Building record MDR10489 - Littleover Old Hall, Littleover, Derby

Littleover Hall, rebuilt c.1600, and replaced in the 1890s. (1) Associated parkland SMR32348. Derbyshire Fire Service Head Quarters, Former Littleover Old Hall and Lodge. Arts-and-Crafts house of 1898 by Alexander MacPherson of Derby for Edward MacInnes, replacing a late Elizabethan house later reduced as a farm. Machine made brick, two storeys and attics, irregular with gables, some depressed into parapets. Fenestration consists of mullioned and transomed windows, with large conservatory built by Messenger of Loughborough; tall grouped stacks, slate roofs. Gate lodge in similar idiom, but half timbered. Spacious interior, galleried hallway and stairs, much light oak panelling and Neo-Jacobean ribbed ceilings, decorative cornicing and friezes. Gardens and pleasure grounds (now mainly built over) landscaped by William Barron & Son. Sold in 1934 to Harold Walker, a wall-paper manufacturer from London, with nearly 10 acres; gardens reduced by sale, but re-landscaped again by Barrons. During WW2 stables and outbuildings converted into a decontamination centre in anticipation of gas attacks. In 1954, house sold to Rolls-Royce as offices for the nuclear program; stable block replaced by new offices. Sold on collapse of Royce’s in 1971 to County Council as Fire HQ. Literature: Craven, M. & Stanley, M., The Derbyshire Country House, 3rd Edn., 2 Vols., (Ashbourne 2001) I. 136-137. (2) The present house is a largish 2 storey house in plain Jacobean taste erected in the 1890s. Its predecessor was a late 16th century house of considerable size, also in brick, remodelled piecemeal in the middle 18th century. No trace remains of the house built by Sir Richard Harpur. On the death of the last of this line, in 1754, the estate passed via a heiress to Samuel Heathcote of Derby. About 1890 the immediate estate and the Hall were sold by T. Bache Heathcote to a local business man, Edward MacInnes, who built the present house, although it was let after the first world war, Arthur Manners being there in the 1920s. MacInnes' heirs sold it to the County Council after the second world war, who converted it into the fire service headquarters. A Pretty timber-framed lodge remains to the north. (3)