Watnall Woods on old maps - The Slade & the old mining tramways

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One of my favourite views in Watnall Woods was once called "The Slade", an old Saxon word (not for a 1970's glam rock band) but for "A valley, dell, or dingle; an open space between banks or woods; a forest glade". Describes it perfectly. This old Ordnance Survey draft map from c.1837 shows it clearly marked between Watnall Wood and the old road down Watnall Hill. It also shows the old mining tramways the remains of which still run through the wood today. It was a surprisingly large¹ operation consisting of  "150 tram wagons, 43 railway trucks, several miles of rails" ..

1837 Ordnance Survey draft map - made as a preparatory drawing for the early OS maps

Watnall Wood's old mining relics

The 1837 OS draft map also shows "Derry Mount" where the Kimberley's windmills once stood, a local name that has long disappeared². Since 1854 the area became known as Alma Hill to celebrate British victory against Russia in the Crimean War's Battle of the Alma². There's no Cliff Boulevard or High Spania, in fact nothing at all between "Edinburg Row" and the two Watnalls³ -"Watnall Cantelupe" and "Watnall Chaworth". 

The old mining tramways start from the now flooded "Colliery" workings near Woodpit Cottage on the northern edge of the woods, heading over Giltbrook and down the valley towards the wharf on the Nottingham Canal. Only the overgrown embankments of these old wooden-railed horse-drawn tramways, called waggonways, remain in the woods today. There are no "big" railways shown on the map either. Kimberley's two railway lines, the Great Northern and Midland, came almost 40 years later in 1875 and 1882.

A contemporary waggonway in Little Eaton

Contemporary waggonways used wooden sleepers and oak rails reinforced with cast iron plates. Later versions were upgraded to all metal rails. The Watnall Woods tramway would have gone past another old mining relic, the Greasley Engine, an early beam-operated Newcomen-style steam engine used for pumping water out of the numerous small coal mines that once littered the Giltbrook valley. An inclined railway, now completely vanished from the landscape, used to go across The Slade to a coal "land-sale" depot near Hall Farm on Narrow Lane where the Watnall Farm Shop is today. This was called "Town End Field and Coal Wharf.”

Aerial laser survey (LIDAR) of Watnall Woods shows
a rectangular compound, 2 main working areas (with spoil heaps) linked by branching tramways 
that head off towards Giltbrook and eventually to a wharf on the old Nottingham Canal near IKEA. 

The later 1885 Ordnance Survey map (below) has "The Slade" written over the woods themselves but it must be a mistake based on the older map and the meaning of "slade".  Twentieth century maps don't show the name at all. Enigmatically, the OS map also shows a mysterious arrangement of old "Stones" in the top corner of the Slade. They were lost to history and imagination when the modern road down Watnall Hill was built.  

1885 Ordnance Survey map. I reckon they got The Slade in the wrong place.
 
Similar to the tramways in Watnall Woods, the Nuthall waggonway built 1763-4 (like the one shown) transported coal by primitive horse drawn waggons into Nottingham from Nuthall. This one shows the Little Eaton "gangway" c.1908. The term "railway" came after metal rails were invented. The gangway and the Little Eaton line of the Derby Canal opened in 1795 to a great ceremonial fanfare with the wagons being kitted out with seats for the dignitaries and a band to mark the occasion. The first load of coal from Denby was distributed to the poor of Derby.

The Slade looking up from Watnall Woods
  
View over The Slade to the Derbyshire Dales
 
This 1826 county map shows no Watnall tramways, no Hall Farm and no "modern" road to Hucknall

Lancelot Rolleston Esquire
of Watnall Hall
The "Colliery" by Woodpit Cottage in Watnall Woods shown on the 1837 map was a Barber Walker mine. The Barber Walker Company's official history book tells us that in 1829 Lancelot Rolleston Esq. of Watnall Hall and Thomas Francis Philip Hutchinson Barber of Lamb Close House entered into an agreement in writing to dig pits and mine coal in the Watnall Estate. 
Certain lands near Watnall Hall were excluded from the bargain, and coal was “to be left ungot as a security to the Mansion House”. The royalty was £200/acre, the first acreage royalty payable under any of the documents in the archives. 
Perhaps the Barber's Watnall mining operation did not prove fruitful as the mining rights soon changed hands. In Watnall Woods in the 1850's a new but ill-fated mining operation had been started by James Morley of Nuthall centred around Woodpit Cottage (where the Watnall Hall gamekeeper lived). Morley had borrowed money from his family's hosiery business, the world-famous I & R Morley Ltd., and bought a lease from Lancelot Rolleston of Watnall Hall to access to the coal reserves. In 1853 it was described as a “house, close with workshops & yard amounting to about 5 acres”. J.M. Lee’s book about Watnall’s mining history says... 
“Morley worked from old shafts which he refurbished, probably old Barber and Walker workings which originally had their outlet to the Nottingham Canal via the Giltbrook Valley. Morley wasn’t lucky. A court case took place in 1858, in which his creditors recovered all his mining and personal assets. He ended up with “the wearing apparel of him the said James Morley” – losing literally everything except the shirt on his back. The colliery apparatus was sold in 1858 and comprised amongst other items: eight steam engines, nine boilers, 150 tram wagons, 43 railway trucks, several miles of rails and a good many buildings, to be demolished within a month, as well as 30,000 bricks". 

