Milford Part 06 - Makeney Road continued
w/e 29 March 2015
All of this week's pictures were
taken with a Kodak DX6490
In this final part of our Village Trail around Milford
and Makeney, we continued to follow the route of the third Heritage
Walk as described in a leaflet downloaded from the Derwent Valley
Mills World Heritage website, along Makeney Road from Forge Cottage.
  We saw in the previous part the site of the
ancient forges and Forge Cottage, the home of the forge manager.
Opposite the cottage and a little further along is Forge Steps,
a row of five houses built end on to the road about 1750 by Walter
Mather. The houses unusual in that they were brick-built were
for workers at the forges where Mr Mather was the iron master
who held the lease.
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  Continuing along Makeney Road we crossed
the drive to Makeney Hall seen here (above) looking back for
the junction with Holly Bush Lane (right). A Derbyshire County
Council Blue Plaque on a stone pillar at the entrance reads "George
Herbert Strutt 1854 - 1928 Mill owner and Belper's greatest benefactor.
Lived at Makeney Hall from 1876 to 1916". In fact the Hall
which is now a hotel, was purchased by Anthony Radford Strutt
in 1818 and was home to several members of the family.
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We crossed the road from the entrance and climbed up the hill
of Holly Bush Lane to what the leaflet describes as the "heart
of Makeney" where we found the ancient Holly Bush Inn. According
to the inn's website it is "a traditional 17th century village
inn, where highwayman Dick Turpin is reported to have frequented
on his travels" and where you can "step back in time
into the quirky layout."
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The lane which was the old coach road between Derby and Sheffield
loops round past the Holly Bush Inn and drops back to Makeney
Road.
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It rejoins Makeney Road near the rear of the Makeney Hall Hotel
seen here on the right and we continued from here southwards
towards the sun. At the first bend in the road there appears
to be a large boulder at the entrance to another property on
the left.
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The boulder marks the entrance to the site of the original Makeney
House. When the Strutts built the Makeney Hall that stands today,
this site became the coach house and later a garage for the cars.
In fact the downloaded leaflet still refers to a garage but the
whole complex has now been redeveloped as residential and holiday
homes providing easy access to the Derwent Valley World Heritage
Site, the Peak District and the rest of Derbyshire. That same
leaflet however does reveal that the original Makeney House was
the home of John Heath, a notorious Derby banker and scrivener
who became bankrupt. Not much changes really, does it?
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Next along Makeney Road is the Grade II Listed Makeney Yard,
a fifteenth century farmhouse (formerly known as Johnson’s
Buildings) that was purchased by the Strutts in 1806 and converted
into several individual properties.
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The Strutts were also responsible for building the adjacent terrace
of eight back-to-back houses similar to those we saw in the second
walk on Hopping Hill. These Grade II Listed properties date from
about 1820.
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The end of this walk before retracing our steps along Makeney
Road to the start is just beyond Red Lane which ascends the hillside
to Holbrook and Bargate but there are still a couple of buildings
that deserve a mention. On one corner of Red Lane stands Makeney
Lodge, a 1730 property built be Henry Peat and extended by his
son in 1783. It later became the home of the Mill manager, a
certain Captain Holmes who was residing there in 1852. Later
still in the twentieth century it had become the home of H. St
John D. Raikes, M.P.
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On the other corner of Red Lane is Red Hill Farm which being
built in 1833/4 by Anthony Radford Strutt as multi-functional
building is, as one would expect, another Grade II Listed structure.
Together with the adjoining cottage the earliest part of which
probably dates from the seventeenth century, it was built as
a model farm.
This marks the end of this walk around Milford and Makeney but
across the valley from Red Hill Farm on the other side of the
Derwent is another model farm built by the Strutt Company. That
is Moscow Farm which was established in 1815 and which lies alongside
the main road from Derby to Belper. That road leads into Milford
and the interpretation board at the end of Chevin Road but our
way there was to return via Makeney Road.
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