LONGFORD HALL STABLES & COACH HOUSE.
Joseph Pickford was a Derby architect, builder and mason of some considerable repute. He designed the Etruria factory for Josiah Wedgwood, the famous Birmingham pottery manufacturer. Pickford built St. Helen’s House in Derby, Pickford House (now the Pickford House Museum) and the old Assembly Rooms. He worked as clerk of works for Robert Adam, architect of Kedleston Hall. Portraits of Pickford’s two sons were painted by Joseph Wright.
He had worked for the Coke family at Holkham in Norfolk. In 1761 he was again employed by the Cokes to upgrade Longford Hall and it was then that he built the stable block. While engaged in this work he met Mary Wilkins, daughter of Coke’s agent, and they were married in Longford Parish Church.
John Whitehurst who designed and built the clock for the Longford Hall stable block was an eminent scientist, geologist and inventor of clocks and instruments—and the back boiler. He was not the first clockmaker in Derby but became the most famous. He made instruments for Matthew Boulton the partner of James Watt in Birminham. Whitehurst (with Erasmus Darwin ) was a founder member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham and an early member of the Derby Philosophical Society. He lived in Derby 1736-1780. His portrait was painted by Joseph Wright.
Whitehurst, Pickford and Wright were all friends and part of the group of scientists, engineers, philosophers, thinker and artists which made Derby a very significant place in the second half of the 18th Century.
Brian Blissett.
24/07/03
LONGFORD HALL
The original house was built in the 1560’s on the line of the old Roman road, much altered in the early 18th century and renovated in the period 1837 to 1842.
The Longfords built the first house and lived there until the line ended, when it was sold in 1622 to the Cokes of Norfolk, later to become the Earls of Leicester.
The Tudor chimneys contrast with the South front dating from 1700
Sir Charles Markham bought the Hall in 1920 and in 1942 it was partially destroyed by fire, when in the ownership of Mr. H. A. Manners.
The house sits on the roman road from Little Chester near Derby to Rocester, known as Long Lane. It is possible that the site is the location of a lost village (Bubedene) although this is more likely to be at Bupton where ancient earth leveling is in evidence close to a spring.
