Derby: Detective work uncovers history of Derby houses

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General Baptist Church

Melbourne House, Derby

ONE of the things I have been doing to eke out a living since I was retired from Derby Museum is to compile house histories for people and, occasionally, for estate agents.

I have been doing it for years, really, for at the museum we ran, for some years, a city survey team, which researched the city’s more historic buildings.

Also we did a bit of “house detecting” for the Civic Society in order to build up data to apply to English Heritage for an application to get a building added to the Statutory List.

In relation to this, some time ago, I was sent two pages from an un-named 19th-century book. The first page was headed “Double villas at Derby” and was followed by a description of two houses, one a very grand pair of semis, built by Nottingham architects Hine & Evans. The question was to identify the house.

Thomas Chambers Hine (1813-1899) was a Nottingham man articled to London architect Matthew Habershon, who designed Derby’s third Guildhall (destroyed in 1841), Christ Church, Normanton Road, and St Peter’s, Belper.

In 1834, Hine replaced Habershon in the practice and, in 1849, returned to Nottingham to set up on his own. He was an inventive and prolific architect and was Nottingham’s equivalent to Derby’s Henry Isaac Stevens.

Robert Evans (1832-1911) was Hine’s pupil, then assistant and partner until 1867, when he left to practise on his own and, later, with William Jolley, of Idridgeghay, as his partner.

Evans’ grandfather of the same name was a Norbury joiner and close relation of George Elliot, whose antecedents we delved into a couple of years ago.

Concerning the single villa, my photocopy read:

 “The site for this villa is at the outskirts of Derby and on the Osmaston Road. The house erected was built in 1864. The front…looks to the handsome church recently built by the General Baptists…The general decorative character of the building is Gothic; though the outline is not dissimilar from that of the English country house of the early part of the 17th century. ”

From this description, it was clearly Melbourne House that was being referred to, built immediately south of the General Baptist Chapel.

In their notes, Hine & Evans modestly fail to note that the Baptist Chapel was of their own devising and built in 1862-63!

In fact, we have long known that both were erected at the expense of Alderman Robert Pegg, the Melbourne man who was baptised at Melbourne Baptist Church in 1801. He went on to make a fortune as a paint and varnish manufacturer at his works on The Morledge and became Mayor of Derby in 1855.

All this establishes that the extravagantly Gothic Melbourne House, with its cylindrical turret, pointed roof and long rambling south front, was designed by Hine, as was the former Polish Club across Charnwood Street which had not yet to be built.

Thus, a little piece of new evidence can be added to what we know of the architectural history of the city: Melbourne House is by T C Hine.

The house inside, although much abused by the NHS that now inhabits it including dropped ceilings and boxed in chimneypieces, is still pretty splendid, with lavish use of Chellaston alabaster.

As Pegg’s works were situated right beside Brookhouse’s plaster works – fed by gypsum from the Chellaston quarries – he probably had access to as much as he wanted at a price he was prepared to pay.

After Alderman and Mrs Pegg died, the house was lived in by Mrs Mary Ferrand in the 1870s – whom I believe was Ald Pegg’s sister.

It was then occupied by surgeon Thomas Carter Wigg, in the 1880s, who was followed in the next decade by lace manufacturer William Fletcher, who moved to long-lost Derwent Bank in 1903.

His brother, Thomas, was also an ex-Mayor of Derby, and their mill was situated not so far away on Osmaston Road, just by the railway bridge.

It was at this stage that Melbourne House – from which the street, built across its lawn and gardens, took its name – acquired its most interesting owner.

This was Richard Mountford Deeley (1855-1944), the third locomotive superintendent of the Midland Railway, who perfected and multiplied the celebrated Midland Compound 4-4-0 locomotive.

He resigned in 1909 after falling out with the overbearing Sir Cecil Paget, who was one of those managers who thought he could do everyone else’s job better than they could. Apparently, the extravagant Gothic pile that still is Grade II listed Melbourne House cost Alderman Pegg all of £1,154 16s 6d in 1864.

You can’t buy much house for that today!

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