Eastwood's hilltop "DH Lawrence Memorial Hall" and other lost local legacies...

The hall was designed by Nottingham's esteemed Council House architect TC Howitt.
But why did locals and academics think it was a little "over the top" ?

A Hilltop in Tuscany or Eastwood?

From D.H. Lawrence's "Nottingham and the Mining Country" 1929  

"Now Eastwood occupies a lovely position on a hilltop, with the steep slope towards Derbyshire and the long slope towards Nottingham... What opportunities, what opportunities! These mining villages might have been like the lovely hill-towns of Italy, shapely and fascinating. And what happened?... they had that lovely site to play with, there on the hill top: if they had put a tall column in the middle of the small market-place, and run three parts of a circle of arcade round the pleasant space, where people could stroll or sit... If above all, they had encouraged song and dancing - for the miners still sang and danced - and provided handsome space for these..." 

In 1955 the local council in Eastwood took DH Lawrence at his word and planned, as a tribute to him, something outrageously grand and ambitious for their small, but increasingly renowned, mining village. It was to be a rather odd combination of a great civic hall and covered swimming pool dedicated to the local boy, turned celebrity author, located high on the hilltop with commanding views of the surrounding countryside. 

It was designed by Nottingham architect T.C. Howitt who did the magnificent Council House in Nottingham's Old Market Square. Lawrence's memorial hall would have included a garden forecourt and plaza by the main road, flanked by covered ways, viewing balconies and a statue of Lawrence in the centre, as can be seen in the picture above, but the plan didn't get enough support and it was never built.

TC Howitt's "Council House" on Nottingham's Old Market Square.
Surely one of the grandest municipal buildings outside of London.

Academia's Proposal

Even Nottingham University's academics who were fans and friends of Lawrence, thought the money would be better spent on creating a University Fellowship place to further his memory... "Prof. M.V. de S. Pinto and Dr. J. D. Chambers, of Nottingham University, declined to join the committee, stating they disagreed with the form of the proposed memorial." Arguably in the long run, they were correct as the University is now one of the most important repositories of Lawrence learning and archive material³. 

A catalyst for culture and tourism of just a white elephant?

The grand hall would have been expensive to maintain. With today's tight budgets, similar council-run facilities have been closed in recent years. The smaller DH Lawrence centre at Durban House and Kimberley's popular swimming pool being prime examples, so who knows what the fate of this large hall complex would have been. I've been told by people living here at the time that the scheme would have increased local rates by a significant amount too... "I remember it being spoken of when I was a kid. How excited was I to think Eastwood was to have it’s very own swimming pool. Then, how disappointing when it was cancelled, the EUDC [Eastwood Urban District Council] giving the reason as it would be too expensive . . . actual words, if I remember correctly, “It would put a penny (1d) on the rates”. . . "  

The site of the proposed hall in 2019, now redeveloped with houses.  
Appropriately in the suburb of Hilltop, just outside Eastwood.

Timing Issue

Also, perhaps the timing wasn't quite right. Eastwood's memory of Lawrence was perhaps too raw in 1955 and his writing style too explicit for the time. He had upset and embarrassed many locals with his unsympathetic depiction of the town and use of real people's names for characters in his books. The main impetus for the idea seems to have come from America where Lawrence's reputation as a writer at the time was much greater. 

A New York Times reporter and admirer of Lawrence made the pilgrimage to Eastwood in 1971. She was in for a rude awakening when she interviewed the old miner's widow living at Lawrence's birthplace at 8A Victoria Street... “He was a nature walker, he was, a regular piker. [The local expression for one who spies on courting couples.] He's not much liked around here." Not quite the same vibe given out from the Birthplace Museum nowadays! She continued... "It's funny, so many people coming. I guess they think it's a museum, but it's not really."  

Up at Lamb Close House, home of Sir William and Lady Barber, you are advised not to bring up DHL in polite conversation. They own Haggs Farm, beloved of Lawrence and his fans but... "By all indications, Sir William intends to let it fall down of its own accord. Apparently he would rather bury Lawrence forever than praise him in any guise for reasons that are not altogether clear, except for a belief that Lawrence drew some of the characters in his novels from members of Sir Williams's family."

The full interview was published in the New York Times and is reproduced in the notes below.

Andrew Lilley's proposed statue of DHL for outside Eastwood Library
received overwhelming local support and a few scurrilous comments.

The town's memory in this regard can be long and bitter. Only last year in 2023, a renewed proposal for a statue of Lawrence in his hometown was met with outrage from some locals accusing him of being "the most hated man in Eastwood" and "the Rolf Harris of his day". I don't think this was a comment on his painting skills so much as his rumoured sexual predilections! These attitudes do appear to be on the wane however as the overwhelming opinion of today's bellwether (the Eastwood "Bygones" Facebook group) was that a statue was a great idea. Funding, however, has not been forthcoming as yet.

