Darley Abbey contains examples of the classic Derwent Valley three-storey mill workers’ terraces similar to the earliest Cromford housing; but it also has a significant number of back-to-back houses, a house type not found in Cromford though present in Belper and Milford, and it has the earliest known example of the cluster house.
This design was promoted by Charles Bage as housing suitable for overseers at the Flax Mill he designed in 1797 for Marshalls on the outskirts of Shrewsbury. It was also used by William Strutt in Belper where, while there is no evidence that the cluster houses were reserved for overseers, it is clear from the rent that they were considered the best the Strutts had to offer their workers. In Darley Abbey it is by no means certain that Four Houses was intended to provide superior accommodation. The houses were no larger than many others in Darley Abbey and there is no evidence of the extensive gardens, private privies and pigsties which made the Belper cluster houses so attractive to those who could afford to live in them.
The cluster blocks in New Road on the other hand may once have come closer to providing superior accommodation than appearances now suggest. But even here it is difficult to see how the curtilage could have contained adequate space for gardens, privies and sties on the scale offered in Belper. However, the two blocks in Lower New Road, in their original form, may have been of a higher quality.
It is tempting to see the hands of Charles Bage and William Strutt at work in Darley Abbey and with William Strutt’s family connection with the Evans and Charles Bage’s family links with Darley Abbey this is a point worthy of serious consideration. There is however no documentary evidence to substantiate such a claim.
The growth of the community followed the development
of
the mills. Between 1788 and 1801 the settlement
doubled.
Growth was a more measured 22% in the next decade
followed by minimal growth, 7%, between 1811
and 1821.
But the substantial investment in mill building
and
machinery in the years 1818-21 was followed in
turn by a
37% increase in housing stock by 1831; after
which, for the
rest of the century, growth was minimal.
Much
of the evidence of the Evans concern to nurture their
mill community is in the mill ledgers rather than
in bricks
and mortar. There is of course the church built
in 1819 and the school which was constructed in 1826,
but their record of
educational provision had begun at least 30 years
earlier. In
1791, a Sunday School was planned for the attic
floor of the
mill, and five years later 80 children employed
at the mill
were attending the Evans Sunday School.
A day school,
teaching children to read and knit, at a cost of
one penny
and a farthing per week, was in existence by 1797;
and two
years later there was a night school. Health care
was also
provided both to residents who were ill and in
the form of
mass inoculation against smallpox: 79 children
in 1797 and
88 in 1800. There was also a club which was organised
on
the same lines as a Friendly Society, to which
members
contributed and which paid a weekly sum to members
who
were unable to work.
Feeding the community was also a major concern for the Evans. Unlike Cromford, Darley Abbey had no market place or public houses, nor is it clear in the early years of this cotton mill community that there were shops. Essential products were however purchased by the mill owners and sold to the residents at cost or at a slight loss. Milk was bought from the tenants of the Evans farms in Allestree and Darley Abbey and sold at tuppence ha’penny a quart. Flour, oatmeal, cheese, beer, coal and blankets were sold on a similar basis though it is not clear that such products were always available or whether they were provided only in times of hardship.
Over the last 40 years new building has obliterated many of Darley Abbey’s green spaces and it requires an act of the imagination to recapture an impression of its pastoral character and of the self-sufficiency of its residents. So much of the allotment and grazing land has gone; the cottages now stand in a suburban rather than a rural setting. But the mill ledgers prove that the cows promised to prospective residents in the newspaper advertisements were a reality. Somewhere space was found for them and for the gardens and allotments. And there can be no doubting the importance of the garden and the allotments in sustaining the community.
In
1930, following the death of Ada Evans, the widow of
Walter Evans, the estate was sold. Subsequently
the two
Evans houses, Darley House which had been
built by
William Evans in the 1780s and where Elizabeth
his widow
received Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1796 (Coleridge
described her as “without exception the greatest
woman I
have been fortunate enough to meet with in my brief
pilgrimage through life”), and Darley Hall-
purchased by
Samuel Evans in 1835 - have both been demolished.
It is
now more than 70 years since a member of the Evans
dynasty exercised influence and control over the
lives of
residents in Darley Abbey, yet some evidence of
an
autocratic past remains to this day.
