Sandiacre - Part 01 - From The Market Place
w/e 2 October 2005
All this week's pictures were taken with a Kodak DX6490

Click here to read David Roberts' "Memories of Sandiacre" - opens in a popup window

Sandiacre was granted a royal charter in 1268 by Henry III and this was once the site of a weekly market. The St Giles Festival, an eight day annual fair was also held here and a mediaeval right allowed the erection and use of a gallows. Such is the volume of the twenty-first century traffic at this road junction that any market or fair here would now prove equally as as hazardous for the onlookers as the hangman's noose did formerly for any miscreants. And on a similar theme the building at the junction of Longmoor Lane and Derby Road with the boarded up windows next to Bowley's the butcher, used to be a slaughterhouse.

Not only is the market place at the intersection of four roads it is adjacent to the Erewash Canal and a bridge over it. The bridge that crosses the canal towards Stapleford and will eventually be the route we will follow along Station Road. The view above is from the far side of the canal back to Town Street and the small image left is of the same area but along Town Street from the market place side of the canal. This stretch of the canal is now called Padmore Moorings but back in 1813, there were lime kilns here, lime being important in the area as it was worked into the soil to improve the land for agriculture. Both of these images are just to the north of the canal bridge.

On the southern side of the bridge on the bank from where this picture was taken, there used to be a coal wharf. The site is now occupied by public toilets and a couple of landscaped areas with seats strategically placed to overlook the canal. Water fowl and narrow boats can often be seen here. On the opposite bank a ropemaker's ropewalk once ran alongside the canal. Lime kilns, a slaughterhouse, a coal wharf and a ropewalk together with a market in close proximity all give an impression of a what a busy little place this was in the past - a veritable hive of industry and activity.

The bridge over the canal which carries Station Road to the traffic light controlled junction with the other three roads at the market place replaced an earlier humpback bridge. Four decorative cast iron lamp supports (inset), at present minus the lanterns, adorn the four pillars of the bridge.

Our walk around Sandiacre will first of all take us eastwards towards Stapleford before turning north and west to cross back over the canal and then eventually head back twisting and turning southwards to the market place. Crossing the bridge along Station Road, the first building we encounter is the former United Reformed Methodist Chapel dating from 1866. Sadly like so many other chapels and churches, its function is now of a capitalist nature rather than a spiritual one.

But chapels are not the only buildings to undergo a change of use. Next door to the former chapel a water pumping station that once served Sandiacre and Stapleford has found a new lease of life as the Headquarters of the St John Ambulance organisation for the Stapleford and Sandiacre Division..  Forward to Part 02

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