1930s: Ring road taking shape

(Redirected from 1950s: Ring road taking shape)

Anton Rippon reviews the year 1935 when working folk were able to celebrate the King’s Silver Jubilee and the new look town centre and ring road began to take shape.

Bunting in Derby Market Place to mark the Silver Jubilee of King George V and Queen Mary in May 1935. Austin’s the grocers can be seen to the left of the picture

Working folk across Britain were not accustomed to being handed extra time off without pay. Indeed, there had long been a battle raging to make any kind of paid holiday an entitlement.

But, on May 6, 1935, to mark the fact that King George V and Queen Mary had been on the throne for 25 years, workers everywhere enjoyed a day off with pay, on what was officially designated Silver Jubilee Day.

Derbyshire was determined to join in and make the most of perfect weather, and towns and villages across the county organised galas, sports events and displays, while Boy Scouts lit a series of beacons that made a fiery chain from north to south. Many communities were decorated with coloured lights.

John Clark, the mayor of Derby, held a Silver Jubilee reception for Derbyshire’s leading citizens. And, as the Guildhall was not big enough, and the Council House project hardly on the drawing board, the mayor had to use Bemrose School, then five years old, to stage his event.

On a more mundane, but nevertheless vital, note, in 1935 Derby Town Council announced that it would spend £568,000 on an improved drainage system for the borough.

The cornerstones were laid for the new £50,000 police courts and offices on the corner of Derwent Street – part of the Central Improvement Scheme that was transforming that part of Derby – and the Evening Telegraph made much of the fact that a wireless room would be installed at the police station to communicate with patrol cars.

Traffic was concerning Derbeians in 1935. A census showed that in one week, no less than 143,397 vehicles passed down St Peter’s Street, compared with 101,841 four years earlier.

The Telegraph reported “striking plans” to relieve the town’s traffic problem.

“With the completion in 1933 of the section from Uttoxeter New Road to Duffield Road, a span of six miles of circular route linked up London and the South with Matlock and the North.

“Town planning arrangements now provide that the link from London Road to Nottingham Road will eventually continue through Chaddesden to Mansfield Road, near the Isolation Hospital, and then across the river via Darley Grove to Duffield Road… the full circular route embracing the whole town will be complete.”

The thought that a new Derby airport would be built at Radbourne still persisted: “Another big development was the provision of a site for an aerodrome at Radbourne.

“ In view of the town’s geographical position… a municipal aerodrome would be a vital necessity to Derby in the future. The initial cost of the scheme is £113,000, and the site of 200 acres, said to be an admirable one, had passed all the Air Ministry tests.”

Derby’s various local government undertakings were certainly booming in 1935. The council-owned electricity department, with its 40,000 consumers, reported a profit of almost £36,000. The new trolley bus system had made nearly £11,000 on the year. The water department’s profit was more than £8,000, and the markets department’s more than £4,000.

Alderman W.R. Raynes, one of three newly-appointed Freeman of Derby in 1935

Three local politicians were made Freemen of Derby to celebrate the local government centenary: Alderman W G Wilkins, the “father” of the council which he had first joined in 1894, had twice served as Derby’s mayor; Alderman Oswald Ling was also a former mayor, and leader of the Conservative Party; and Alderman W R Raynes, who would give his name to part of the ring road, was a former Derby MP and the town’s first Labour mayor.

Despite Conservative gains in local elections, Derby Town Council was still controlled by Labour. And, in the General Election, National Party candidates J H “Jimmy” Thomas (completing 25 years as a Derby MP) and W Allan Reid, were returned to Parliament by Derby’s voters.

On the weather front, Derby enjoyed a scorching summer in 1935, with the hottest day coming on July 13, when the temperature reached almost 90F degrees.

The hot weather ran through May to August, by which time Derby was five inches behind its annual rainfall. In September, however, around 1.3 inches of rain fell on one day alone.

The month’s final quota – 4.19 inches – was double the average for that month, and October’s record was four inches.

In December came the snow and ice.

Nowadays we take video conferencing for granted, although it seems only a few years ago that even telephone conferencing was an unusual way to conduct business meetings.

