Provisional Schedule for 2026

Date	Topic /Activity	Leader
January 12th	Disappearing Shops	Everyone
February 9th	Brinsley Pubs	Helen
March 9th	Lost Businesses	Everyone
April 13th	History of Trams - Ripley rattler / Local Gentry	Alan /Madeleine
May 11th	The Pentrich Revolution	Jim
June 8th	Bennerley Viaduct visit /talk	Janet
July 13th	Local Chapels / Churches	Everyone
August 10th	No meeting
September 14th	The Temple Estate	Richard & Diana
October 12th	Planning meeting	Everyone
November 9th	War Memorials	Everyone
December 14th	TBC

Recent Topics discussed included

The Temple Estate - Commissioned in 1757 by Charles Sedley, The Nuthall Temple was designed by Thomas Wright in the fashionable Palladian style, surrounded by an idyllic, natural landscape rather than traditional formal gardens. The grand estate was defined by a central hall featuring a striking 78-foot-high dome. Operating the house and its three estate farms—Villa Farm, Home Farm, and Assarts Farm—required a vast workforce, including nine indoor servants and numerous outdoor labourers.

Without a standard heir, Charles Sedley passed the entire estate to Elizabeth, his recognized daughter with "Miss Wood" of Eastwood. Following his death, Elizabeth's husband legally changed his surname to Sedley to fulfill the conditions of Charles's will. However, this name change proved temporary, as the Sedley lineage was ultimately discontinued when he later ascended to the title of Lord Sudbury.

In 1819, the house was bought by the Holden family, who were well established in Derbyshire.
The last owner to live there was the Reverend Robert Holden, but on his death in 1926, his son,
decided he could not afford to retain it in the light of death duties and put it up for auction.
At first it would not sell, but eventually the estate was sold in parcels, and the house went
for a mere £800.

The house contents were sold at auction in 1927 and in 1929 the house was demolished. The subsequent arrival of the motorway has now cut Nuthall into two, and it is interesting to contemplate what the village would have been if the Temple had been preserved.

There are still a few relicsof the house preserved in Nuthall: the Gate Pier at the
entrance to the Three Ponds, and a summer house in one of the gardens along Kimberley Road

Local Chapels / Churches - At this meeting, we shared ideas about local churches and chapels. We discussed how some villages had lost many of their original churches, whereas in others, new denominations flourish, like the New Horizons Christian Centre at Langley Mill.

The Churches looked at included ranged from the very old to the relatively new such as the 13th century Nuthall Church and the 20th century Nuthall Methodist Church. We learnt that in the 17th century, a significant number of Quakers were living in Eastwood, although a meeting
house was eventually built nearby. Many of the local churches were non-conformist and the proliferation of chapels in Kimberley and Eastwood reflected the fact that the Methodist Church split in 1800 into two factions – Primitive and Wesleyan. The two halves of the church were re-united in 1932, and thus many of the chapels became redundant. Some of the chapels have been demolished, and others have been re-purposed e.g. Elite Carpets in Eastwood, or
turned into single / multiple dwellings e.g. Kimberley St. Paul’s at the top of James Street.

Chapel on the Hill in Kimberley

In July, we visited the Chapel on the Hill in Kimberley, which is situated at the top of the cemetery. It was built in 1883 and designed by Richard Charles Sutton, who as a young
architect was given the job of constructing the scaffolding for the last public execution in Nottingham in 1864.

This building's purpose was to be a mortuary chapel and there is a glass screen which was designed to protect the mourners from the body in case it was diseased and the original blue tiles were thought to keep flies at bay.