The Lost Houses of Derbyshire : Coney Green House – North Wingfield
The name Brailsford is a common one in Derbyshire (not to mention elsewhere), and received added lustre through the knighthood granted to Shardlow-born Sir Dave Brailsford in 2012 for services to cycling (notably Olympic cycling).
As Brailsford is an unique place-name, it is generally accepted that all people of this name descend from the ancient knightly family of that name, who descend from Elfin (otherwise Aelfwine or Elsinus) de Brailsford, a man of Anglo-Saxon ancestry who, unusually, held the manor of Brailsford when Domesday Book was compiled in 1086. Fortunately, they are well documented, even in this early period, so we know much about the younger sons and their posterity. Eventually, Brailsford passed from the family with the death without male issue of Sir Henry Brailsford in 1356 when the estate passed through his daughter Joanna to Sir John Basset of Cheadle and from the Bassets eventually to the Shirleys.
Robert de Brailsford, second son of Nicholas, Aelfwine’s son, called himself de Wingerworth, having inherited through marriage an estate there and other land in the area including North Wingfield. Sir Engenulf de Brailsford, a great-grandson of this Robert was living in 1232 and 1259 and left two sons, of whom, the elder William, was granted house and land at Tupton (probably Egstow) and other land at North Wingfield by Sir Henry, the last of Brailsford, and with his wife Agnes he settled there.
His posterity acquired an estate at Seanor two miles to the east (nothing seems to remain of the house) and members of the family are found at Little Brailsford in North Wingfield, and The Hill there. Thomas Brailsford of Seanor married Penelope, daughter and heiress of John Clay of Crich and their third son, Thomas is described as being ‘of Coneygree’ in a list of freeholders of 1633. His son of the same name, a doctor, later sold Seanor and settled at Coney Green (as the name later became). He was assessed for hearth tax on a substantial seven hearths in 1670, and in 1681 (if we are to believe the record of a datestone from the house) rebuilt the house, dying in 1720.
The next we hear of the house is a notice in the Derby Mercury for 31st July 1772 for its sale by Francis Brailsford with an estate of 110 acres, its ‘grounds within a ring fence and coal under the greater part of the premises.’ The buyer, probably keen to invest in mining, was Thomas Fanshaw of Brough, but clearly his plans came to nought – perhaps he couldn’t raise the necessary finance to start mining – and two years later the house and estate ‘convenient for a gentleman’s family’ was again sold, this time to Thomas Wilson, who paid £4,000 for both Coney Green Hall and Pilsley Old Hall (on which watch this space!)
Wilson was a member of an old-established local family, and was already a coal-owner, so we may be confident that he was well funded in his endeavour. It was, without doubt Wilson who re-fronted Dr. Brailsford’s old house, with a classical façade of locally quarried and ashlared coal measures sandstone, probably the seam known as Top Hard Rock – much sought after for building. The result was a slightly bizarre mix of Palladian with Baroque overtones, and was probably composed by a local builder using a pattern-book. There must have been some ornate pleasure grounds surrounding the house too, for a pair of lakes in a small park-like enclosure still remained according the 6 inch OS map surveyed in 1878. There was also a courtyard surrounded on three sides by farm buildings to the SW of the house, too.
As we only have one image of the house (a photograph dated 1883) it is impossible to assess how much of Dr. Brailsford’s house remained, but the likelihood is that most of it did. The new façade was of five bays, a particularly wide central one breaking forward slightly with rusticated quoins at the angles under a modillion cornice and plain parapet. This probably fronted a set of spacious new rooms flanking a notably wide hall, a fact that can be deduced from the width of the central bay of the house. The thoroughly wayward entrance is tripartite, with the door’s fanlight rising through an open pediment (very Palladian and out of date by 1774) but both that and the sidelights were embellished with rusticated surrounds best known as Gibbs surrounds, after the Baroque architect James Gibbs who first used them, and which can be seen on Derby Cathedral, which he designed in 1723. Above that is a Serlian (‘Venetian’) window matching the entrance in width, but strangely plain after the bravura treatment of the doorcase below. Otherwise, the fenestration is notably plain except for discreet key-blocks.
The only architect operating locally who made much use of Gibbs surrounds was Edmund Stanley of Chesterfield, who used them in 1754 on the entrance of Lea Hall, but this is a much more disciplined piece of architecture. Working with Joseph Pickford at Ogston Hall just over a decade later, and in Palladian mode, seems to have cured him of this sort of thing in any case, hence the suggestion that we are looking at the work of a local builder cherry-picking things from a builder’s pattern book.
One suspects that the hall was quite a grand affair and it probably had a columned screen on its far side with Dr. Brailsford’s Restoration staircase rising behind. This would explain why Wilson’s homonymous son decided to further rebuild the house in 1811 which feat he marked with a second datestone which read:
At this remove one can have little idea as to what Thomas, junior had done, but it probably involved ‘modernising’ the rear range. Either way, he retained the 1681 date stone in the fabric.
By 1827, the house had passed to his son William and by 1843 his brother Thomas Wilson III had the house, and the demesne was well disfigured by coal mines, notably those sunk by the Wingerworth Coal Company. At this time, a third brother, Richard Wilson, was living in another lost house, Pilsley Old Hall, essentially on part of the estate.
The house, mines and estate were sold by Thomas III’s son George Banks Wilson in 1873 along with the Wingerworth Coal Company’s mines to the Clay Cross Company. This was to provide space to expand their works which lay immediately to the west of the house and to dump slag and tip waste: an ignominious end to what was once a neat and modest agricultural estate. In 1883 the house was the residence of the Company’s local agent, John Ward and his family, who were photographed standing outside the rather forlorn looking house which shows signs of suffering from mining subsidence, too.
Therefore, it will occasion little surprise to learn that in April 1890, the Clay Cross Company unceremoniously demolished the house and cleared the site, replacing it with a modest house across the road (also now vanished). Today the Clay Cross Company’s huge site is but a memory and the ground has been reclaimed, leaving no trace of the house, the position of which is marked by the north western angle of the junction of Market Street and Howe Grove where a new housing estate is being built on the reclaimed and de-contaminated site.
Somewhere under the low mound of reclaimed spoil at the junction, the last vestiges of this interesting and eccentric house may still lie.