Thomas Evans was as entrepreneurial in improving his factory community’s transport links as he was in his other business decisions. In 1792 he instigated a plan to link the river Derwent to the Derby Canal and to make it navigable to Darley Abbey weir. Benjamin Outram was commissioned to survey and prepare proposals and a plan has survived which sets out Outram’s route for a towpath up the east bank of the river to Darley Abbey where a wharf was to be built. For a while the mill had its own boat. In May 1788 it sank and had to be salvaged and repaired. No evidence to confirm the precise location of the Darley Abbey Wharf has been found. The Derby Canal link provided Darley Abbey with direct access to the canal system and to the river Trent which, with Gainsborough as the principal port, remained a major artery for goods coming into this part of the region until the coming of the railways.
Of special importance for Evans was the Grand Trunk (or Trent-Mersey) Canal which he used to export his products to the key market in Manchester which he attempted to supply on a weekly basis.
In 1798-99 the Evans improved the community’s road links by extending New Road up the hill to join the Derby turnpike. A junction was made at the Mile Ash toll house and the new road took the name Mile Ash Lane. Before and after the new road had been built the Mile Ash tollhouse was used as a collection point for goods. So in September 1793, when Evans was expecting ironwork from the Alderwasley forge, he wrote “Mr Geo Strutt writes us he has ordered you to send a wheel and pinion from his model to be laid down at the turnpike”. Waggoners were a constant problem. In June 1799, the iron pillars for the cotton mill which were on their way from Smiths in Chesterfield turned out to have been “left at Derby”, the waggoner saying he did not know “they were to come hither”. Darley Abbey did not have its own rail link although the North Midland line passed close by. The nearest railhead for the Mill was via Haslam’s Lane and Chester Green, Derby.
The settlement the Evans created in Darley Abbey has survived almost completely intact. Many of the houses have been altered externally and internally, for the most part superficially, and the privies and pigsties have gone. But few significant buildings other than the two Evans houses, Darley House and Darley Hall, the Evans farm and the paper mill, have been demolished. It is in no sense a planned or model community having grown incrementally over at least 50 years and no obvious pattern is discernible in its growth. But as an early factory village, in its range of properties and house types, it is no less important than Belper or Cromford.
Like the other Derwent Valley factory masters the Evans provided houses for their mill workers. They acquired a number of houses when they purchased the existing mills in Darley Abbey and some of these were pressed into service to accommodate the first mill families. It is not clear when they began to build their own housing either in Darley Abbey or in the neighbouring settlement of Allestree where they also had factory housing for the Darley Abbey Mills. Plainly, a number of houses were available by 1787 when they advertised for labour in the Derby Mercury offering “comfortable houses with every convenience at Darley or Allestry [sic]”. An unofficial census a year later recorded the total number of houses in Darley Abbey as 47, which gives some idea of the size of the settlement at that time and provides a basis against which to measure subsequent growth.
This
was probably the first of the housing development provided by the Evans.
It was certainly in existence by
1796 and is believed to date from c.1790. The houses
were
built on a flat piece of land just over the bridge
from the
cotton mills. As the name suggests, they are built
round
three sides of a square and are three-storeyed,
brick-built
with slate roofs and one continuous roof line.
The houses to the north and south of the square
are larger
than those on the west and face into the square.
Those on
the west face outwards and the kitchen extensions
face into
the square. The north-south houses contained
about 53.3
square metres internally when first built. Those
at the rear
of the square, on the west, in contrast, were
approximately
half the size at 27.3 square metres.
There are four groups of semi-detached cottages,
three on
the western side of the road and one on the east.
These are
similar in size to the larger houses in the Square.
They are
three-storeyed and built of brick with slate
roofs.
This square is formed by blocks of houses of
which many
are back-to-back. Built in brick and slate-roofed
they are
mostly of two storeys. On the west side the block
of three
is believed to have been built originally as
six back-to-back houses. To the north, the block
of four houses has remained
back-to-back, as has the lower block of six built
into the former Abbey building, now the Abbey
Inn.
On the south side there are blocks of four houses and three houses, and between them the two houses which are larger and very much later in construction.
A
row of five three-storey, brick and slate houses which
included originally a schoolroom at the end. They
occupy
the level ground at the bottom of New Road. They
are
thought to be the houses built by the Evans between
1800
and 1802 referred to in the company ledger as “five
houses
and a school room”.
Three-storey brick and slate houses built
in the form of cluster houses in two blocks
of four with gardens to the side and rear, at the
bottom of New Road. They all have
later extensions.
