Toponymy Only Draycott was listed in the
Domesday 1086 landholding survey as Draicot or Dry Cote which was thought to mean ‘dry place’. Wilne was first noted soon after in very late 11th century records and stood for ‘clearing in the willows’. It was alternatively later known as Little Wilne to help distinguish it from Great Wilne.
Parish and environment Prehistory to Victorian era and early economy The area has unearthed very few prehistoric and early history remains, such as a flint knife of
Late Neolithic or
Early Bronze Age origin (3000 BC to 1501 BC) found in topsoil in a field to the south-east of Draycott. Also in the same area, a Bronze Age cremation cemetery, found human remains dated to the period 1600 BC to 1001 BC. A Late Bronze Age sword which was found by a machine operator during gravel extraction during the later 20th century at Church Wilne. The present day A6005 road from Derby which branches off to Sawley is an old Roman road during that era (43 AD to 409 AD) from
Little Chester to the River Trent at Sawley which cannot be precisely dated but was probably built shortly after the establishment of a Roman fort at Little Chester during the 80s AD, and used by the Romans for efficient movement of soldiers, as well as to get Derbyshire lead to the Trent Lock area by the River Trent. and a church was recorded there in 822AD. The two churches were likely to have been Sawley and Church Wilne. The area at this time was held by the
Bishop of Lichfield (St Chad being an earlier archbishop) but was recorded in Domesday as the Bishop of Chester as the
diocese had briefly moved there during the period. It is thought that Draycott and Church Wilne by this time were one and the same and initially based by Church Wilne, Residual traces of earthworks close to the church were found in the late 1960s and middle 1970s as evidence of a
deserted medieval village, with possible medieval walls, foundations and pottery unearthed from the ploughed fields adjacent to the church, providing additional proof of extensive occupation. Great Wilne, across the River Derwent to the south, developed at a much later period, and was first recorded in the middle-late 13th century, although of the two Wilne communities ended up being the larger settlement. However, up to the Victorian period, journals recorded as many as 30 houses and a population of 140 in Wilne. It is possible water level issues throughout the Derwent floodplain probably began an exodus of locals towards slightly higher ground alongside a key transportation route, the Roman road. There are several examples of medieval farming with
ridge and furrow techniques to the south of Draycott and surrounding Church Wilne. Certainly by the end of the 11th century soon after Domesday, Church Wilne began having individualised records in ecclesiastical and other administration documents.
William Stanhope (1683 to 1756) was made Earl of Harrington in 1742. His descendants including
Charles Stanhope (1844 to 1917), the eighth Earl of Harrington held the manor into the 20th century. Wilne became an ecclesiastical parish in 1822, partitioned from Sawley ancient parish and at the time included Hopwell hamlet, Draycott liberty along with Breaston and Risley chapelries.
Early transport Draycott informally is known as Neddy Town and locals known as Neddies. In earlier modern times, donkey drawn carts from the coalfields of the north hauled this output to the waterways. The Market Place was a key stopover point where
donkeys were changed over and is the origin of the nickname as the term
'neddy' is in informal usage within some parts of England but was also applied at Draycott. The relocation of locals increased into the 18th and 19th centuries as Victorian infrastructure such as roads, canals, railways, electricity and industry were brought to Draycott. Derby Canal was built through the middle of the parish, skirting the north of Draycott and opened in 1793. It provided an alternative to using the Derwent for navigation, which could be awkward at certain times of the year during floods or dry weather. The
Midland Counties Railway was built in 1837-1839 paralleling the canal, but diverged from it towards Sawley, where both met the road to Derby.
