About the project
Location: Derbyshire
Melbourne, in South Derbyshire, is an attractive and prospering little town. Walking round the streets today, its appearance does not suggest a slum clearance problem in the past. However, between c1957 and c1972 over 160 houses were demolished there under slum clearance measures, and whole streets were flattened. Melbourne was said at that time to have the worst slum problem in the district.
The LHI funded study has looked at the main areas of clearance in turn, building up a picture of how each cleared area came to be built in the first place, what it looked like, what it was like to live in, and how it came to be destroyed. Many of the clearance areas have a common theme, being developed in connection with the growth of Melbourne in the Industrial Revolution during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Blanch Croft, a targeted clearance area which happily survived, is also included in the study as a living illustration of the type of development that was lost.
Our study also aims to show that in some respects "slums" were in the eye of the beholder. Many of the properties condemned as slums in the past would today be cherished pieces of real estate. Higgledy-piggledy houses reached by narrow paths, or awkwardly arranged on narrow streets, are today regarded as charming rather than as nuisances to be removed.
Occasionally, large and respectable houses were demolished simply because they were in the way. One of these, a handsome townhouse of c1780 on New Yard, was demolished because it occupied a large area of valuable land within a large clearance area. This house was built by Mrs. Sarah Lester and given as a generous present to her nephew, who lived there for 35 years.
We have focused in on a few particular characters and events that bring Melbourne's past alive. Thomas Cook the travel agent was born in 1808 in a tiny cottage on Quick Close, demolished in 1967. At the bottom of Quick Close, in another tiny cottage, a Melbourne butcher brutally murdered his wife in 1885, her body being discovered the next morning by a passing rag and bone collector. Nearby, on Blanch Croft, Melbourne's leading industrialist William Haimes was buried in 1854. He fostered the creation of one of Samuel Wilderspin's pioneering infants' schools in Melbourne during the 1820s, where children were to be taught with empathy and understanding in line with principles well ahead of their time.
Our project report is a very extensive piece of work, drawing on a great deal of original research by group members, supplemented with photographs and interviews. Before the writing-up stage, the Group exhibited the early findings of the project several times to an enthusiastic and appreciative local audience. As a spin-off, the Group has commissioned a memorial to Thomas Cook on the exact site of his birthplace, funded in part by the National Forest Company's "landscapes" project, and due to be installed later in 2006.
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