The "Congo"

Lawrence's Phallic Alternative

What would Lawrence's own idea of a hilltop memorial landmark have been for "future Eastwood"?

He wrote a late, unfinished piece, quasi Sci-Fi even, that I really like called "A Dream of Life" in which he comes back to a future Eastwood and the hilltop church (the "Congo" as it was known) has been replaced by a rather phallic "rosy-coloured" tower around which dance semi-naked Etruscan-like natives. I often try to picture the scene as I drive through Eastwood these days, but it's quite a stretch for a mind experiment especially on a drizzly, grey November afternoon! The "Congo" (Congregational Church) was a beautiful old church standing in a very prominent spot in the centre of Eastwood. It was the Lawrence family's local church where they spent many Sunday mornings. The attached British School is where Lawrence began his teaching career. The decision to demolish such a great landmark around 1970 and build on the open square opposite deprived Eastwood of a hilltop focal area. Today a cheap and ugly low-rise branch of Iceland is in the same place, a victory for the gods of commerce and profit. 

c.1915 - The Congo, with school and town square, in its heyday by local artist Malcolm Parnham.

c.1970 - Demolishing the "Congo" Fred Dibnah-style

The Council's Proposal

You have to admire the local Eastwood councillors for their ballsy ambition for the new hall which was probably very anti popular feeling. Lawrence describes his own very similar idea in his retrospective essay "Nottingham and the Mining Country" from 1929... 

"If the company, instead of building those sordid and hideous Squares, then, when they had that lovely site to play with, there on the hill top: if they had put a tall column in the middle of the small market-place, and run three parts of a circle of arcade round the pleasant space, where people could stroll or sit... If above all, they had encouraged song and dancing - for the miners still sang and danced - and provided handsome space for these." 

These three local newspaper articles below take us through the initial council proposal and the less than enthusiastic reaction to it...

Derby Evening Post, Wednesday March 23rd 1955

Eastwood's £200,000 memorial to Lawrence: Appeal plan

An artist's impression and general outline of Eastwood's proposed £200,000 memorial hall and swimming bath to D.H. Lawrence, the writer, who was born in the town, have been received by the committee in charge of the memorial.

Eastwood has no public hall for its population of 10,000, and the committee intend to organise an international арpeal to collect the money for the hall, which is to be built at Nottingham Road.
Eastwood Urban Council have already bought the site, which is next to the Hill Top offices of the Council, and hope that in the future a library, clinic and municipal buildings will be built adjoining the memorial hail.
TO SEAT 600

The proposals in the outline of the memorial made by Cecil and Howitt and Partners, architects, of Nottingham, include a hall, with a floor seating capacity of 600, a stage adapted for plays, cinema shows, dances and meetings, and a gallery for seating between 30 and 50 distinguished visitors, capable of being used for special civic functions.
The frontage of the site is about 300 feet, but the hall is planned to have a frontage of almost 100 feet, and it will be set back from the road about 120 feet.
The eventual layout will include car parks and terraces, and a park and sports ground at the rear of the buildings. There is already a football pitch where the proposed park will be, and tipping is being done in the area to level the ground.
Because there is a slope from the front of the hall towards the rear to a depth of 15 feet it has been suggested that a swimming bath 100 feet long and 60 feet wide with changing accommodation should be built under the hall. When not required for swimming the bath could be covered over and used as another hall.
AREA'S ONLY BATHS

At present the only swimming bath in use in the area is at Langley, and this is very small. There are also some disused swimming baths at Greasley, but they are closed because of the absence of means of purifying the water.
Heanor Urban Council have several times discussed building public baths at an estimated cost of £40,000, but the proposed baths under the Lawrence Memorial Hall will cost £47,000 and will form part of the foundations for the hall.
If the baths are not, included as part of the hall the cost of the foundations will be £25,000, a saving of £22,000.
The general construction of the hall includes precautions against subsidence caused by coal mining, but the superstructure will be of brick and specially faced with selected brickwork, and the whole will be round a steel framework.
The main hall will be lit by four tall windows on each side. The foyer will contain a booking office and two small shops.
COVERED WAYS

Outside the hall covered ways with side exits are planned to provide shelter from rain for people either waiting outside or moving between the hall and vehicles on the road.
In the centre of the forecourt it is intended to put a statue of D.H. Lawrence, who lived in the town until he was 23, and left while he was still comparatively unknown. He died, famous, in the South of France from tuberculosis.
The D.H. Lawrence Memorial Committee is composed chiefly of members of the Council, Eastwood Trades Guild, Eastwood Rotary Club, Community Centre and Women's Social Club.
WORLD-WIDE APPEAL

