). Also on the left you can just glimpse the white, imposing structure of the ‘New Theatre‘.
In the distance, at the end of the road, are the houses of Manners Road.
Of course, not all the houses you can see were built in the Victorian era.
Manners Road
This road was glimpsed in the previous photo. These are the houses on the north side of the road as it approaches Bath Street (just off the extreme right). The old Manor Ground football ground stood on the left of the houses.
Market Street
The idea for this ‘new’ street from the Market Place to join with Nottingham Road, was mooted in 1853 and was complete ten years later. In the photo we can see where Gladstone Street crosses (left to right).
Mill Street
Mill Street runs, west to east, from the bottom (north) end of Wood Street to the Erewash Canal. In 1881 it didn’t exist at all — and nor did Wood Street. The area was covered by fields, and the only significant building was the flour mill adjacent to the canal. Serious development of the area began in the late 1880s and beyond the end of the Victorian era.
The photo shows the western end of Mill Street where anew block of flats in Wood Street has just been built.
Mitchell Terrace
At the end of Victoria’s reign Mitchell Terrace was a row of six homesteads, taking its name from the outspoken grocer and Town Councillor Charles Mitchell who represented parts of Hallam Fields. The photo is taken from the Longfield Lane end of the terrace, the older part of the development.
