Thornhill House: Demolished Thornhill House was worth saving

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Developers this week set about demolishing 200-year-old Thornhill House, built for a former deputy lieutenant of Derbyshire and later part of Kingsway Hospital. Maxwell Craven looks at its history and architectural merit and states why he believes it was worthy of preservation.

THIS impressive Regency villa was built on an elevated site in the district of California, Derby, looking south but with an easterly vista across The Rowditch towards the town – a view which was later spoilt by the erection of two brickworks on the west side of the brook.

It is one of three such houses which were designed by the amateur architect, Alderman Richard Leaper (1759-1838); the other two being now listed Grade II.

Leaper was also a director of the family bank, receiver of customs for Derby, four times mayor of Derby and a partner in a tanning firm.

The client was Major John Trowell, of Long Eaton, a JP. His family had been considerable landowners since the Restoration.

Born in 1744, he made a deputy lieutenant of the county in the 1780s. In 1785, he was living in All Saints’ parish, Derby, and in 1787 became a major in the Derbyshire Volunteer Militia.

Later he moved to a house in the neighbouring parish of St Michael, where he was living when he married Dorothy Webster, daughter and sole heiress of William Woollatt, at St Werburgh, Derby, on September 27, 1792.

Woollatt was cotton pioneer Jedediah Strutt’s original partner and brother-in-law.

At the time Thornhill was commissioned, c1809, he was a tenant at Offcote Grove, near Ashbourne. But he never saw the house completed, dying before it was finished in 1821 at a cost of £7,000.

The builder was Derby mason and contractor Thomas Cooper. The money appears to have been in the form of a loan from Thomas Cox of 41 Friar Gate, also a banker. This was probably because the Major’s estate was still in probate.

The two-storey house was built in brick and originally rendered in Brookhouse’s Roman cement – manufactured locally in The Morledge, Derby, and grooved to resemble ashlar.

The main south front originally had six bays set under a wide, low-hipped roof and the ground-floor windows were carried down to terrace level. The east front had three bays and the front entrance was at the west with entry via a Tuscan portico.

Unfortunately, that was replaced later by a much larger brick affair.

The two substantial two- storey service wings originally had three bays and un-stuccoed brickwork, brick lintelled windows, dog- toothed eaves cornices etc.

The interior was relatively plain, partly because the flamboyant Major Trowell was but recently dead and his widow probably did not feel it appropriate to finish the interior in as bravura manner as her husband might have done himself.

The main dog-leg staircase from the hall was top-lit. The mahogany balustrade was supported on plain locally- made cast-iron balusters with generous spiral terminals.

In 1987 a number of chimneypieces in various local polished limestones were boxed in.

The parkland, originally nearly 100 acres, stretched from Rowditch Farm, along the Uttoxeter Turnpike to The Rowditch and east to the edge of Rowditch Place, then the seat of a branch of the Bateman family. As soon as the house was completed, however, it was reduced by the sale of the western edge to the Trustees of the Uttoxeter Turnpike.

The entrance was reached from Uttoxeter New Road at The Rowditch via Trowell’s Lane which had a neat contemporary brick lodge about half way along it, which survived until about 1930.

Miss Trowell refused to sell some land to the Corporation in 1873 to build an asylum, probably out of what we would call NIMBY-ism but on her death, around 1880, it passed to her nearest heir, Edward Strutt, 1st Lord Belper and he sold the Corporation the 24 acres it required.

He also sold more to the Trustees of the Derbyshire General Infirmary to build a temporary typhus hospital.

The house was subsequently sold to the Mosleys of Burnaston House – descendants of Sir John Parker Mosley, 1st Baronet, of Rolleston Hall, Staffordshire.

It eventually became the home of the eldest daughter of Ashton Nicholas Every Mosley – Isabella Ashton Mosley, who died there unmarried in July 1912. The family trustees finally sold it to the County Borough of Derby in 1924 so it could extend the Borough Lunatic Asylum.

Part of the park was also made available for the building of the Kingsway section of the Derby Arterial Road ( the present Ring Road) in 1930-31, following the extension of the Borough boundary in 1929. Hence, the renaming of the complex which became The Kingsway Hospital in 1938.

The hospital authorities at first envisaged using the house as a nurses’ home but, in 1929, it was converted, at a cost of £1,409, to house what were then referred to as “mental defectives”.

Within a decade, a lean-to timber conservatory was added, though it was recently removed.

Some time after the war, the huge replacement portico was built, there were additions to the service wing, the chimneys were removed and the boxed-in fireplaces uncovered or taken out.

The building was then re-rendered with grey pebble-dash, further detracting from its appearance.

In 1935, the building housed 40 female child patients under the care of the matron, Miss Kathleen McGrenery, and Dr. John Bain.

It was damaged by fire in May 1966 but required little more than extensive redecoration. It then became a day care centre but was later closed and boarded up.

Thornhill, despite the vicissitudes it suffered over the past 80 years, was still a splendid example of one of Alderman Leaper’s slightly quirky villas and retained a number of features typical of his work, notably the staircase.

It could have made a home of real distinction or spacious apartments. It was certainly a building eminently worthy of preservation.

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