At their meeting on Easter Tuesday the committee will discuss plans for starting the appeal, and it is likely that a leaflet will be drafted with information about the proposed hall and with a picture of the artist's impression. It will be sent out all over the world asking for, subscriptions.
At a meeting of Eastwood Urban Council when the project was first publicised, Councillor T.J. Lewis said the price of the hall was "tremendous," but great interest was being shown in the author at present, especially in America, and it might be possible to collect money from fans all over the world.
Feeling in Eastwood is divided about the scheme. Some people believe it is too ambitious for the size of the town, and even if the money was forthcoming for the building, they think the cost of staffing and maintaining it might be too much of a strain on the community compared with its usefulness.
Whether the £200,000 hall will be built will depend ultimately on the response to the appeal, but if the full sum is not collected a modified version may be erected.

The Nottingham Guardian Journal, Wednesday, April 13, 1955

Lawrence memorial appeal to be drafted

Despite opposition from people who had been invited to join the committee to launch the £200,000 appeal for the proposed D. H. Lawrence Memorial Hall at Eastwood, feelers are to be put out to determine how to raise a fund.

The hall would incorporate a concert hall, with a swimming pool below it.

Meeting at Eastwood's council offices last night, the committee, headed by Coun. H. Knapp, heard the Eastwood Urban Council clerk, Mr. H. Webster, read letters of criticism from people who had been invited to support the scheme.

Prof. M.V. de S. Pinto and Dr. J. D. Chambers, of Nottingham University, declined to join the committee, stating they disagreed with the form of the proposed memorial.

They suggested that a better way to perpetuate the name of Lawrence would be to create a fellowship at the University or, perhaps, name a library there after him, with a bust in it.

Too ambitious - Other letters said the scheme was too ambitious. One said that, if Eastwood wanted a concert hall, the building should be an amenity supplied by the local authority.

"It would be a hall for all kinds of culture other than musical concerts," remarked Coun. Knapp. "One of the reasons why D. H. Lawrence left Eastwood was because of the lack of amenities. I am sure he would have been in agreement with this scheme."

Coun. E. Wilson said the project would provide for the whole of Eastwood, where Lawrence was bred and born. "We have been prompted because we have not done anything in the way of a memorial," he added. "In particular, we have been prompted by people from other countries," put in the chairman.

Americans had asked for a memorial, he said. In any case, there would be a public hall on the project site in Nottingham Road, Eastwood. It was decided to approach publicity experts, with a view to drawing up appeal leaflets.

Nottingham Evening Post dated 21st. April 1955

Lawrence Entombed?

It is exhilarating to note that, while millions of pounds of the taxpayers’ money are being spent on weapons, the Eastwood Urban Council proposes the raising of a comparatively meagre sum by voluntary effort in the scheme for the erection of a D. H. Lawrence memorial hall.

At the same time, it is disappointing to hear that such learned men as the heads of a university are contesting the scheme and suggesting that a better method of perpetuating the name of a local literary genius would be to commit him to the inside of their university out of reach of the ordinary man. D. H. is already accessible to all members of the higher academical institute. It would be more in keeping with Christian principles if, in respect of their superior understanding, they were to uphold the Eastwood proposal and use such a hall on occasion to give the benefit of their knowledge to a world already starved of the ability to appreciate and enjoy their common heritage by the advent of Messrs. Hollywood and Co., Ltd. The simplicity of William Shakespeare has already been relegated to the shelves of the academies. All the same, Shakespeare has his Memorial Theatre and why should Lawrence then not have his Memorial Hall? Or is he too to be committed to a second tomb and accessible only to those fortunate enough to possess the higher capabilities of understanding?

SOCRATES

Other More Recently Lost Local Legacies

- Lynncroft house - The rambling Lawrence family home at 97, Lynncroft was recently sold and looks likely to be gutted and converted into a HMO. The large attic with its wooden boards was the scene of dancing and singing for one memorable Xmas party. DHL being, as usual, the master of ceremonies⁵.

- Clarkes department store - Lawrence's future brother-in-law Eddie Clarke was at the same Xmas party. He founded Clarkes department store in Ripley which only recently closed down after over 100 years of trading. 

- May Holbrook's house in Moorgreen was demolished a couple of years ago and replaced with a large modern house. Lawrence knew May from Hagg's Farm where he spent many idyllic weekends in the countryside above Eastwood with May's sister Jessie Chambers. When Lawrence was dating Frieda Weekley, his Nottingham University professor's wife and his own future wife, May's Moorgreen house was their secret love nest. He also came here after his mother's death for solace with the Holbrooks. Like Hagg's Farm, it held an emotional bond for the young author.

