• Article |
• Discussion |
• View source |
• History

This rare photograph of Brook Walk taken by Victorian photographer Richard Keene around 1872 prompted historian Maxwell Craven to examine which buildings still existed at that time and how the area has changed over the past 135 years.

Some friends recently showed me their family archive of old photographs of Derby, mainly Victorian photographer Richard Keene platinotypes.

One view was completely new to me – a shot of Ford Street Bridge from Brook Walk.

At first, I assumed that the widening of the footpath in front of the camera would be the end of Little Bridge Street but, from looking at the Archaeological Society’s excellent reproduction of the 1852 Board of Health Map, it appears not to be.

It is a widening caused by the row of four whitewashed cottages at an angle to the brook. Behind the camera is the wall of Abell’s foundry.

The odd angle of the cottages is because they were built around 1818-19 as part of a court – later Court No 8 – parallel to Brook Street and accessed by a narrow cobbled alley. The later ones beyond were built to face the brook and are aligned with it.

The date is some time before 1876, when some of these cottages were cleared to make way for the Great Northern Railway’s new line, which crossed on a blue brick viaduct roughly on the angle of the old cottages with the later, taller ones.

I believe the photo is one of a series that Keene took to record the area in 1872, before the railway destroyed a swathe of buildings in its path from east to west.

Some readers will recall his shots of the doomed medieval inn, the Old White Horse, on Friar Gate, the thatched cottage adjacent, Mrs Eyre’s elegant porticoed Georgian House beyond and his view up Short Street with the Lord Hill tavern behind.

At that time, the brook was edged with a simple timber railing, rather than the scaffolding pole one can see today. The bridge at the end, carrying Ford Street, spanned the northerly of two branches of the brook, which forked just beside the cameraman.

It was one of seven bridges over the brook rebuilt in 1789-92 to the design of William Strutt, chairman of the second (1788) and third (1792) Improvement Commissions.

Brook Walk first appears on the 1819 map of Derby by J T Swanwick and was then pretty new. It was only needed once the West End began to be developed, from 1792, although it probably existed long before that as a path through the meadows of the common fields.

Ford Street was just as old. The bridge was an innovation, getting its name from the ford which once existed there, access from King Street to Friar Gate across Markeaton Brook.

In 1768, when posh houses were built on the south edge of Nuns’ Green to form the middle section of Friar Gate, the track was metalled and given a bridge in 1792.

In the photograph, the building on the right at the Ford Street end carries a painted wall panel – clearly a pub. This was the Apollo Tavern, established by 1833 as a beerhouse, probably as a result of the Duke of Wellington’s Beerhouses Act of 1830.

After the Iron Duke died in 1852, it was renamed the Waterloo Tavern which it remained until it closed and was cleared in 1919. When the picture was taken, the long-standing landlord was William Gardener.

Opposite, almost out of sight in the photo, stood the Quiet Woman at Brook Walk/8 Ford Street, established at the same time as the Apollo but swept away by the GNR in 1876. The little shop off the end of the view up Brook Walk was clothes dealer John Dickerson’s shop.

Today, almost nothing that Keene’s camera saw is visible. All that remains is the odd alignment of the long-demolished cottages and that of the original Brook Walk towards Ford Street.

Now the brook dives into a sluice protected culvert to the right, which takes it all the way under the city to the Derwent outfall. This part, and the suitably tall protective railings, were all done in 1932 in the wake of the great flood of May 22 that year.

The railway arches went in 1987, leaving a grassed and rather fly-blown open space, and Ford Street, widened in 1937-38 was again widened to form part of the inner ring road in 1967-68.

With so much gone, one can now see all the way across to what remains of the 1820 Cavendish Street gas works, although the surviving buildings are a lot later, all converted into some kind of “fun factory”.

The tower of Derby Cathedral now peeps coyly over the gasworks roofs but the view of it is soon to be compromised by yet another hideous new development, the steel work for which is even now looming over the entire scene.

The whole scene is so drastically changed that it makes the survival of the photograph all the more valuable. It makes you wonder how many more obscure Keene prints or glass plate negatives are lying around undiscovered in the attics of people whose ancestors lived in Derby at the time!

• After 130 years, Mick-Mack line could be ready for a comeback
• Artists With Derbyshire Connections

FEEDBACK

Did you enjoy this article? If so, why not comment on it? Perhaps you disagree with something in it, or you know something the writer doesn't and can add some extra facts. You may want to ask a question about this article. Making a contribution is easy - either click 'edit' to insert more information or 'discussion' and then 'add comment.' This is your site. Please feel free to use it to the full and share your memories, thoughts and knowledge about Derbyshire with others.

If there is no 'edit' link showing it means the article has either previously been published in the Derby Evening Telegraph, or it has been protected by the site administrator and cannot be edited.'

County:  Derbyshire

Return to Image:Brook walk.jpg