WWII: Rich mixture of waste land and rural beauty

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Regular Bygones correspondent Stuart Haywood has published a book about his memories of people, places and events in and around his South Derbyshire home of Newhall, some of them going back almost 70 years. The book, Rich Mixture, is based on articles previously published in Bygones and our monthly heritage magazine YesterdayToday. Here, Stuart describes his 1930s-40s boyhood.

I WAS a young boy during and just after the Second World War and lived in Wood Lane, Newhall, on the northern fringes of the village. In this area we had fields in which to play and woods to roam.

At the top of our lane was Bretby Park, which surrounded Bretby Hall. This had been the ancestral home of the Earls of Chesterfield until the estate was broken up by the 5th Earl of Carnarvon. He had acquired it on the death of the 7th Earl of Chesterfield, who was without issue, in 1871.

The 500 acres of woodland provided a wonderful playground for a lad to explore. My first memory of the park is of trees to the south being cleared and the land being reclaimed for agricultural use to help the war effort.

This work was carried out by Italian prisoners of war. Although a considerable area was cleared, there were still large tracts of woodland untouched.

In season, there were sweet chestnuts and conkers to be collected for their respective uses. One of my favourite fruits of thepark were the pignuts which I dug up with my penknife to eat and enjoy their nutty flavour. There was also plenty of firewood to collect to help keep the “home fires burning”.

As I got older, I enjoyed walks with my friends through the park to Bretby village or Hartshorne. We would pass the first two artificial lakes created in the late 17th century by damming a stream. The lakes were part of the great design to beautify the park and create a lavish garden around the mansion.

We would pass the hall on one side of the road and, on the other, was a new block of buildings where very often we would see people in their beds outside on a paved area.

The hall had been taken over in 1926 and turned into a hospital for children with TB, which was a scourge in those days. The building was later made into an orthopaedic hospital. My mother was a patient in the hall in 1975 when she was treated for an arthritic condition.

If we were making for Hartshorne, we would pass over the impressive gallops laid out in the mid-19th century by the 6th Earl.

Bracken had been introduced into the park in the 1860s by the 7th Earl as cover for the game. I liked to run through it in the autumn when it was dying down. It was taller than me so I did not know exactly where I would emerge.

It was on the slope just off the main road (A511) that I learned to ride my bicycle. The long wall along the main road disappeared under snow for several weeks in the winter of 1947. We would walk over the drifts along the road and no evidence of the wall could be seen.

My favourite picnic spot was Eureka Park in Swadlincote. There were frequent attractions to attend, such as gymkhanas. There was also the occasional athletics meeting, parades and galas. The galas would feature concert parties with mainly young girls singing and dancing with, perhaps, the support of a comedian or ventriloquist. Some of the acts were very good... but some were dreadful.

Close to the pit bank was a first-class bowling green and just around the corner, a diamond-shaped paddling pool. On a warm summer day, the pool would be full of happy, laughing children, splashing about and thoroughly enjoying themselves.

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