- Quarry Cottage in Brinsley, Lawrence's grandad's old house, is getting exterior cladding installed at the moment which will alter its appearance dramatically. 

- Tower Cottage in Zennor - a bit further afield and on a final positive note, DHL's old cottage has recently had it crenelated roof reinstated. This time though the roof is flat maximising the rooftop sea-view. 

Bash in the attic - Lawrence family Xmas dance party venue⁵

May Holbrook's house, Moorgreen - now gone.

----------THE END ---------

Notes and Sources - Thanks to Buxi Duan, Darren Turner and Gavin Gillespie for inspiration and information.

1 - Andrew Lilley's statue Facebook discussion with 196 local comments (you need to join the "Eastwood and Kimberley Bygones" Facebook group to read them) https://www.facebook.com/groups/400986200022386/permalink/4218821144905520/

2 - New York Times article  June 6, 1971 By Ann Geracimos entitled ""In DH Lawrence country they still hold the grudge".

"Part 1... NOTTINGHAM, England—Nottinghamshire isn't touted yet as a tourist center unless you have a great deal of feeling for Robin Hood and his Merry Men, who sported in Sherwood Forest, but this region has a rugged, historical charm, especially for students of the Industrial Revolution. It has quite a literary legacy, too—not only D. H. Lawrence but also, among Others, Lord Byron, from nearby Newstead Abbey, and Alan Sillitoe, the novelist, from what passes as Nottingham's working‐class slums. The city itself, however, is famous less for its cultural associations than as the home of Players cigarettes, Raleigh bicycles and Boots chemical and pharmaceutical products.

The first time I saw Nottingham was as a graduate student at the university (the same one Lawrence attended on a two‐year scholarship in 1906, when it was a teacher's college) and as part of my studies of Lawrence and his works I roamed the countryside as often as possible, taking notes about the places described in his novels. I have since returned to the area several times to see what progress, if any, has been made toward commemorating the man who put nearby Eastwood (known as Bestwood in “Sons and Lovers”) on the map. Others will do the same at their own risk.

From Nottingham, population 400,000 and still very much a 19th‐century city, it is eight miles to Eastwood, population 13,000, the mining town where Lawrence was born 85 years ago. By taxi from the station or by lurching bus the trip takes 20 to 40 minutes through scenery that is much the same as it was in Lawrence's day. Once in Eastwood, the traveler who is interested in Lawrence is more or less on his own, but by summertime, if things go according to plan, the Nottingham County branch library there will have produced a guide to Lawrence sites. Meanwhile, help is available through Lawrence's own books (with names and addresses changed to protect the guilty) and in the illustrated text of “D. H. Lawrence and His World” by Harry T. Moore and Warren Roberts. Otherwise, simply consult instinct and absorb the vibrations of a bleak and brooding English Midlands landscape in habited by folk suspicious, perhaps even jealous, of Lawrence's portrayal of them.

“It's like a country in an under world,” said Gudrun. “The colliers bring it above‐ground with them, shovel it up. Ursula, it's marvelous, it's really‐it's really wonderful, an other world. The people are all ghouls, and everything is ghostly. Everything is a ghoulish replica of the real world. . . . It's like being mad Ursula” —from “Women in Love”

All the homes in Eastwood in which Lawrence once lived are still privately owned, but brave strangers knock any way at Number 8a Victoria Street, a squat two‐story structure identical to its neighbors in a barren row sloping down to coalfields below—a toy house in a toy town stuck in a smog patch. A black plaque above the transom of the green door reads:

BIRTHPLACE OF D. H. LAWRENCE Born Sept. 11th, 1885 Died March 2nd, 1930

The plaque was put up by one of Lawrence's boyhood friends, the owner of a shoe shop, although there is some dispute about whether this was the house in which his mother gave birth to David Herbert, fourth child in a family of five. Lawrence's father was a “butty,” or section foreman, in Brinsley Colliery, the remains of which are in nearby Brinsley. The pub where his father used to hang out has closed, but the chapel in which the family worshiped, of which Lawrence wrote in “Hymns in a Man's Life,” is the Albert Street Congregational Church a block away.

The poverty of Eastwood, made up of sooty brick dwellings faced with cream and green painted woodwork, has created a shabbiness that the few “grand” buildings, such as the church, emphasize by contrast. Steep‐roofed and of sandstone, it is as triumphantly, modestly gothic as Victoria Street and the surrounding thoroughfares are pain fully lowly and plain. A person standing outside 8a Victoria Street feels as if he could embrace the whole of it. The window is flush with the pavement and almost knee level.

