Country Images Magazine May 2015 - North Edition | Page 16
DERBYSHIRE’S
LOST HOUSES:
by Maxwell Craven
Abbot’s Hill House
entrance front, 1926,
photographed by
C. B. Sherwin [M Craven]
Abbot’s Hill House
It is very difficult to imagine, when looking at
Derby’s Babington Lane with its endless tailbacks of ’buses, that less than a century ago it was
virtually rus in urbe: the countryside in town par
excellence. Indeed, the last owner of Abbot’s Hill
House, that stood for just on two centuries between
Babington and Green Lanes, W. H. Richardson, was
a keen huntsman and kept his hunters in the stable
block there.