Sandiacre - Part 07 - The Old Village
w/e 2 April 2006
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

Part 6 of our walk through Sandiacre took us from the Starch Lane/Church Drive junction to the Stoney Clouds Nature Reserve and now we must retrace our steps to that junction before continuing in this part around the area of the original settlement. As we descend the hill (left) there is a wall (right) that is worthy of closer inspection. This distinctive type of long and short stonework is local to the area. Where Church Drive crosses Starch Lane the walls that form the boundary of the property on the corner are also of interest. These are built in a herringbone style and are thought to contain stones that originally came from the Abbey at Dale, just a few miles away.

The herringbone wall (top right above) continues up the small incline along the short section of Church Drive between Starch Lane and Church Street until it meets a small building with an old door set into the wall (left). A plaque above the door (bottom right) reads: 'Erected as a village lock-up and pound for the imprisonment of stray animals, about the year 1660 A.D.' The lock-up is quite small but still contains a fireplace although I doubt that it has housed any miscreants for many a year.

Looking back from across Church Street, both the lock-up and the pinfold where the stray animals were kept can be seen but the leaflet that details the route of this walk gives some information that differs to the date given on the plaque. This says that it is thought that the lock-up itself was not built until about 1790 although the pinfold is probably earlier. Either way, they've both been there a long time!

Another old building stands directly across Church Street from the lock-up and this one is most definitely still in use. The Blue Bell Inn was converted from a 300 year old farmhouse and it is now a thriving hostelry that we must double back in front of to regain the end of Starch Lane where it meets Stanton Road. The name plates for the streets are visible in the distance towards the right hand side of the image above.

The road swings round now into Stanton Road and on the right is the small St Giles' Park, the local Scout Hut and Sandiacre Town Football Club's home ground. On the left (where the car is peeping out) is Sandiacre Cloudside Junior School but despite all these facilities and activities, the road is fairly quiet these days with most of the traffic using Town Street and Lenton Lane (see Part 6). At one time though as has been mentioned previously, Stanton Road formed the main road to Ilkeston via the higher ground through Stanton By Dale.

A little way along Stanton Road a narrow alleyway adjacent to the school boundary leads through to a more recently built area of the village. In these parts such an alleyway is often referred to as a 'twitchell' or a 'jitty'. This particular twitchell follows the old field boundaries of a farm that stood nearby and further evidence of Sandiacre's agricultural past was once found in the location of an old building near the other end of the twitchell (right). Unfortunately, it has now been demolished - or I wasn't looking in the right place - but our route now turns right into Kings Road and then left into Albert Road which is where we'll continue the walk in Part 08.  Back to Part 06  Forward to Part 08

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