Soap and Pegged Rugs

Lawrence's mother was scrupulous about money in the earnest Protestant mold and, being poor, was desperate to pick up a little extra by selling her own handwork and lace. The miner's widow who now lives in the house sometimes sells cakes of soap and pegged rugs to visitors. “It's funny, so many people coming,” she remarked as I followed her inside. “I guess they think it's a museum, but it's not really.”

I obligingly bought a portion of goods I thought equal to an entrance fee and was rewarded with a look into the kitchen, crowded by a single table, one of the two small low‐ceilinged down stairs rooms. She pointed to the brown, black and yellow tile stove on the left wall that had warmed the Lawrence family when they lived here from 1875 to 1887, the only authentic souvenir in the house. But there was no warmth in her expression when I asked if she had known them.

“He was a nature walker, he was, a regular piker. [The local expression for one who spies on courting couples.] He's not much liked around here. Oh, I used to see him walking about. I knew his mother. I was on the milk run for three years on Walker Street. [The family lived at 12 Walker from 1891 to 1902.] That Mr. Lawrence, the father, was a proper boozer. He was not a nice man.”

That finished the subject as far as she was concerned. I went out again into the soot‐flavored landscape, over which an acrid smell seemed perpetually to hang.

Little David Herbert, or “Bert,” Lawrence went to the Beauvale Board School, an elementary school at the junction of Dovecote and Mill Lanes, near Hill Top, Eastwood. A man who has gained a reputation locally as a friend of Lawrence once wrote a lengthy newspaper account of those days in an article entitled “Boys of the Beauvale Breed” and later answered my appeal for information with a rambling 32‐page handwritten letter, grumbling about “guinea‐snatching columnists” who prey on Lawrence, although he hadn't seen the author since 1904 when the two were schoolmates. Lawrence then was 9 years old, my correspondent 10.

Lawrence's eldest brother, who dis approved of him, died in Hampshire a few years ago. Survivors include two nieces and a nephew. Also still living is a childhood sweetheart. Royalties from Lawrence's lifework—seven novels, 49 short stories and numerous essays, letters and poems—bypassed the Lawrence family entirely and went to his wife, the German‐born Frieda. The house in nearby Mapperley where Lawrence and Frieda met in April, 1912, before running off to the Continent together still stands and is called Hillcrest.

Forbiddingly Private‐Looking

Beauvale Board School is fancy Victorian, with cupola and lattice‐like windows, a tall chimney, entirely a replica of another age, as is Eastwood overall. The house at Mapperley is a large, three‐story, ivy‐covered brick structure — smart by local standards. Both are forbiddingly private‐looking places, as self‐contained as the towns people themselves.

None of Lawrence's relatives are active in any memorial campaign. The first and last recorded meeting of the D. H. Lawrence Memorial Committee was held in 1964. Hopes of securing funds to honor the author with a civic center in “the country of my heart,” as he called it, haven't been fulfilled. But all the same, a kind of possessive pride seems to be replacing some of the resentment against him in these parts. Derbyshire Life and Countryside, a genteel monthly, once printed an article that claimed Eckington, a village in neigboring Derbyshire, to be the model for “Lady Chatterley's Lover,” not Eastwood. And an art teacher in the Eastwood secondary school painted murals on the dining room wall symbolizing scenes from Lawrence's books."

"Part 2... A pupil of Lawrence at the former British School behind the church on Albert Street, an ex‐miner who had quit the pit to run the local cinema, was only too glad to discuss his teacher. He had been born next door to Lawrence's house on Victoria Street but remembered him only as “the somewhat feminine” authority he saw standing over him in the classroom:

“He stood alone in his way of life. He was a good teacher, one of the best, a very nice kind of man. If we were not writing correctly he had a little cane about a foot long. He used to just touch your knuckles, never indulged in force of any kind. I only wish he'd come back. Eastwood was a very miserable place then, the survival of the fittest. A case of scrambling up to the shop for some drippings, even in what they call the good old days. Miners had to share common gardens to make ends meet.

“I've never been a big reader of books, but, no, he didn't seem the man to write that ‘Lady Chatterley's Lover.’ He used all local names. Mr. Chatterley, I understand, was a clerk at the collieries here. George Mellors used to go about selling tin pans. Arthur Clifford used to sell bicycles. His son still is in the business, selling motorcycles and motorcars.”

The Bottoms consisted of six blocks of miners' dwellings, two rows of three, like the dots on a blank‐six domino, and twelve houses in a block. This double row of dwellings sat at the foot of the rather sharp slope from Bestwood, and looked out, from the attic windows at least, on the slow climb of the valley towards Selby. . . . So, the actual conditions of living in the Bottoms that was so well built and that looked so nice, were quite unsavoury because people must live in the kitchen, and the kitchens opened on to that nasty alley of ash‐pits.

