Greenhill Lane B6016
Derbyshire- Lost Houses
The entrance was placed to the right of the façade , affording space for a large ground floor reception room , panelled in oak with Ionic pilasters , as at 36 , St . Mary ’ s Gate of 1736 , and boasted a fine Wright iron fanlight grille above it , which has also survived and is in the collections of the Museum Trust ; the roof was hidden behind a modest parapet . The garden , as with other houses in Full Street , stretched down to the Derwent , and all sported modest but usually rather pretty summerhouses / boat houses at the river ’ s edge .
Alderman Heathcote ’ s homonymous son was host to Lord George Murray during the ’ Fortyfive , when Bonnie Prince Charlie stayed in Derby from 4th to 6th December 1745 , and was widely supposed to be a keen Jacobite . Nevertheless , such was the disarray of the Whig opposition during the emergency , that he survived with reputation relatively intact , inheriting the Littleover Hall estate from his Harpur in-laws a few years later .
The house was let for a while to the banker John Heath in the 1750s and to lead merchant Henry Thornhill ( of the Stanton-in-Peak family ) in the decade following . In 1781 it was purchased by Dr . Erasmus Darwin FRS , formerly of Lichfield and more recently a rather bored resident , with his second wife , of Radburne Hall , she being the widow of Col . Pole of that place . Dr . Darwin , with Derby ’ s John Whitehurst , a founder of the illustrious and wonderfully informal Lunar Society , was one of the last great polymaths , a geologist with a preference for Vulcanism , an inventor of wonderful versatility and the originator of the theories adumbrated by his even more illustrious grandson , Charles .
Having acquired the house , he began to modify the interior , replacing the rather staid staircase with a curvilinear one , extending to the rear and devising the world ’ s first artesian well in the garden to provide fresh water for the household in lieu of the increasingly polluted water of the Derwent . To it he affixed an iron plaque which read :
Darwin also bought , in 1783 , a portion of the gardens of Exeter House called Goose Green Close , which lay opposite , on the east side of the river , from John Bingham the ironmaster who then lived there . To reach his new pleasure grounds , he devised a hand operated ferry from the rear garden of his house ( later 3 , Full Street ) to the east garden , illustrated for posterity by his son ( Sir ) Francis . When the Council decreed a new bridge across the Derwent at this point in 2006 , an appeal for an apt name for it was launched . ‘ Darwin ’ s Ferry ’ was persuasively suggested , but ignored by whoever did the judging and the structure – an acquired taste aesthetically – remains anonymous to this day . Darwin also built a small Gothick pavilion by the riverbank in which to retire to write .
In 1801 , Darwin ’ s eldest son , Erasmus junior , died by his own hand , much to the intense distress of his eminent father . A successful lawyer , he had previously acquired Breadsall Priory , but in 1802 , Erasmus , wife and extended family decided it might be a deal more salubrious and indeed spacious to live at Breadsall than Full Street , what with the incursions of industry in the town centre , and moved there at the beginning of the year . Yet within two months of re-locating , Darwin had died , fairly unexpectedly , an unfinished letter to his lifelong friend Benjamin Franklin still on his desk .
The house in Full Street had been advertised to let in January 1802 , and his executors sold it to George Bellairs of the Stamford banking house
KITCHENS , WET ROOMS , BATHROOMS & SHOWER ROOMS
TEREBELLO EDUXIT AQUAM ANNO MDCCLXXXIII ERASMUS DARWIN LABITUR ET LABETUR
- approximately to be rendered as ‘ the boring through brings forth water / the year 1783 / Erasmus Darwin / flowing out and falling down ’. Darwin ’ s alterations were started under the direction of Joseph Pickford , who worked extensively for the Lunar Society ’ s members , but he died suddenly in summer 1782 and the works were probably finished by his foreman Thomas Freeman .
Bathroom Images of Leabrooks .
44a Charles Street , Leabrooks , Derbyshire DE55 1LZ
Main Road B6016
To Swanwick
To Somercotes
LEABROOKS
Charles Street
Opening times : Monday to Friday 9am – 4pm , Saturday 9.30am to 1pm .
E : bathroomimages @ btconnect . com T : 01773 608531 * Not in conjunction with any other offer
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