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Heanor & District Local History Society

Welcome

(Last updated on 25 April 2024)

News (for general introduction, see below)

Only one more indoor meeting to go for the current season - Tuesday 14th May Dr James Wright will give a fascinating talk on “Myth-busting”. A professional archaeologist, Dr Wright will concentrate in this talk on debunking the myths about “secret tunnels” - just about every town and village seems to have such a story, including Heanor.

If anyone would like to explain just how (or why) you would dig a tunnel from Heanor Church to Codnor Castle (there’s rather a deep valley between them!), then please feel free to message us.

We have just published our programme for next season, which starts in September. There are a few VERY local topics, such as Heanor Cemetery, Shipley, the Market Place and William Gregg V.C., along with a look at the local impact of the major 1893 miners’ strike. We hope that the other topics will prove equally interesting.

As always, our meetings are free to attend - you don’t have to be a member. However, our newsletters are only free to members, and they alone are worth the membership fee.

Our monthly newsletters have changed a lot over the years. If you haven’t yet seen them the Newsletters 50th page, we have added downloadable copies of our first newsletter, in January 1970, and our 410th newsletter, from January 2020. Have a look at see what you think.

Email newsletters: If you enjoy these digital newsletters, why not subscribe to future editions? The cost is only £6.00 a year, which means that you get nine editions, monthly from September to May - you can do this easily by going to the Membership page. (You can, in fact, buy all 50+ years’ worth of newsletters, but this has to be done by a digital download - contact us for more information, or see the Newsletters 50th page for an order form).

© Except where otherwise stated, the contents of this website are copyright of the Heanor and District Local History Society. If you want to use anything you find here, please ask - the chances are we won't mind.

Where items have not been prepared by the Society itself, we would like to thank the owners of copyright of the images and items used on this site for granting us the necessary permissions for their use. In some cases, despite our best efforts we have not always been able to locate the copyright holders. If you believe that any rights that are yours have inadvertently been infringed, we would ask you to contact us and to accept our apologies.

The Society is a registered charity. We are non-profit making, and all money we receive is ploughed back into preserving and promoting the past of the Heanor area - this website, our Heritage Centre, our publications, talks and displays, are all examples of our work. If you would like to assist us, please leave us a donation, large or small, by clicking on the button above - all transactions are administered safely and securely by PayPal.

Please let us know of any subjects you would like to see us cover on the website - better still, send us an article, or just a few brief notes, and we will see whether we can turn this into a new article. Scanned photos of anything in the Heanor area are always of interest, but please try to obtain a high-resolution scan where possible.

Over the next couple of months, the website will be having a major revamp - it is possible that it will experience a bit of downtime while this happens, but we will still have our presence on Facebook.

We are also pleased to be working with Derbyshire County Council in developing a new display of local history topics in the town - more news on that shortly.

We have also been helping Amber Valley with a number of topics lately, and you will perhaps see these come to fruition soon.

Heanor (in case you are just browsing and don't actually know) is a market town in Derbyshire, England, very close to the border with Nottinghamshire. Not a major tourist area, but we are here to celebrate our history and heritage, which is as strong as anyone's!

In September 2006, research was published into the "most English" places in the country, based primarily on the analysis of names in the most recent census, which split the country's population into 200 ethnic groups. Heanor was declared the second-most English town in the country, after nearby Ripley, with almost 90% of the population being English in origin. Third came Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, and Boston in Lincolnshire came fourth. Whatever your views on what this means, at least it got the town's name mentioned!

We hope you will find our site both interesting and informative. We aim for the site to undergo regular changes - most pages stay the same, but new additions come along (we hope) quite often, and eventually some items will also disappear. So please keep coming back to see what changes we have made. If you've not visited for a while, have a look at the What's New page, where we keep a running log of changes made to the site.

The Society's interests extend well beyond this immediate area, and covers all the old Heanor Urban District Council area (including Langley Mill, Loscoe and Codnor), along with Shipley and Smalley.

The Britain from Above website contains a huge number of aerial photographs from the 1920s and 30s - this is just one taken in the Heanor area.

Using photos from that website, we have now created a Heanor from Above page.

Heanor Market Place, 1928

A coal wharf on the Cromford Canal at Langley Mill, dealing with coal brought down for transportation from Eastwood and Brinsley. Beggarlee was in operation until after the end of the Second World War.

Beggarlee Wharf

Coal and transport are two vital themes to the history of the area - it would be a very different place if there had been no coal here!

Finding old photographs (and by “old” we mean anything before 2000!) taken on side streets is never easy - most streets never featured on film, or if they did the photos have been lost. If you can help, please get in touch with the Society.

Jessop Street, Codnor

This photo, taken in the early 20th century, shows Jessop Street at Codnor, along with the Jessop Arms public house.

Did you know that the town’s fire station has been in four different locations over the years?

We are particularly keen to hear from anyone who has a photo of the fire station when it was at what is now the Wilmot Street Community Centre.

Here is a crew lined up for inspection on the Town Ground (date not known).

Heanor’s Fire Service

One of the biggest employers in Heanor, Morley’s was originally established in Sneinton, Nottingham around 1797 - the firm opened premises in Heanor in the 1860s. This aerial photo shows the north factory.

I & R Morley

We would like to hear from anyone who can tell us of their time working at Morley’s.

Heanor is no longer the shopping hub that it once was, and side street shops are almost all now gone.

But the shops of our past continue to hold a fascination for all, and we are always keen to receive copies of photographs taken of them.

Heanor’s Shops - Perrin’s Bakery

Here is a shot of Perrin’s Bakery, at the top of Market Street, taken in 1928.

Lying at the extreme edge of the History Society’s area, between Codnor Castle and Ironville, the pond in Foxholes Plantation has a rather eerie feel about it, even in the best of weather. A good walk in the summer though.

Foxholes Pond

The History Society covers all the area around Heanor, including Smalley, Shipley, Langley Mill, Loscoe and Codnor.

A theme park at Shipley, built on the site of the former Woodside Colliery, ran from 1987 to 2007.

The American Adventure

Even really recent history plays a part in the activities of the Society - the American Adventure theme park is now gone, with few signs that it was ever there.

Vic Hallams was a timber construction company, founded at Marlpool at the end of the First World War, before moving to Langley Mill after the Second World War.

Vic Hallams Ltd

In an area such as ours, much of the emphasis is on the now lost industrial history of the 19th and 20th centuries.