—from “Sons and Lovers”

The Lawrence family improved their lot by leaving Victoria Street for the status of a corner house in what is called The Breach, “The Bottoms” of “Sons and Lovers,” where most of the family scenes in the novel took place. They lived from 1887 to 1891 at 57 The Breach, which is now 28 Garden Road.

The three‐story red brick building, a with a side garden, was purchased year ago by two small Anglo‐Ameri can educational organizations, the Young Writers Association and the College Projects and Research Group. They intended to restore it as a typical miner's home and use it as a resident center for young writers. Two student members from Michigan State University spent a summer of field work doing minor repairs. Then a fire gutted the interior and now the project is off unless more money can be raised soon, hopefully in America, according to Prof. Ken Roberts, chairman of the Young Writers Association and a lecturer in English at Birkinhead Technical College in Cheshire.

There are boards over the windows, which haven't been replaced since the fire. The hedge, normally a sign of considerable style, like the nortice over the entrance, is untrimmed. The fire is believed to have been started by local boys, “nuisances,” taking advantage of an empty playground.

A Nottingham dealer in old and second‐hand books is interested in taking over the house to promote it exclusively, and profitably, as a Lawrence museum, if the writers don't come through. “He was an important person in social history, the way Dickens was, but I don't think much of him as a person,” said the dealer, explaining his plans. “He was rather a nasty sort of man. Always in for a dig.”

The digs go both ways. Controversy over Lawrence, whose “Lady Chatterley's Lover” was taken off the banned list in England only 11 years ago, seems endless—perhaps the final proof, after all, of his merit. An 86‐year‐old pensioner passing by in the rain outside The Breach house called Lawrence, his former classmate, “a snotty nosed lad” and kept on walking, complaining the whole time about his own bad health.

Nobody was home up the hill at 12 Walker Street, the residence of the Lawrences from 1891 to 1902 and one of a long row of semi‐detached houses with stucco bibs in front and gardens in the rear. Milk bottles stood outside the door. Walker Street gives way to Lynn croft Road where, at Number 97, the Lawrence family lived from 1902 to 1910. Some years back neighbors at Number 99 found what they thought were two slate paintings by Lawrence hidden away in their fireplace.

Eastwood is a town of class‐conscious sections: Victoria Street is on the disadvantaged slopes, whereas Walker Street looks out on an expanse of land that seems to fold and unfold in layers of shadow toward the horizon. Lyncroft Road is “respectable,” without being roomy. All the streets are clean; the town is undistinguished otherwise, there being no center, no glamorous “olde English” inn of any kind. The government office, the District Council, is solidly functional, as is the new secondary school. Nobody gets lost in Eastwood, since most streets run into the main road or else turn in on each other in easy square patterns. The pubs are standard stucco and do a good business Friday and Saturday nights. The miners nowadays are likely to drive to work, while their wives do domestic labor and spend the extra money on wigs.

Suspicious of the Author's Portrayal of Them

They drew away from the colliery region, over the curve of the hill, into the purer country of the other side, towards Willey Green. . . . It was a spring day, chill, with snatches of sunshine. Yellow celandines showed out from the hedge bottoms, and in the cottage gardens of Willey Green, currant bushes were breaking into leaf, and little flowers were coming white on the grey alyssum that hung over the stone walls.

—from “Women In Love”

It's not always grim, as Lawrence well knew. The country around East wood is a succession of lush green fields and woods, with abrupt views of slag pits among the soft rolling curves of land. It's not difficult to understand the mixture of fear and fascination he felt for the region. Between the ages of 17 and 23 he escaped three or four times a week to Haggs Farm in Willey Spring, walking for 40 minutes or cycling. It was there that Jessie Chambers, Miriam of “Sons and Lovers,” first encouraged him to write. He last visited the farm in 1926, four years before his death.

“No Trespassing”

There were no road signs that I could see. When I finally found the place, an empty brick building down a short road behind a white fence, nobody was around except a young boy who informed me from behind a closed gate (“No Trespassing”) that the property was private and indicated that he meant to keep me off it.

The wife of the tenant farmer who looks after the property told me in a telephone conversation later that she was “browned off” about people like me coming by.

Sir William Barber, her landlord, who was in Scotland shooting, had told her not to let in photographers, she said. “From what I heard, Lawrence smacked Sir William's father when he was caught trespassing.” There were 90 acres of corn, dairy and pasture land to manage, and having visitors come by all the time interfered with the work. Yes, she had read “Sons and Lovers,” she said: “That was all right. Some of it is a bit crude, though. I'm not much for dirty books.”

