1930s: Friends and neighbours on father's patch of Darley Abbey

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The death of Darley Abbey character Clifford Ward prompted former neighbour Martin Anthony, now living in Dorset, to recall how the two families grew up together, their paths ultimately diverging but memories from that time living on.

Louis and Marjorie Anthony with their two oldest sons, Martin and Colin, in 1938

Darley landowner Louis Anthony

Clifford Ward at 18, in 1945, when he was called up to do National Service

Marjorie Anthony celebrating her 80th birthday in Dovedale in 1993, toasted by her three sons (from left) Garth, Colin and Martin

The sudden death of 79-year-old Clifford Ward, of Old Lane, Darley Abbey, was greeted with sadness by villagers,

Clifford had lived in the same house, in the heart of the village, since 1937 – four years after it was built by my father, the well-known Derby butcher, Louis Anthony.

Born in 1892, Louis fought in the trenches of Northern France in the First World War, earning medals for gallantry. After the war, he was apprenticed to butcher William Domleo at his shop in Curzon Street, which he later bought, though retaining the firm’s name.

In 1930, after the death of Mrs Ada Evans, whose family owned Darley Abbey, the entire village was put up for sale in lots.

Louis purchased lots 11 and 12, some 40 acres of land on the east side of the village, including Old Lane, and farmland for many years was tenanted by William Appleby.

The land also included Nutwood, from which the newer estate derives its name, and the Wet Meadow which is an area much enjoyed by walkers who stroll along the edge of the Derwent.

In 1933 Louis built two semi-detached houses in Old Lane. The following year, he married Marjorie Lockton, of Wolfa Street, whose mother was a regular customer at the Curzon Street shop and would bring her five daughters and two sons when she placed her weekly order.

Marjorie was often called to collect the meat. Little did her mother realise that the butcher’s handsome assistant was taking a special interest in daughter No 4.

Five years after the couple married, just prior to the outbreak of war, the couple moved into one of Louis’ semi-detached houses in Darley Abbey, with their sons – myself, Martin (four) and Colin (two).

Cyril and Beatrice Ward had rented the house next door two years earlier. Their family was to hold the tenancy for nearly seven decades.

Clifford Ward was born on January 1, 1927, in the block of four cottages which now constitutes the Abbey public house. His mother was presented with a new pram by Greenhill Furnishings on Green Lane to celebrate the birth of the town’s first baby that year.

Not long afterwards, they transferred to Old Lane. Both neighbouring sets of children attended St Matthew’s Primary School in Brick Row, which was founded by the Evans family. It is is now a block of offices.

Clifford’s father, Cyril, worked at Rolls-Royce in Derby in his earlier years. Later, he had a variety of occupations, including window cleaning and painting and decorating.

Clifford was 10 and his sister, Iris, six, when they arrived at Old Lane. They soon got to know us and the families, especially Beatrice and Marjorie, enjoyed a cordial relationship.

Louis ran a smallholding from the Old Lane home, grazing sheep on what is now the Nutwood estate with the aid of a succession of sheep dogs.

He also had about 15 cattle housed in a barn near the river’s edge close to the bridge over the Derwent, plus a couple of hundred hens which provided the shop with a ready supply of free-range eggs during the war years.

We two older boys were kept busy collecting the daily production in two heavy metal buckets. Two massive corn bins stood outside the barn, with liberal helpings for the hens – especially before Christmas!

Early in the war, our house was extended to provide an oak lounge, garage, coal shed and lean-to. Colin remembers as a toddler venturing up the builder’s ladder to a dizzy height, only to discover that it was much easier to go up than down at such a tender age!

In October 1943, my youngest brother, Garth, was born and the event was celebrated by the planting of a monkey puzzle tree in the front garden. It has become a familiar village landmark, towering over house and garden.

Soon after the war ended, the three-and-a-half-acre plot adjacent to the north end of Old Lane was compulsorily purchased by the housing authorities for new homes, for the princely sum of £813. Weirfield Road Estate was built on the land, providing much-needed housing for some 20 to 40 families. Clifford Ward was called up for National Service and spent periods in both Iraq and Egypt. He used to reminisce fondly of his experiences in Basra, where he had a good rapport with the local people.

After his return, he worked as a self-employed timber merchant in the village and also at the Post Office.

But his health was not good and, after the loss of his parents, his sister, Iris Shannon, looked after him, bringing him meals each day.

With the passage of time, the pathways of the two families were to diverge. Garth and I followed a calling to the ministry of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, in my case involving the surrender of a State scholarship to the University of Durham.

Now 71, I live in retirement in Dorset with my wife, Margaret, herself a pastor’s daughter from Nottingham, after 44 years of active ministry level.

Colin left home in 1953 to study and work at a college farm in Berkshire, with a view to take up farming. He went on to work for Radio Rentals, becoming general manager and then training manager for the company’s national staff.

Later he joined the NHS to retrain individuals suffering from trauma or psychiatric disabilities.

He and his wife, Elizabeth, have two children and four grandchildren, and currently live near Stamford in Lincolnshire.

In August 1970, Louis Anthony startled his wife by telling her that he would die the following June. He was about to reach his 78th birthday at the time. His health was hardly excellent, but he seemed in reasonable shape.

On Saturday. June 30, 1971, he was told that Garth would be ordained to the ministry of the Gospel and later that evening, passed away.

After his death, Marjorie remained in the village, along with her beloved dogs, Roddy, and later, Muffin.

She spent the final two years of her life living in turn with her sons, and was buried alongside her husband in the Nottingham Road Cemetery in August 1995, at the age of 81. Following her death, the Ward family continued to live in the home they rented from the Anthonys in Old Lane.

In his latter years, Clifford was a regular at the cafe on Darley Park, calling in to see Gill and Ken, the proprietors, and the young female staff at least two or three times a day, seven days a week.

The cafe used to be the venue for the art class for Central School for Boys and had beautiful wood-panelled walls.

Clifford was apparently always made welcome, enjoying many a hot meal there and his favourite hot chocolate.

He had a beautiful singing voice, strong and clear and always in tune. He would tell the staff to turn the background music down. Then he would burst into song, singing his favourite “The Lambeth Walk”.

He loved to listen to Jim Reeves at the cafe and would always request him by saying: “Put James on please”. On busy days he would make himself useful and collect the pots.

Clifford was not only part of cafe life but was well known along Duffield Road, where he would walk to town, sometimes three times a day, swinging his walking stick in the air. Rumour has it that it never touched the ground – until increasing frailty caught up with him. He will be sadly missed by all who knew him.

With Clifford’s death, the two houses in Old Lane have been sold. But it has been agreed to use 10 per cent of the proceeds for a worthy cause.

Following his ordination, Garth with his Yorkshire wife, Sylvia, and their three sons, was called by his church to a series of overseas mission appointments, with lengthy spells in Sri Lanka, the Cameroons, Pakistan and, more recently, Cambodia.

This has led the Anthony family to undertake a special venture which may be of interest to Darley Abbey residents. We have decided to fund a project for Vietnamese women refugees in Cambodia who have been forced by poverty to resort to prostitution.

We three brothers feel such a venture is a fitting and lasting tribute to our many happy boyhood years in Darley Abbey, and to the good relationship enjoyed with Clifford and Iris Ward and their parents over many decades.