Chasing down the mystery ……. walks in the Lea Woods ….. no. 1

Take one holiday home which clearly has heaps of history possibly back to old King George 111, throw in a wall and a ruined fireplace in the lane opposite and here is a bit of mystery well worth looking into.

Bits of the holiday home, 2024

The holiday home was one of those grey Derbyshire stone buildings set on three floors with a modern extension facing the Lea Brook just outside Cromford.

Forgotten fireplace, 2024

The wall juts out from the side of the house and still has two large stone iron hinges along with a hole to accommodate a lintel while opposite there is the remains of a fireplace.

All of which suggests that our holiday let was once part of a bigger structure which stretched across the lane and incorporated the fireplace.

But as ever the devil is in the detail and maps going back to the late 1870s show no such structure.  Instead in 1879 there is a suggestion that it did extend ever so slightly into the lane, but that is it.

As for the fireplace that might have been part of a series of out buildings which formed a large complex which had been a hat works but by the time the OS staff had surveyed the area in 1879 it had become disused.

And by the 1920s while elements of the former hat works remained in situ, the building that might have housed our fireplace had gone. 

Although the 1924 OS and later 1938 map show that the holiday home retained what I guess was a smaller addition. *

Lea Brook, 1896

So, the mystery as yet is still a mystery.

My directories for the area start and finish either side of the start of the 19th century, and the earliest map from National Library of Scotland date from 1879.

More of the holiday home, 2024

If I lived closed to Cromford I could search out the local studies centre, and appeal to the history association, but that for now is it.

But I have the census returns for the 19th and early 20 centuries which with time will lead to the residents of our holiday home, and perhaps more.

And just after I posted my old chum Bill Summers drew attention to the wo pictures of the house commenting on the the wall with the chimney pot, and I realized that I hadn't included the end wall with the iron brackets and lintel hole.

Now, given that the iron brackets aren't easy to see, I left it out but here it is with the hole that once would have been occupied by a lintel.

Leaving me just tp wait for someone from Cromford with access to the archives.

Location; Lea Bridge, Cromford

Pictures; of our holiday home, 2024, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and detail of the OS Map, 1896 from courtesy of Digital Archives, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

The wall with the lintel hole, 2024

*National Library of Scotland,  https://maps.nls.uk/view/101601063