Mills The parish was a notable later period industrial centre in Derbyshire, a key local development was the construction of mills. Although the 1086 Domesday Book reported a mill within Sawley with suggestions it was at Wilne, there was a later discovery of a 12th-century mill at Sawley village. Wilne Mills was the first local mill reported in estate records from 1536, owned by the Earls of Harrington and a millrace and weir created to help channel water through the site, forming an island which it was based on. It had many proprietors over the following centuries, involved in several activities from grinding corn to textile manufacture. Up to the early 1900s it was concerned with cotton and had its operations being overseen by Marcus Astle, but the mills burnt down in 1917. The site was rebuilt in 1924 and still involved primarily textiles and the Astle family until after
World War II. Two mills were originally opened on either side of Hopwell Road alongside Derby Canal soon after it was opened at the end of the 18th century, the one to the west was Thread Mill. It was a
cotton 'twist' mill from the 1820s or earlier which is thought to have failed early on and was later sold to a local
co-operative society and converted to dwellings and used into the 20th century. The mill to the east may have been the location of an early mill opened by the Towle family and utilised the material from Thread Mill, Lyson's
Magna Britannia of 1817 then said of the time that the area was “chiefly inhabited by stocking-makers”. Sensing the trend, Draycott Mill converted some of its operations to the manufacture of lace by 1842. But demand was outstripping supply, and enterprising figures saw the need for additional capacity. A new mill using a novel way of hiring out not just space but also individual weaving machines was being built with
Ernest Terah Hooley as an early investor and
Ernest Jardine as eventual owner, and named to commemorate
Queen Victoria’s 1887
Golden Jubilee, however a fire devastated the progress made and delayed building such that, when Victoria Mill was completed 19 years later in 1907,
Edward VII had been on the throne for six years. There was however great local pride, with claims it was the largest lace manufacturing plant in Europe, with others suggesting the world. A number of
fords, bridges and ferries have existed throughout history, with two of these continuing to be used into the present day. There was a ford which crossed from the former Wilne Mills location to the Shardlow bank. It possibly dates from the Roman period, with certain usage in medieval times and was indicated on late 19th century
Ordnance Survey maps. There is also Ambaston Ford which is at the end of a path leading from Nooning Lane, which is still indicated with depth poles so possibly passable at very low river levels. Of the bridges, the first to exist was Wilne Toll Bridge, which stretched south to the opposite bank from the Wilne Mills area. This was a medieval wooden bridge which continued via a path to Great Wilne, however this structure collapsed in 1936. The toll was a penny and enforced by a toll house, it was used particularly by commuters to Draycott as well as employees of Wilne Mill who were exempt from the toll. Interestingly, as the Derby Canal became less used in the 1930s, coal carts began to more frequently use the bridge from Shardlow Wharf and speculation is that these heavy loads contributed to the bridge's collapse. A pedestrian-only bridge replaced it in 1937 but was closed to public access by the new owners of the mills in 1950, a year after the site was purchased. This later bridge is now dilapidated and still spans the river to the present day, alongside an aqueduct. A new foot crossing was finally built 250 metres downstream. it is thought that at Wilne Mills a ferry was in place since the 1600s which replaced the ford, and which the Wilne Toll Bridge eventually replaced. A temporary
chain ferry, which was a regular rowing boat guided across the river by a fixed chain, replaced the bridge while it was being rebuilt during 1936-37. Another nearby upstream was the Ambaston chain ferry, and it crossed between The Ferry House (also known as the Boathouse, where Wilne Road meets the river) and the south bank, from which a footpath led to Ambaston. Formal parish council reports were that it was withdrawn from service by the
Air Ministry during the
Second World War for security purposes, although an alternative legend is that the boat was stolen in the 1950s. With the loss of this crossing and the mill bridge, direct travel on foot between Great Wilne and Church Wilne was severely impaired, with an increase up to 12 miles, until the current footbridge was established in the 1960s.
Notable houses With the wealth generated by the mills, some operators commissioned notable houses locally. Draycott House is a
Georgian era styled large house in the north of the parish built in 1781 by
Joseph Pickford, the renowned Derbyshire architect for William Evans, a Derbyshire industrialist whose namesake son
William Evans, later became
High Sheriff and
Deputy Lieutenant of
Derbyshire as well as a
J. P. It was later sold to the Scott family. Draycott Lodge was constructed in around 1800 and was the home of William Willatt, a lace manufacturer. Draycott Hall, close to Draycott Mill was built by the industrialist Towle family circa 1830 and later sold to the Earl of Harrington. Attewell House on Station Road was home to Marcus Astle, proprietor of Wilne Mills, it was constructed in the late 19th century.
Religious developments St Chad had preached locally in around 670AD, with a Saxon church recorded in the Wilne area by 822 and likely the location of one of two churches later recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book within Sawley parish. A sizeable replacement church was erected in the 13th century and dedicated to the saint. This remained the only worship place through the countrywide late medieval
Protestantism and
non-conformist movements until 1800 when the
Wesleyan Methodists opened a branch on Lodge Street. with their original site becoming the present-day local
Scouts group headquarters. St Chad's suffered a fire in 1917, with much of the monuments in the church destroyed and no record of what they were. The Willoughby Chapel had a screen of 1624, decorated with centaurs and animals, which was lost. A tomb dedicated to John Willoughby of 1604 was also badly damaged but later repaired.
The Coffin Walk This was a funeral procession route from Breaston to Church Wilne and was alternatively referred to as the Corpse Way.
Breaston Parish Church was a
chapel of ease in medieval times and only conducted mass, it was after the
English Reformation period elevated to parish church status in 1719, and there was no burial churchyard until 1824 when one was consecrated. Burial services until then were held at St. Chad's and coffins would be carried by pallbearers across the fields. At the crossroad where the path intersected the road between Draycott and Sawley, and entered the parish was known as Wilne Cross, which historically possibly supported an actual
wayside cross for directional and guidance purposes. A nearby
stile sited along the parish boundary edge was known in Victorian times as Deadman's Stile, and it has been suggested it was so named by locals due to the location affording lengthy views of the procession from Wilne Cross to the church with the flat elevation of the land.
