Country Images Magazine North Edition October 2017 | Page 20

D e r b y s h i re -
Lost Houses
I
n 1720 – the date in confi rmed by the survival
of a lead rainwater head in the collections of
Derby Museums Trust – the locally based family
of Samuel Heathcote (1653-1723) decided they
needed a new house, and Heathcote, an alderman
and former mayor of Derby, was the man who
commissioned it.
Th e iron place once affi xed to the wall of the house by Darwin’s pioneering artesian well of 1783.
[Derby Museums Trust]
Th e house he built was of two and a half storeys
in height, four bays wide and much in the then
popular provincial Baroque style of Francis Smith of
Warwick, but with a rusticated ground fl oor divided
by Doric pilasters supporting a matching frieze.
Another Smith-like conceit was the placing of the
attic windows above the cornice, as on Franceys’
house, Market Place, of 1696. Indeed the fenestration
on the upper fl oors was much more closely akin and
similarly disposed to that surviving on Franceys’
House and the former Lloyd’s Bank on the corner of
Market Head and Iron Gate. Possibly the architect
was George or Roger Morledge of Derby.
Detail of a painting of Full Street by Peter Perez Burdet of 1764, showing
the house. [Derby Museums Trust]
Bust of Erasmus Darewin in old age by George Moneypenny of Derby,
once at the Derby Mechanics’ Institute and now at Darwin College,
Cambridge. [M. Craven]
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Plate, part of a service made by Derby Porcelain Factory for Erasmus Darwin
showing a favourite subject: the caldera of a volcano.
[Derby Museums Trust]