Olive Owen grew up in a house in Duckmanton.  The house came with her father’s job as Ostler at Markham Colliery, and she talks about her father’s work with the horses as well as her life in the village.  After she was widowed with a young daughter, she returned to live with her parents before remarrying.  In the meantime she found a job at the local school.

Olive Owen

Tony Brown was brought up in Staveley, in Speedwell Terrace near Ireland colliery where he later worked.  He remembers the games children played, and the activities they joined in.  After he married he and his wife, Sheila, lived with his parents in their new home in Inkersall, Speedwell Terrace having been demolished in ‘slum clearance’.  He then moved with Sheila to Mastin Moor, where the council built a new estate in the 1950s.

Tony Brown

Sheila Brown talks about living in Mastin Moor as a child, before the new housing estate was built.  She talks about playing on the building sites, going to Mastin Moor School, and working locally.  She has lived all her life at Mastin Moor, apart from a short period when she lived with her parents-in-law after she was married.

Sheila Brown

Joyce Dickens moved to Chesterfield in the early 1960’s when her husband came to work for Civil Defence.  A brand new council house was provided with the job, and Mrs Dickens has lived in that house ever since.  She brought up her two children there, and has seen many changes.  She talks about moving to Chesterfield, living on Whittington Moor, and the changes she has seen.

Joyce Dickens

Our anonymous contributor was born in 1929 in his grandparents’ house on Chatsworth Road.

In 1932 his parents moved into a brand new council house on Maynard Road, which is between Boythorpe Road and Park Road.  The move made a huge difference to the family.  During the war, the family built an Anderson shelter in their garden.  After the contributor and his siblings grew up and left home, his elderly parents moved into a council-owned bungalow.

Anon - from Maynard Rd, Chesterfield

Home for Good is a year-long project at Derbyshire Law Centre, supported by the National Lottery through the Heritage Lottery Fund.  It explores the history and heritage of social housing through oral history, photographs, written accounts and objects contributed by local people.


Home 4 Good Oral History