Modern period Facilities and economy Draycott Isolation Hospital opened in around 1905 to the northeast of the parish. The hospital was for medical cases that required
isolation, it later became a
tuberculosis hospital. The hospital closed in around 2003 and the buildings converted into the residential Woodland Park development. A house within this was one of Derbyshire's most expensive sold in 2021. Shardlow Rural District Council established a Draycott and Breaston sewerage and disposal works to the east of Draycott village at the turn of the 20th century. This remained a key local water processing facility until the nearby Church Wilne
Water Treatment Works was created within Breaston parish in 1967. A pumping station remains onsite. The
First World War impacted trade greatly, and the textile and lace businesses in the village began to feel the strain. The mills had an excess of production space, some of which were let out to other proprietors and businesses. Victoria Mills started life as a tenement mill, but from that period outside operators who were not associated to lace manufacturers started hiring space, including hosiery and knitted outerwear manufacturers, upholstery manufacturers, dyers and electrical engineers involving a firm building
relays and lighting systems started by a partnership of Jack Parry and Henry Martin in 1943. It was this later business named as Parry's that came to dominate operations at Victoria, by 1948 they had moved in and with a huge expansion programme took over the ownership of the mill in July 1957, the last lace manufacturer leaving the mill in February 1970. Draycott Mill while mainly hosting cotton and lace manufacturers, part of the premises was known to be occupied by bicycle component makers from the late 1800s. By 1922 only one lace maker was listed, and by the late 1920 no lace firms were reported onsite. However a number of firms continued to utilise the space for various industry into the 1960s. The original factory front on Market Street was in 2001 converted to housing, the units in the rear of the site still involved with varied industrial and commercial uses. At Wilne, the mill buildings there continued to be worked by the Astle family until the late 1940s when the site was sold in 1949 to Haley and Weller, a toy company specialising in
fireworks. The site continued the manufacture of these but expanded to incorporate
pyrotechnics, and with rapid growth, started supplying military defence products. The business divested the consumer products arm in 1974. Following mergers and changes in ownership it now belongs to the Wescom group. Derby Canal had begun to decline into the 20th century because of competition from other transport means, firstly from the railway, and later road haulage. It struggled through the first half of the 20th century before being closed in 1964 and parts of its route outside the parish built over to accommodate road schemes such as the M1 motorway at Breaston/Long Eaton and the A52 interchange at Derby. North of Draycott village, the section of canal was simply left to dry out, was filled in and grew over with vegetation. The canal's towpath between the A6002 Derby Road bridge and Breaston village was later overhauled to become a new cycle route, which was completed by Sustrans in the 1990s. The bed of the canal is also being restored in this area by the
Derby and Sandiacre Canal Trust which formed in 1994 with the aims of reopening the route of the canal, and the section within the parish is being termed as the 'Golden Mile'. The renovated mill building on Hopwell Road will also be the base for the trust. The last houses in Church Wilne were demolished in the 1960s, likely due to wider land being obtained for quarrying, and only two cottages next to the Coffin Walk are presently in the vicinity. The council redeveloped the area into a nature reserve which has since become a retreat for birds and other wildlife in the area. A large private house was constructed in the 1960s just off Gypsy Lane in the west of the parish, complete with swimming pool. It was in 1967 licensed as a restaurant called The Oasis offering cabaret entertainment facilities, with a dance floor over the pool. Later, it changed name to The Blue Orchid which ran notable
Northern Soul music events throughout 1970. Continuing with nightspot facilities through the ensuing decades, it was later redeveloped into a hotel called Tudor Court containing 'Jester's Discotheque' by the middle 1980s, and in the middle 2000s the site was rebuilt into the present Coppice Park gated community. One of the post WWII proprietors of the former Rose and Crown public house (closed in 2012) was G. Arthur Musson. Although he lived outside the parish at
Kilburn, he had a keen interest in boxing and in 1967 established a club in the village, which over the decades moved into a building alongside Derby Road and hosted a young people's community centre and
Taekwondo martial arts club. A
table tennis club had formed in 1986 at Long Eaton and was playing in locations around Sawley, while gaining a reputation for sporting prowess. Needing a permanent base, in 1999 organisers discovered the boxing gym building was a suitable location and hired out space, eventually taking over the lease, renovating and the enlarging the building as they grew in membership and notability, eventually renaming themselves The Draycott & Long Eaton Table Tennis Club as a nod to former and present links with the communities.
Railway station Draycott and Breaston railway station opened originally in 1852 as Draycott, although it was directly adjacent to the boundary within Breaston parish. It closed in 1966 during the
Beeching railway network cuts. == Governance ==