Listed Building record MDR10415 - 3-16 Brick Row, Darley Abbey, Derby

Boar's Head Cotton Mill Complex and Associated Housing, Darley Abbey. Thomas Evans began the mill building programme in 1782, and in order to attract an adequate work force to his new enterprise he created a new village, complete with school and other amenities. The Workers Housing: the three storey brick terrace, nos 3-16 Brick Row, was built in 1797-1800 and incorporates the first schoolroom for the village on the third floor. No 16 at the north end of the row functioned as the lodge for Darley House. (1) It has been suggested that the production of bricks for Evans' Darley Abbey Mills [SDR 18955] complex exploited a local outcrop of Mercia Mudstone, and specifically created the hollow which now accommodates Brick Row and rentals refer to houses in the brickyard. (2) Nos. 3 to 16 Brick Row were built by the Evans family in two phases between 1797 and 1800. The first phase was of five houses and a school-room and the second of eight houses and a school-room. They are a range of 3 storey, brick built, slate roofed terraced mill workers houses formerly incorporating two school-rooms at second floor level. They were altered in the 1820s when the adjacent school was built. There are generally segmental brick-arched lintels to the openings except at the former second floor school-rooms and at No 16. Most of the windows and doors in the Row have been altered, but a few houses retain early cast-iron casements set into larger wooden-paned frames, for example at No. 11 front and rear. The former school-rooms have king-post roof trusses to create a clear space but are now subdivided with brick party walls. The extent of school-rooms on the second floor can be identified by differences in fenestration above houses that are now numbered 6 to 12 Brick Row, and they were served by a former dedicated entrance in the centre of the terraces ground floor. No 16, the house at the northern end of the Row, is a stuccoed building with a stone base and functioned as the lodge for Darley House whose main drive was opposite and its entrance door was repositioned from the main terrace frontage to the side when the single storey end bay was added and the elevations stuccoed c. 1820s. There is a row of largely intact privies across the passage to the rear. The Row is of considerable historic interest as an early example of the provision of custom-built educational facilities by a mill-owner for his workforce. The Evans family had earlier provided a school-room in the attic of Long Mill. (3)