Heanor & District Local History Society

September 2016

(Last updated on 11 May 2016)

News (for general introduction, see below)

It’s September, so that means a new season for the history society! We look forward to seeing you at our next meeting, on Tuesday  13 September, at 7.30pm, when Brian Key and Frank Bacon will give a talk on Forty Years of Shipley Country Park. It would be really great to see some new visitors, as well our regular members. You don’t have to join to come along (though we hope you will!), and admission is free. You can see details of all this coming year’s talk on the Programme.

Please don’t forget our Questionnaires which can be downloaded from our “We want your memories” feature. We now added the two most recent questionnaires, one asking for your recollections of visiting the doctor in times gone past, and the other wanting to know about local recreation grounds. To date, we have compiled two large supplements from these questionnaires - more are planned as soon as we get sufficient returned forms to fill around 12 pages. Thanks to all those who have helped so far.

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.

© 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.

In the eleven years that this site has been on the world wide web, over 420,000 visits have been made, with over 900,000 page-views. Not bad for a site covering a small market town in Derbyshire! A number of emails are received each month - some are dealt with very quickly, others need a bit of time to think about!

But please get in touch if there is anything that you feel you can add.

We are always keen to hear people’s memories of Heanor - just send us a few notes and who knows, it could develop into a whole new page on the website, or an article in one of our newsletters.

Then and Now (Part One) - The Changing Face of Heanor Town Centre  is available from the Society and from a number of local stockists. We have started working on Part Two!

In case you missed it, there was a short article broadcast on BBC Radio Derby in November about the renaming of the King of Prussia pub - you can listen to it by following the link.

On the slideshow below, you can click on any of the photographs for a larger image.

Entrance to all all our meetings is free - we will, of course, try to persuade to to become a member, or to buy a raffle ticket, but there is no commitment - everybody is welcome!

If you haven’t yet seen them, there have been a number of new pages in the last year - Heanor from Above, Marlpool Cemetery, the Suffragette movement, Mapperley village, and also several questionnaires asking for your own memories of the area.

Please let us know of any subjects you would like to see us cover - better still, send us an article, or just a few brief notes, and we will see whether we can turn this into an item for the website.

Our latest book is now available!

Then and Now (Part Two): The Changing Face of Langley Mill and Aldercar was published on 23 April 2016.

Priced just £6.00, the book has 40 pages of old and new photographs, taken, wherever possible, from the same location.

For more details, and to order direct from the Society, follow this link.

Alternatively, it is available locally from:

• Basilia, Cromford Road, Langley Mill
• Frosts, Market Street, Heanor
• Shipley Garden Centre