Several historical societies have produced enough pressure so that the 120‐ year‐old farmhouse has a special rank entitling it to a two‐month reprieve should the property be threatened by demolition or a major alteration by its owner. By all indications, Sir William intends to let it fall down of its own accord. Apparently he would rather bury Lawrence forever than praise him in any guise for reasons that are not altogether clear, except for a belief that Lawrence drew some of the characters in his novels from members of Sir Williams's family."

"Part 3... Now Neglected

A Nottingham reporter who got inside the farmhouse a few years ago described it as having wails of a faded rosebud pattern and an oak‐beamed kitchen. One corner contained the drop leaf table where Lawrence wrote arid could look out on the red roofs of Felley Mill (Strelley Mill farm of “The White Peacock”), likewise neglected now.

Sir William's home at Lamb Close, in Moorgreen, is the supposed model for “Highclose” in “The White Peacock,” “Shortlands” in “Women in Love” and “Wragby” in “Lady Chat terley's Lover”:

Wragby was a long low old house in brown stone, begun about the middle of the 18th century, and added on to, till it was a warren of a place without much distinction. It stood on an eminence in a rather fine old park of oak trees, but alas, one could see in the near distance the chimney of Tevershall pit, with its clouds of steam and smoke, and on the damp, hazy distance of the hill, the raw straggle of Tevershall village, a village which began almost at the park gates and trailed in utter hopeless ugliness for a long and gruesome mile.

A spokesman for Sir William, a former Lord Lieutenant of Nottingham whose family had been among the original exploiters, in Lawrence's eyes, of the coal rich fiefdom of Eastwood (Tevershall), hung up the phone after telling me that “you will save yourself a lot of trouble if you don't come round.”

The only Lawrence “souvenir” on display locally is his original gravestone, of rough stone on a cement slab, given by a late Nottingham University professor and Lawrence scholar to the Eastwood District Council office in hopes that civic plans then afoot would come through. It reposes in the second floor council chamber. (The building is opposite Walker Street, along East wood's main road, just before the strip of shops that form the town center.) The gray and stone pebble mosaic re lief, about 10 by 24 inches, shows a phoenix rising, Lawrence's personal symbol. It is thought to have been made by an old French peasant in Vence, in tribute to the author just after his deaths on the Riviera.

Lawrence's body was later cremated and his ashes were taken to a permanent tomb in Taos (now under supervision of the University of New Mexico), where he lived in the early 1920's. The inscription on his stone in the Lawrence family cemetery in Eastwood, cared for by surviving relatives, states simply: “Unconquered.”

For the devout Lawrence fan, a complete tour includes a stop at the Notting ham City Library, a rambling gray Victorian gothic stone pile on Sherwood Street that was Nottingham University College when Lawrence went there. Lucy Edwards, the local history specialist, sits at the clerk's desk Lawrence used on his first job with a Nottingham surgical goods manufacturer. The firm, Haywoods, since has moved to the out skirts of the city.

“Our Two Exiles”

Behind her are the Lynncroft Road slate paintings that she says she doesn't know what to do with, and around her is the largest collection of printed and illustrated materials on Lawrence to be found anywhere. The library has been working since 1958 on this and on a Byron collection—she calls them “our two exiles.” In her opinion, inhabitants of Eastwood don't care for Lawrence because “he never went down pit.”

Among the source materials on tap for qualified people is a series of 40 tape recordings of persons who knew Lawrence, including Rebecca West, Aldous Huxley and Bertrand Russell, that Miss Edwards says the library is laying down for posterity, “like good wine.” She also has a copy of‐the first story by Lawrence to appear in print, “A Prelude,” published Dec. 7, 1907, in The Nottinghamshire Guardian under Jessie Chambers's name.

A smaller collection of books by and about Lawrence is open to all in the Nottingham County branch library at Eastwood. It is marked for a special Lawrence room the library hopes to have in its new building. Michael Bennett, the librarian, is only too happy to talk to Lawrence fans. He is the only man handy with the key to The Beach house, but, again, this is only for “the qualified.”

Lawrence was an extremely personal writer, and people tend to feel personal about him, which may be the only way to know him at all.

A friend of mine, visiting Taormina, Sicily, one time, decided to look up the villa where Lawrence and Frieda stayed in 1920–21. My friend didn't know where the house was, and neither apparently did any of the villagers. She kept asking for the home of the “English writer”—“morto, morto,” the dead one —getting nowhere until, finally, she discovered three houses together in what she believed to be the right location. The first was too new to be the one. From the second there came the sound of a typewriter. Inside was a young man, who, like her, had come wandering through earlier to explore Lawrence's Italian sites and, having found the Taormina villa, decided to in and do some writing of his own.

