The lane we know today as Little Morton Road was often called ‘Pilsley Lane’ and ‘Pilsley Road’ in the nineteenth century, but came to be known officially as ‘Little Morton Road’ from the cottages here, which were in a detached part of Morton parish, and called ‘Little Morton’. There are several detached parts of Morton parish in North Wingfield, paying their tithes to Morton, and listed on the Morton census returns.
Little Morton Road runs north-west to south-east from the junction by the Gate Inn at North Wingfield, down to Locko Brook, a fall of about 90 feet (27.5m). At Locko Brook it meets Church Lane and Parkhouse Road.
The tithe map below (1843) shows one farm, Little Morton Farm, a row of cottages ‘in Morton’ referred to on later maps as ‘Little Morton’ with a stable opposite, and another settlement at the southern end of the road, later called Lockobrook Cottages.
At the top of Little Morton Road stands a guidepost, said to be made from the the remains of an medieval cross. It was probably made into a guide post at the beginning of the eighteenth century, following the ‘Act for Enlarging Common Highways’ (1697) which required a stone or post to be erected where highways crossed, indicating the name of the next market town. Mr W.A. Taylor of St Lawrence (now 47 St Lawrence Road) restored the guide post in 1932.
Our walk starts by the Gate Inn, now more than 200 years old. The building was purchased from Mr Edward Brocksopp by Mr Francis Clay in 1814, when it was a ‘newly erected house’. After Mr Clay’s death in 1829 it was purchased by Mr John Hole, and by 1834, when his son inherited the property, it was a freehold house with 3 acres of land on Little Morton Road called Green Croft. By 1846 the building was a beer-house, and it remains a public house to this day, though it is currently closed due to building work.
Behind the public house, on what is now the car park, stood a terrace of four cottages called ‘Brampton Row’ or ‘Brampton Cottages’ built by Brampton Brewery. The row first appears on the map of 1900, and I’m told these cottages were two up and two down, with back kitchens. The row was demolished circa 1971, but part of the front wall still remains, and shows traces of the gateways. The cottages were later numbered 2, 4, 6 and 8 Little Morton Road, and even though they have gone, today the existing houses on the right hand side of the road start at number 10.
On the left hand side of the road, number 5, The Glebe, was built on the old Glebe Patch in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The house was used as the Rectory from 1957 when Rev. Joyce became rector, until the present rectory was built near the church.
The Glebe, once used as the Rectory, and the stone posts marking the site of the pinfold.
The Pinfold
On the tithe map, the road widens in front of The Glebe, and the village pinfold was situated here, occupying 2 perches of land. The internet tells me this was about 10 square metres. Today two stone posts mark the spot, now a grassed area. Most villages would have had a pinfold, used to hold stray animals, but it is rare today to find such reminders of a village’s agricultural past.
Housing Development
Today, walking down the hill, houses and bungalows line most of the road, though there are good views of surrounding farmland, and views across the valley to Parkhouse Road. Maps tell the story of the gradual ribbon development on Little Morton Road in the twentieth century.
Little Morton Road remained undeveloped for many years, and most of the houses along it date from the mid twentieth century. By 1938, there were only some half a dozen houses at the top of Little Morton Road, near Brampton Row, and no more houses were built along the road down to Little Morton Farm. The 1921 Ordnance Survey map shows little had changed from tithe map eighty years earlier. By 1967 more houses had been built, and the cottages at Locko Brook and Little Morton had been demolished.
OS 1 970 1:2500.Most of houses along the road down to the farm were built in the second half of the twentieth century, and with infill building side roads appeared. By 1970 Fairfield Drive had been built. Chatsworth Drive and the Elvaston Road estate were built in the 1970s. The bungalows behind number 24 were built in the 1980s.
OS 1970 1:2500 showing the southern end of Little Morton Road. A bungalow and two pairs of semi detached houses, bottom left, with long, narrow plots turned at an angle of 45 degrees were built on the site of Little Morton.
Little Morton Farm
In 1843 Little Morton Farm was owned by Mr John Clay and occupied by Mr James Taylor. By the end of the nineteenth century Mr James Holmes, and then his widow Mrs Eliza Holmes farmed here, and after Mrs Holmes’s death in 1895 her son John was listed as the farmer. In the twentieth century Mr William Woodward (d.1930) had the farm, and after him Mr Robert Sharpe (d.1937) and his family. It is still a working farm today, and pictures and more information about Little Morton Farm can be found on their website https://www.littlemortonfarm.co.uk/the-farm/index
Circa 2018 – 2019 an application was made for planning permission to build a large housing estate (up to 265 dwellings) on land to the rear of Little Morton Farm. After many objections, an appeal and an inquiry, permission was eventually refused. It was observed that the fields, some of which were called ‘Hilly Lands’, were one of the last remaining areas of remnant medieval strip fields around North Wingfield.
Little Morton
The cottages ‘in Morton’ which gave the road its name, were roughly half way down on the right hand side. The cottages were once owned by Mr John Hole, and some were described as newly built in 1846. By his will (made in 1834) Mr Hole left his property in North Wingfield to one of his sons. This included the Gate Inn, and “5 houses and gardens called Little Morton” with a small house at the end of this row which his widow was to live in rent free. On the 1841 census the row had 26 inhabitants.
In 1876 Mr Francis Hole sold the 6 cottages at Little Morton to Mr Edwin (sometimes Edward) Eyre. Mr Eyre’s estate was sold in 1906, including 5 cottages at Little Morton. By 1922 the cottages, then numbered 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 Little Morton Road, were dilapidated, and they were demolished a few years later. Today two pairs of semi-detached houses and a bungalow are on this site
Little Morton 2021, and plan of the cottages on the site in 1906.
Lockobrook Cottages
There was another row of cottages at the bottom of Little Morton Road known as Lockobrook Cottages, not to be confused with the row also known by this name at the bottom of Church Lane, which is still standing. On the tithe map of 1843 the dwellings on Little Morton Road were owned by the Chesterfield solicitor Mr William Drabble junior, and occupied by Mr Richard Roper and Mr William Hopkinson. These cottages came into the possession of Mr Joseph Bright (who inherited Drabble land by his marriage), and at the sale of his estate in 1918 they were described as “stone built, with blue slate roofs” and were numbered 11, 12, 13 and 14 Little Morton Road. Number 11 was slightly larger than the others and had four bedrooms, 12 and 14 had two bedrooms and 13 had three.
Lockobrook Cottages were subsequently purchased by a builder named Mr Tomlinson, and by 1937 when the cottages were the subject of a clearance order, one of the Tomlinson family was living there. The occupants objected to the demolition of their homes, but it was ruled that these properties were unfit for human habitation. A brick wall survives today (pictured below) which may have been a boundary wall or outbuilding to one of these cottages.
I conclude the walk with a newspaper cutting about excavators living in this area in 1860.
North Wingfield 
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