Building record MDR13928 - The Knoll, No. 159 Duffield Road, Derby

Large villa in Italianate style, built in 1876. Two storey plus belvedere. Yellow stock brick, hipped slate roofs, with modillion eaves. Ground floor, stone plinth, single storey canted bay window on the left, sliding sash windows in stone surrounds. Projecting entrance to the right, single storey with flat roof, two casements with fanlight under brick arches. Double string course above windows. On the first floor, three semi-circular headed windows in moulded stone surrounds. Stone eaves course. Belvedere with a semi-circular headed window and stone string course above. Second floor two semi-circular headed windows in stone surrounds linked at bay by an apron panel. Curtilage wall is rock faced gritstone with moulded stone copings. Built for Arthur R. Robinson, engineer and manager of the Mersey Wheel Works, Nottingham Road as Longlands, the name being kept by Henry Boden the silk manufacturer when he had it in the mid-1880s, but which was changed to The Knoll by Joseph Norton Hughes-Hallett, a lawyer who bought it in 1896. Charles Humphreys (1820-1879) may have been the architect. He was for many years the architect of choice of the Midland Railway and built exclusively in yellow brick, having an interest in the works where they were made in Lincolnshire. Robinson’s firm supplied the Midland Railway with wheels for their rolling stock. (1)