Libraries

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On 21 September 1931 the Derby Evening Telegraph reported on the decision to have a branch of the county library in Chaddesden, once arrangements for suitable premises were made.

Derbyshire Education Committee opened a branch library in the Church Hall on 26 February 1932. By 26 April 1934 the Telegraph reported that the branch library had 500 readers and an honorary librarian but it appears to have closed within a few years.

On 23 November 1938 Mr F Williamson, Director and Curator of Derby Public Libraries, stated that a provisional site for a library had been reserved on the Roe Farm Estate and the only obstacle in the way of was finance. It was estimated that a new library would cost between £5,000 and £6,000.

At a meeting of Derby Corporation on 4 February 1947, the provision of a library for Chaddesden was discussed.   £33,000 had been set aside for a new community centre at Roe Farm with provision for a library. A year later Chaddesden Parish Council considered the suggestion that a Chaddesden war memorial should take the form of a library and it was decided to approach the Carnegie Trust for a grant. That idea was abandoned when Derbyshire Education Committee agreed to provide a better library service if a suitable building could be found.

On 26 July 1950 Alderman F A Gent, chairman of Derbyshire Education Committee accepted that Chaddesden had strong claims for a better library service and stated that the County Librarian had been asked to consider a prefabricated building to serve as a library.

Chaddesden Library 1954

The new Chaddesden library was built at a cost of £5,000 and opened on Saturday 11 September 1954. It was the first postwar library in Derbyshire and the 42nd branch library in the county. Alderman Gent invited Mr F H Crossley, County Architect, to hand the key to Mr Edgar Osborne to open the new building. Mr Osborne had retired in May 1954 after completing thirty years service as the first Derbyshire County Librarian.

The premises were then dedicated by the Reverend G Rivers, Vicar of Chaddesden. Others attending the ceremony were Alderman Gladys Buxton, Vice-Chair of the County Council and Olive Eden, Chair of Chaddesden Parish Council and a member of the County Education Committee. The occasion was a personal triumph for Mrs Eden, who had campaigned for several years for a library for the parish. Alderman C F White, the Chairman of the County Council was unable to attend because of ill-health.

“George Tomlinson”, a biography by Frederick Blackburn, was the first book issued from the new library. It was stamped and handed to Mrs Eden, by branch librarian Joy Brooks at the opening ceremony. Mr Osborne was also handed a book, a volume of Steinbeck, but his was a keepsake. In his speech Mr Osborne said the library was the first specially built library since the Staveley branch library was built 20 years previously.

He added that he thought the library, which cost nearly £5,000, would be the first of a series of branch libraries of light construction, cheap and quick to erect. Alderman Mrs G Buxton thanked Mr Osborne for his excellent speech. Following the ceremony guests were invited to tea at Morley Road School.

The new library contained about 7,000 volumes with 5,000 being for adult reading and the remainder for the children’s library. The library was open to the public from Monday 13 September 1954 and its hours were 10am to 7pm each weekday and on Saturdays from 10am to 5pm. Librarian Miss Brooks, previously at the Bakewell branch, had two assistants.


The approach to the library from Chaddesden Lane. The cedars and other large trees in the area are the remains of ornamental planting around Chaddesden Hall.


Front view, Age UK building on the right.


Inside Chaddesden Library. This photo and the two above were taken on 11 March 2011. A display of plans for the replacement library can be seen on the right.

Margaret Domagala remembers Chaddesden Library

My years as caretaker of the library started in 1960. I worked over twenty-one years meeting many members of staff who I remember very well.

A large boiler that took twenty-two shovels of coke every morning and evening heated the library. I took my own personal axe from home and went on the park and chopped the wood. It was considered by the powers that be, I was not safe with an axe and didn't get one for quite a few years later until Mr Cartledge who came from the Central Library one day told me he would send firewood ready chopped for me.

I did climb the steps and clean the high windows inside and often went out on the roof to unblock the down pipes from needles which had dropped from the cedar trees.

The floor was mopped every night for many years until I was given an electric polisher that was only for domestic use and kept fusing with a loud bang. Eventually it was replaced with a stronger one to cope with the large floor. The drive I swept every morning and cleared the snow in the winter, the drains outside always flooded after rain, wellington boots were kept close by for wading through the water to unblock them.