This group of two blocks in the cluster house format
comprises eight houses in all. The blocks are brick-built
with slate roofs and the elevations have been given
an
unusual elegance for mill workers’ housing,
the doors being
set in blank arched recesses. The road-side elevation
has
been rendered and painted but the quality of the
original
brickwork is evident at the rear.
The houses to the rear have allotment gardens. No evidence remains of ancillary buildings to house privies or pigsties, though there is ample space for there to have been such facilities. The care with which these blocks have been designed is thought to be attributable to their high visibility from the Evans residence.
The Hollies is a large house built in brick and
slate attached
to a larger house, the White House, which was built
later.
These substantial dwellings were used as managers’ houses
and the White House was the home of John Peacock
who
purchased the mills after Walter Evans death
in 1903. It
has not proved possible to establish when these
houses were
built but on stylistic grounds it is likely that
they were both
part of the early 19th century development of the
community, though the Hollies has been much altered.
A row of fourteen, three-storeyed houses, built
of brick with
slate roofs, in a single terrace. Documentary evidence
suggests they were constructed in 1826 at the same
time as
the adjoining school, though stylistically they
appear earlier.
Most of the windows and doors in the row have been
altered but one or two of the original iron casements
set in larger
wooden multi-paned frames have survived, as for
example at No. 11.
An interesting feature of the row, not evident externally, is that some of the top storeys are not part of the same house as those below. The Evans needed flexibility in their housing provision and spreading the attics of some houses across adjoining houses offered an opportunity to provide additional space for larger families.
Allotments for each house were provided on the other side of the road. The house at the northern end of the row was adapted to give it the appearance of a lodge for Darley House whose main drive was opposite.
These four houses are built of brick and slate
in the cluster house form and contain three
storeys. Each house was originally 45 square metres
internally. They were completed in
1792, an early experiment with the cluster house
format, later to be adopted by Charles
Bage in Shrewsbury and by William Strutt in Belper.
Unlike the Belper cluster houses they
do not have private gardens or pigsties, though
they were provided with “necessaries” (lavatories)
in 1796. They each had
an allotment on land behind the Mile Ash houses.
A
single stepped terrace of 13 houses built in 1795-96. It
contains three storeys and is built of brick and
slate and
each house in the terrace was provided with a lavatory
and
a pigsty together with a plot of land to the rear.
Shortly
after the terrace was built the Evans constructed
the new road in front of the terrace which linked
the mill community to
the turnpike (now the A6), at Mile Ash.
 |
 |
 |
 |
This is the terrace in Darley Abbey which gives the greatest impression of quality in construction and design. It is of three storeys and built in brick and slate with a stepped roof line to accommodate the slope. Architectural distinction is provided by the lintels over the windows and doors having projecting keystones. Each house had a lavatory and a plot of land to the rear.
These
houses are on the other side of the river from the
main village. Thomas Evans acquired the site in
1778
possibly with a view to using the adjoining stream
of water
to power a mill. When this proved impossible the
houses
were added to the Evans housing stock. Two
of the original
three houses remain.
Five houses were built within the perimeter
of the cotton mill site. They were constructed
at different times as the mill expanded and were
occupied by foremen at the mill or at the
adjoining bleaching and dye works. The houses reflect
the status of their occupiers, being
larger than most of the other houses in the settlement.
Designed
by Moses Wood of Nottingham (Built by Walter
Evans in 1818). It is described by Pevsner as “unaisled,
of
Commissioners’ type with tall slender windows
with
Perpendicular tracery and angle pinnacles”.
The square
tower at the west end is also pinnacled. The crypt
beneath
the altar contains the remains of nine members
of the Evans
family, together with those of Moses Harvey, a
junior partner
in the cotton mill. The Churchyard has ornate cast
iron
gates of impressive size; many of the slate headstones
were
provided by the Evans for their workers.
Built in 1826 as a school room with houses
for the Master and Mistress at each end. Red-brick,
two storeys, the windows to
the ground storey are round-headed and in round-headed
recesses; there is a sill band to the first floor
and a stone cornice;
there are pediments to the ends (which project
slightly), a
pediment in the centre with a clock and plain wrought
iron
railings enclosing a small playground at either
end. It was
endowed by Walter Evans who left £8,000 in
his will to be
invested for the teaching of poor children aged
four to
twelve in the parish “and not more than 40
at a time”.
The building is now in use as offices.