The natty map maker Peter Perez Burdett and
wife Hannah, dressed for a countryside ramble in 1765

Peter Perez Burdett's mathematical survey and map of Derbyshire 1767
Burdett's superbly executed map is the first mathematically accurate one showing Watnall.
Until the 1760s maps were barely more than guess work. This is one of the first to be mathematically drawn using sophisticated surveying instruments and trigonometry. He began his survey from the top of Derby Cathedral's tower, measuring angle and distance to a known spot and then repeating over the whole county. 
On 10th March 1759 the Society of Art had announced that it would pay a premium for the best county maps at the scale of 1 inch to 1 mile, and specified the surveying methods to use.
Peter Perez Burdett in 1767 with this map of Derbyshire was the second person to receive the award out of the total of thirteen claimants. The map shows accurately and in much detail the towns and villages of the county with many interesting additions including churches, large houses (with their owners' names), smelting cupola, coal mines, mills (wind and water) as well as measurements in miles along all of the roads. On this 1791 edition many of the owners' names include the landed gentry and mill owners in the Derwent Valley, such as the Duke of Devonshire and Sir Richard Arkwright. It doesn't show the Rollestons of Watnall Hall but it does show the nearby Nuthall Temple, which had only been completed 10 years earlier in 1757 and its owner in 1791 the Rev. Vernon Sedley. Note also the lack of canals. The Erewash canal was built 1776-1779.
 
Burdett's map showing Watnall c.1767

Derby Cathedral (then just plain All Saints church) 1728
where Burdett began his survey

Compare the accuracy of Burdett's map to the 1632 tapestry map of Nottinghamshire which also shows Watnall. It is a very beautiful object and the best representation at the time of the area. Mathematically accurate though, it was not...

1632 tapestry map of Notts.







There's more reading about the old mining remains, old local maps and activities in Watnall Woods here. There's also more detail on James Morley's outcome after his mine failed...
https://watnallhall.blogspot.com/2023/01/the-greasley-engine-and-other-giltbrook.html
Lancelot Rolleston's life of highs and tragic lows can be read in his biography is here...


Sources:


Nottinghamshire Historic Environment Record - Monument record M18632 - Modern waggonway from The Slade, Greasley to the Nottingham Canal

Georef OS maps of Watnall from the National Library of Scotland
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16.6&lat=53.01191&lon=-1.26162&layers=257&b=1

Nottingham Archives - Barber Walker and Watnall Hall estate papers;
Wiki Commons OS draft maps - collection of preparatory drawings for the Ordnance Survey old series maps
https://britishlibrary.oldmapsonline.org/maps/2047bef8-649b-5f68-9af4-bcef31dba7d4/view


Christopher Greenwood's county map of Nottinghamshire from 1826 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wagonway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Eaton_Gangway
https://www.irsociety.co.uk/Archives/25/little_eaton_tramroad.htm

Burdett's 1767 map online https://maps.nls.uk/joins/10424.html

Notes 

1 - JM Lee - A Brief History of Watnall

2 - Derry Mount last appears on a map in the 1853 Public Health Report for Brinsley and Eastwood which also had an addendum for Kimberley. The area instead became known as Alma Hill to commemorate the British victory over Russia at the Crimean Battle of the Alma in 1854.

Lee, William; Macaulay, C., introd. Public Health Act (11 & 12 Vict. Cap. 63.) Report to the General Board of Health on a Preliminary Inquiry into the Sewerage, Drainage, and Supply of Water, and the Sanitary Condition of the Inhabitants of the Parish of Eastwood, and the Hamlets of Newthorpe, Moorgreen, and Brinsley, in the Parish of Greasley, All in the County of Nottingham (London, 1853),

Battle of the Alma (River) - 20 Sept 1854

3 - The two Watnalls - Watnall Cantelupe and Watnall Chaworth were so named as land owneership in the area was divided between 2 estates:
-  the Greasley Castle/Beauvale Priory estate land inherited from the de Cantelupe family 
- the Bingham/Rolleston/Chaworth-Musters estate centred on Watnall Hall

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