A look at the course of the Rother from Pilsley to Coney Green.
The Rise in Pilsley Fields
Maps show the River Rother rising at Pilsley, in fields just to the north west of St Mary’s church. The stream runs westward down through Padley Wood. A hundred years ago, it was said that in summer the stream ran dry here, but unfortunately settlement in Pilsley soon caused it to run with waste water and sewage instead. Chesterfield Rural District Council put a sewage farm on the river here, which contributed to the pollution of the river.
Padley Wood
The Rother flows west through Padley Wood, with a chalybeate well marked on its course (maps 1884, 1900, 1921 and 1949). Chalybeate waters containing salts of iron, are usually orange-brown in colour.
“The chalybeate (containing salts of iron) water at Tibshelf… About a century ago it was much valued, and drank throughout the summer season. But it does not appear to be now in any repute.” – J. Pilkington. A view of the present state of Derbyshire, 1789.
The Railway and Clay Cross No.7 pit
After Padley Wood, the Rother turns north, and takes a northerly course of almost 27 miles towards Chesterfield, Sheffield and Rotherham, where it joins the River Don. The river valley here became part of the route taken by the Erewash Valley Branch of the Midland Railway.
The branch line was proposed and partly built in the 1840s, but the branch line did not reach Clay Cross station (at Tupton) until 1862. At a half-yearly meeting of the Midland Railway Company in February 1862 it was reported that the work on the line was “very fairly accomplished, and that it would be opened in the course of a few weeks”. Considering that the line had been projected in 1846, one man asked what “a few weeks meant?” provoking some laughter. (Nottinghamshire Guardian 21 February 1862)
Dr Peck, the Medical Officer of Chesterfield RDC reported in 1901 that “After passing through the wood, [the Rother] reaches a refuse tip connected with the Midland Railway, at which point the brook has been temporarily dammed during its diversion in connection with the widening of the main line. Below the dam the volume of water gradually increases, and presents a clear and fairly pure appearance until Clay Cross is reached, where it is joined by the sewage of Danesmoor (from another sewage farm), when it at once assumes a foul aspect.” He also said that coal washings from Clay Cross Company’s no.7 pit also occasionally entered the brook here. (Derbyshire Times Sat 9 Nov 1901)
Millholm Plantation
The area now called Millholm plantation was once the site of two dams which possibly date back to the Medieval period. The larger of the dams covered 11 acres. There was a furnace here in the seventeenth century, powered from a wheel on the mill leet. This is shown on a map dated 1621 drawn by William Senior, called ‘The Platt of Parkhall belonging to the right worshipful Sir Francis Leake, Knight and Barronet’ (DRO D5375/34/9/1).
It is not known when the dams were drained, but from the newspaper notice below we know that there was still a dam here in 1758, and there was a corn mill here in 1762 (Burdett’s map). The dams had completely disappeared by 1841, and it has been suggested by historian George Griffin that the dams were eventually filled in by spoil from the railway cutting.
“William Senior’s map of 1621 shows ‘Upper Dam’ and ‘The Nether Dam’ ponds to the south of the furnace, with a leat running from The Nether Dam to the furnace complex. There is also a water wheel shown at the furnace. By the plan of 1841, ‘The Nether Pond’ is largely woodland named ‘Pond Plantation’. By the first edition 25″ OS map of c. 1880, this plantation is known as ‘Millholm Plantation’. There are earthwork features marked on this map that are likely to relate to the former mill pond, dam and leat. By the time of Burdett’s map of 1762-7 the site had become a cornmill. The blast furnace may have been the source of slag encountered during the building of nearby Park House Colliery in 1867. Much of the area around the furnace has been completely altered by opencast coal working but the site of the furnace itself, where there are slight surface irregularities, does not appear to have been affected by subsequent building, mining or other activities. By the end of the 19th century the site is known as ‘Hagghill Farm.” – The Derbyshire Historic Environment Record
Coney Green Farm
The Rother meets the Locko Brook just to the east of Coney Green Farm. This property was built by moving Coney Green House from the north side of the A6175 (called Wingfield Lane on some maps).
Coney Green House was the home of the prosperous Brailsford family in the sixteenth century. In 1774 it was advertised for sale as a ‘capital messuage’ suitable for a gentleman’s family, with 110 acres of land. In the late eighteenth century Thomas Wilson, whose family lived in Pilsley, made his fortune trading commodities and slaves between England, America and the West Indies. His brother Henry died in Demerara in 1797. He purchased Coney Green House in 1799 for £4,000.
In 1873 Clay Cross Company purchased the house from the Wilson family, and it became the home of their farm bailiff. Much of the land was used for tipping slag and refuse from pits no.s 2 and 3. In 1890 it was dismantled and moved across the road to its present site. In the process it was converted into two dwellings, and two old date stones of 1681 and 1810 were incorporated into the new building. The Clay Cross Company retained and continued to operate the farm after their coal interests were nationalised in 1947. The company sold their retail milk round and two milk vans in April 1951 for £2,300.
-Information on Coney Green from: R.F. Childs, Coney Green Farm IN The Rocket (January 1967), no.6, p.8 ; Clay Cross Company. Over a Hundred Years of Enterprise: Centenary and Supplement of Clay Cross Company Ltd 1837-1959 (1959), 23-24.; Cliff Williams. Clay Cross Community and Company (1997).
North Wingfield Nature Reserve
Here, the course of the river has been straightened and runs along the side of the railway line to the bottom of Church Hill. The Nature Reserve, a mixture of grass and wetland, is managed by Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, and in recent years they have restored a meander to provide a habitat for water voles.
Coney Green House circa 1885 with the Clay Cross Company’s farm bailiff Mr Haynes.
And Finally…
River names can be ancient, as they were important features in the landscape, and would have been named by our ancestors long before tribes migrated across the continent. There are many explanations of the name ‘Rother’ so it is impossible to be certain, but the English Place Name Society suggests that its name comes from the ancient British, and means ‘great water’ or even ‘red water’.
From 2009- 2019 the Environment Agency designated the quality of the river from its source to Redleadmill Brook (10.1km downstream) at Tupton as ‘poor’.
North Wingfield 
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