In 1935, however, the Derby firm of International Combustion landed a £300,000 contract with the government of Western Australia, thanks to what was referred to in the Evening Telegraph as “radio-telephone conferences” between the firm and its overseas representatives.

Later in the year, a second radio-telephone conference linked up International Combustion with buyers in Australia, Africa, India, New Zealand, South America, Paris and New York. It seemed to work.

The Evening Telegraph reported: “Orders obtained for Derby from the Dominions showed a marked increase following the new departure in trading methods.”

A notable trading change took place in 1935 when the Old Crown Derby China Works in King Street was absorbed by the Royal Crown Derby Porcelain Company on Osmaston Road.

Long-serving workers at Ley’s Foundry were rewarded when 43 past and present employees with 40 or more years’ service to the company were each given £5 and a framed certificate.

Sir Gordon Ley unveiled a bronze tablet – paid for by workers and placed outside the messroom in Colombo Street – to the memory of Ian F Panton, the Ley’s works’ general manager who had died at the age of 46.

Other local deaths in 1935 included that of Oliver Platteau, head of Derby’s Belgian colony, who had lived in the town since he was exiled from Antwerp during the First World War and who had acted as the district’s unofficial Belgian consul.

And Derby’s children lost a good friend with the death of Mr H J Blount, who, as secretary of the Pearson Fresh Air Fund, had organised for more than 60,000 local boys and girls to pay visits to the seaside and the country.

They might have visited some of the most beautiful parts of Derbyshire which were steadily being added to the areas preserved by the National Trust and the Council for the Preservation of Rural England.

Secured for the pleasure of the public were the Longshaw estate (765 acres), Alport Height (nine acres), Blackamoor (448 acres), Taddington Woods (50 acres), parts of Dovedale (330 acres), Shining Cliff Woods at Alderwasley (200 acres) and Stanton Moor Edge (28 acres).

Ilam Hall, Dovedale, became the latest addition to the chain of Derbyshire Youth Hostels, after being presented to the National Trust by Mr R McDougall, a well-known Lancashire businessman.

During 1935 there were 30,000 visits to Peakland hostels, 10,000 more than in the previous year.

One area that looked like being out of bounds, however, was the village of Derwent which, it was announced, would be submerged when the Derwent Valley Water Board’s Ladybower reservoir was completed.

That was still five years ahead, but the £750,000 contract had been awarded in the autumn of 1935, to a Scottish company. The reservoir would ultimately submerge Derwent village, a church, surrounding farms and a main road.

But then Derby alone was consuming 5.6 million gallons of water every day. It had to come from somewhere.

Derby was also awash with cultural events in 1935. In November, the great tenor, John McCormack, gave a concert at the Grand Theatre, in Babington Lane, in aid of the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary.

On the brink of world fame, Arthur Rubenstein, the Polish-born pianist, gave a recital at one of the season’s chamber concerts at Derby. And the legendary comedian, Sir Harry Lauder, took time off from appearing at the Grand Theatre to address members of Derby Rotary Club.

Ashbourne achieved wider fame when a BBC wireless programme was broadcast from the town. Items included talks by a clockmaker, a farmer, two schoolboys, a caretaker, two Shrovetide football celebrities and an angling authority.

The story of the so-called grammar school ghost was also included in the programme.

Derby also played its part in making local radio history in 1935. When the Association of the British Chambers of Commerce held their first meeting in the town since 1883, a banquet was laid on at the LMS Railway Institute, from where speeches were relayed by the BBC to the Dominions and Colonies. It was the first time that speeches in Derby had been broadcast to the Empire.

For the county’s soldiers came the welcome news that the 1st Battalion, Sherwood Foresters, were being posted to “the best station in the British Empire”. The 1st Foresters were to replace the 1st Manchesters in the West Indies. The 2nd Battalion, meanwhile, was returning to Lichfield after foreign duty since 1919.

Finally, Derby had a new bishop. The first incumbent, the Right Reverend Edmund Courtenay Pearce, died in October after collapsing while taking a confirmation service near Glossop.

His successor was the Venerable Alfred Edward John Rawlinson, the brilliant 51-year-old academic who had been Bishop of Auckland. He would hold the post until 1959.

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