We had no lights in the drive or park then; it was completely dark when the library closed at night. Large wooden gates had to be closed at the entrance leading on to Chaddesden Lane every night and opened again in the morning.

I made many friends over the years with readers and staff. On a recent visit to the library I noticed that the drains were still blocked.


John Fryer, Margaret Domagala and Margaret Hall.


The boiler room door and chimney are seen in this view taken on 11 March 2011,
also repairs to lower woodwork at the corners of the building.

The highlight of 40th anniversary in September 1994 was a visit and talk by Deric Longden, the author of books such as “Lost for Words” and “The Cat who came in from the Cold”.

In September 2004, the library celebrated its 50th anniversary with a variety of different events and showed the progress made over the years. As part of the celebrations, local historian Tony Bowler gave a lecture to an audience of 57 on Thursday 9 September 2004. The presentation was repeated on Thursday 23 June 2005 to 44 people.

With such large audiences Tony broached the subject of starting up a Chaddesden history group with librarian Mary Adelman. A meeting was arranged at the library and took place on Thursday 6 April 2006 at 10:30am. Over 40 people attended of whom 24 joined the new Chaddesden Historical Group straight away.

When the old library became due for major repairs, a new library was built on a different site in the park. The old library closed on 16 February 2013 and the building was demolished that summer. Its site is now a car park alongside the Age UK building.

Wollaton Road Library

The Borough of Derby was incorporated in 1835 and was among the first of the County Boroughs created on 1 April 1889 as a result of 1888 Local Government Act. The county boroughs were the first unitary authorities, independent of the county in which they were situated and that also applied to their public libraries. Derby Public Libraries was a small-scale operation with a Central Library on Wardwick, Borough Archives that became the Local Studies Library and branch libraries at Alvaston and Pear Tree. As mentioned above, there was a proposal for a Roe Farm Community Centre and Library but it came to nothing. None of the original Derby libraries is now in use as a library.

In 1968 the borough boundary was extended to take in Chaddesden and Spondon parishes as well as Allestree, Mickleover, Littleover, Chellaston, Alvaston and Boulton, places that had become suburbs of Derby, some with Derbyshire County Libraries. The abolition of county boroughs in 1974 resulted in all of Derby's libaries coming under county council control. The county library service had already taken action to fulfil the need for a library to serve Roe Farm Estate. A site was found near the shopping centre on Wollaton Road - actually it was at 16 Greenwood Avenue - linked to Wollaton Road by a new footpath alongside the Co-Op.

A user of Wollaton Road Library recalls that it was opened in the late 1960s. It was a lightweight wooden prefabricated building. If you ran down the room, the floor reverberated. Sssh!

The City of Derby (as the borough became in 1977) regained unitary status in 1997. Derby City Libaries took control of all the libraries within the city boundary. Remnants of the county libraries remained, such as membership numbers being in a single series and Derby City readers being allowed to borrow books from County Libraries. Wollaton Road Library was short lived - the building in need of repairs? - and it closed around 2000. The site was used by the City Council as a storage depot for a few years. A block of flats now occupies the site.

Derwent Community Library
Roe Farm Lane

The Revive Healthy Living Centre, built in 2006-07, was one of several buildings in the area that were funded by a government grant - Derwent New Deal for Communities.   Derwent Library, which occupies one room in the building, was the first part to open - on Monday 5 March 2007 when the photo above was taken - followed by the cafe on 26 March. The building also contains an NHS clinic and community meeting rooms.

Finding a plot of land large enough for a building like this is not a simple matter in a built-up area like Chaddesden. The Roman Catholic church agreed to sell the west part of the St Alban's church site including the priest's house which was demolished. A new house for the priest was built on the other side of the church. The photo above shows the new boundary fence between Revive and the church which is off the photo to the right.

