Country Images Magazine North Edition October 2017 | Page 19

D e r b y s h i re -
Lost Houses
T HE LO ST HOUSE S OF DER BYSHIRE
by Maxwell Craven
Darwin’s House
Exterior of Darwin’s House, photographed when it became the Beaconsfi eld Club by C. B. Sherwin in 1926. [Derby Museums Trust]
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Full Street in Derby was known
as the most fashionable place in Derby to live, the trend having been set
by the construction (and serial enlargement) of Exeter House at the south
end (see Country Images February 2016 or check-out on line). With the sale
from 1768 of Nuns’ Green, however, Friar Gate began to overtake it, and
indeed, nemesis descended upon Full Street in 1855 when Exeter House
was demolished and in 1893 when the Corporation built a vast electricity
power station where the Devonshire Hospital - originally Bess of Hardwick’s
Almshouses - had once stood. The only positive thing that happened since
is that the power station came down in 1970, and the Council had the
foresight to leave the site grassed over with an attractive view to the river
and Silk Mill, embellished from 1995 by the erection of Anthony Stones’ fi ne
equestrian statue of Bonnie Prince Charlie.
CountryImagesMagazine.co.uk | 19