Jane James from Derby’s Local Studies Library, takes a stroll down a Derby road, once home to some of the town’s most successful businessmen and politicians.

THE city is full of buildings of architectural and historical interest. One group stand on the Osmaston Road between Reginald Street and Grange Street.

They began life as Victorian villas for Derby industrialists and the majority are now locally listed. By referring to maps, trade directories and census, it is possible to date the development of the properties and identify their occupiers.

The use of ratebooks enables the owners to be identified and sales catalogues and newspaper advertisements provide additional details. If the deeds and building plans have survived more information is at hand.

The tithe map tells us the land occupied by these houses was part of Saxelbye’s Close in 1847; owned by the executors of Francis Severne, a manufacturing jeweller.

The land was offered for sale and, by 1851, Robert Dyche was living at what is now La Gondola – 220 Osmaston Road – but which he, as a timber merchant, appropriately named Wood Ville.

He was succeeded by his son-in-law Edward Bemrose of the printing family.

Next door, at Ashtree House, lived members of the Severne family. Their family home had been Field House, on the opposite side of Osmaston Road, built by Frances in the 1820s from the profits of his jewellery business, but, by 1841, occupied by Henry Boden.

By the late 1870s Ashtree House was the home of the Midland Railway Company accountant William Hodges.

The neighbours, at Saxelbye House – named after the field, which in turn was named after a Derby grocer who had owned it at one time – were William Brunt, a woollen draper and tailor and, from the 1870s, Miss Jane Heald.

When the house was sold in 1904 it was described as having a library, drawing room, dining room, four bedrooms and a dressing room, two kitchens, a servant’s bedroom and dressing room, bathroom, wash house and a chamber over the coach house; the latter containing a landau by Holmes.

Elm Villa, now the Engineers’ Club, was also developed in the mid-1850s and was owned, until his death in 1896, by George Holme, the elastic web and boot manufacturer.

Mr Holme was mayor of Derby in 1874, and introduced elastic web-weaving by power looms into Derby, working from the Bath Street Mills.

The remaining houses, Grove Villas, comprise two sets of semi-detached villas, described in 1852 as newly erected and spacious. Their most famous occupants were Thomas Roe, timber merchant, mayor of Derby and later his son, Thomas jnr MP and later Lord Roe, Sir John Smith, the brassfounder, George Unsworth, silk manufacturer and the company secretary of the Midland Railway.

Next time you are passing, pause and take a closer look. This was once the place to live if you were successful in business and civic affairs.

If you would like to learn more about how to unearth the history of a building or neighbourhood we will be running two courses from March at the Local Studies Library entitled An Introduction to House History and An Introduction to Local History. For details telephone 01332 255393 or call into the library at 25b Iron Gate.

• Osmaston Road Derby: Road was home to rich and famous
• Road was home to rich and famous

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This article is from the Derby Evening Telegraph and is reproduced online here.

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