The site has an interesting history. Pre-war Ordnance Survey maps show a proposed new street, Johnson Avenue, but the war started before any houses were built. The name commemorates the Johnson family who were owners of Roe Farm between 1918 and 1930. Before that, the land had been crossed by the colliery tramway from Stanley which opened in 1894. The boundary between the car park and the two bungalows behind appears to be the boundary of the tramway, and this same boundary can be traced at various places in the estate, most obviously in the garden boundary between Dorchester Avenue and Renfrew Street.

Why is the library called Derwent when it is a long way from the river, a lot further than Riverside Library in the Council House?   Derwent was the name for the electoral ward that contained the Borough of Derby east of the river. With minor adjustments to the boundary, it was replaced by the present Chaddesden West ward in 2023.

Springwood Library


Springwood Library is within Springwood Leisure Centre, Springwood Drive, Oakwood. Photos taken on 19 May 2026.

Springwood Leisure Centre opened at the edge of Oakwood Park on 1 April 1997 as part of the Oakwood estate which was the largest private housing development in Europe at the time. The centre was designed with a four-court sports hall, two squash courts, a 30 station gym, synthetic football pitch, outdoor multi-sport play surface, dance studio and creche.

Oakwood had no library until 2007. In April of that year Derby City Council approved £1.1million project to build a new fitness suite. After the equipment had been removed from the old gym, the room was converted into a library.

Chaddesden Park Library


Chaddesden Park Library is named after Phillip Whitehead, journalist, broadcaster and former Member of Parliament for Derby North. Solar panels and sedum planted on the green roof can be seen in this photo taken on 29 May 2026.

Two locations were considered for a replacement Chaddesden Library.   By placing the library at the Nottingham Road end of the park it would be an extension of the district shopping centre, on a main road and readily accessible. The alternative was within the park near the site of the old library. A public consultation found a majority in favour of the latter. To improve access for library users from the Nottingham Road direction, a new footpath was built through the park from the entrance opposite Richmond Road.

The library was designed to be a 'zero carbon' building making use of natural daylight and ventilation throughout the building and with far superior insulation to its predecessor. It opened in March 2013 giving Chaddesden and Oakwood their best ever public library service with three new libraries but it was not to last. Government pressure on Derby City Council to cut spending resulted in the non-revenue-earning libraries being transferred to a charity and run by volunteers. The libraries have since returned to council control but still run by volunteers and open for limited hours. Use the links at the end to find when your library will be open.

Phillip Whitehead (1937-2005)

Phillip Whitehead, to whom Chaddesden Park Library is dedicated, was born in Matlock Bath in May 1937. He was the adopted son of Harold Whitehead, carpenter, of Mill House, Rowsley. After attending the village primary school in Rowsley, Phillip went to Lady Manners Grammar School in Bakewell. Between 1956 and 1958 he did National Service with the Sherwood Foresters and then read Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University in 1958-61. In 1960 he was the President of the Oxford Union and, strangely in view of his later political affiliation, President of the Oxford Conservative Association. After graduating from Oxford, he worked for the BBC where he was the producer of the Gallery and Panorama programmes, and then to Thames Television to work on This Week.

Phillip was selected as the Labour Party candidate for the Derby North constituency when the sitting member decided not to seek re-election. He won the election on 18 June 1970 with a 3,479 majority over the Conservative candidate. That was all the choice the voters had - there were no other candidates. Still living in the stone-built cottage in Rowsley where he had been brought up, he was re-elected several times although with a majority reduced to 214 in 1979. Now in opposition, he was appointed the front bench spokesman for education. His time in Parliament ended in the June 1983 election he was defeated by the Conservative candidate.

Returning to broadcasting, he became a presenter with Thames Television from September 1983. His political career resumed in 1994 when he was elected as the Member of the European Parliament for the Derby & Staffordshire East constituency. Re-elected as an MEP for the East Midlands in 1999, he was still in office when he had a fatal heart attack at his childhood home in Rowsley on 31 December 2005.

There is an information board about Phillip Whitehead in the porch of the library. These notes were made from a collection of newspaper cuttings about him, and articles written by himself that is held in the library.

Further Information and Useful Links

The photographs of the original Chaddesden Library are from the Chaddesden Historical Group collection. The others were taken by Peter Barnes who also did this latest revision to the text.


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