“The scene of my Nottingham Derby novels all center around East wood, Notts, where I was born. And whoever stands on Walker Street, Eastwood, will see the whole land scape of ‘Sons and Lovers’ before him —Underwood in front, the hills of Derbyshire on the left, the woods and hills of Annesley on the right. The road from Nottingham and Watnall, Moorgreen, up to Underwood and on to Annesley [Byron's Annesley] gives you all the landscape of ‘The White Peacock,’ Miriam's farm in ‘Sons and Lovers,’ and the home of the Crich family and Willey Water in ‘Women in Love.’ ‘The Rainbow’ Is Ilkeston and Cossall, near Ilkeston, moving to Eastwood. And Hermione in ‘Women In Love’ is supposed to live not far from Cromford. . . ..” from a letter by D. H. Lawrence, April, 1925."

3 - Today the University's "D.H. Lawrence Research Centre" organises academic conferences, exhibitions and public events relating to Lawrence and its Kings Meadow campus houses his archives. The School of English at the University has led the way in Lawrence research; it has been home to several celebrated Lawrence scholars, including Vivian de Sola Pinto, James T. Boulton, Peter Preston and John Worthen (who remains Emeritus Professor of D. H. Lawrence Studies).

Nottingham Uni DHL Centre https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/dhlawrence/about-us.aspx

4 - Nottingham and the Mining Country... 

"Now Eastwood occupies a lovely position on a hilltop, with the steep slope towards Derbyshire and the long slope towards Nottingham. They put up a new church, which stands fine and commanding, even if it has no real form, looking across the awful Erewash Valley at the church of Heanor, similarly commanding, away on a hill beyond. What opportunities, what opportunities! These mining villages might have been like the lovely hill-towns of Italy, shapely and fascinating. And what happened?

Extract from Gavin Gillespie's website on DHL...

This sounds as if the inspiration for the building came from an essay that Lawrence wrote about Eastwood in 1929, a year before he died.

"The middle classes jeer at the colliers for buying pianos - but what is the piano, often as not, but a blind reaching out for beauty? To the woman it is a possession and a piece of furniture and something to feel superior about. But see the elderly colliers trying to learn to play, see them listening with queer alert faces to their daughter's execution of The Maiden's Prayer, and you will see a blind, unsatisfied craving for beauty. It is far more deep in the men than in the women. The women want show. The men want beauty, and still want it.

If the company, instead of building those sordid and hideous Squares, then, when they had that lovely site to play with, there on the hill top: if they had put a tall column in the middle of the small market-place, and run three parts of a circle of arcade round the pleasant space, where people could stroll or sit, and with the handsome houses behind! If they had made big, substantial houses, in apartments of five and six rooms, and with handsome entrances. If above all, they had encouraged song and dancing - for the miners still sang and danced - and provided handsome space for these. If only they had encouraged some form of beauty in dress, some form of beauty in interior life - furniture, decoration. If they had given prizes for the handsomest chair or table, the loveliest scarf, the most charming room that the men or women could make! If only they had done this, there would never have been an industrial problem. The industrial problem arises from the base forcing of all human energy into a competition of mere acquisition."

The full essay is on the following link:-

www.dh-lawrence.co.uk/lawrence_about_eastwood_1929.htm

5 - Bash in the attic - the recent sale of the Lawrence family house on Lynncroft brings up a tale of a Christmas dance party that the Lawrence kids organised up in their garret attic. DHL's sister Ada tells the story. "Bert" is DHL himself by his familiar family name...

"At this house there was a large garret, and here on Christmas Eve we arranged a dance. Bert said we must wax the floor, and persuaded mother to give us two candles, which we shredded and rubbed into the wood by sliding about for half an hour or so. We decorated the beams with Chinese lanterns, hung a fancy curtain here and there, and put bits of mistletoe wherever there was room.

There were about eight couples. For music we depended on George, a school friend, and Eddie (who is now my husband). George’s repertoire was quite varied, and we managed the polka, waltz, minuet and even lancers with great enthusiasm. But as poor Eddie could only play from memory the waltz Love’s Golden Dream Is O’er, we had Love’s Golden Dream for waltz, polka, and valeta, until perspiration dropped from the end of the violinist’s nose.

All the girls loved to dance with Bert. His movements were so light. It was a thrilling moment when a lantern caught fire, and we nearly blew our heads off and stamped through the floor in putting it out.

Someone suggested ghost stories, and we trooped downstairs into the parlour, put out the light and gathered round the fire.

Bert, of course, told the tale, plunging into a ghastly adventure until our hair nearly stood on end. When he reached the most thrilling point he hesitated. Suddenly there was a most horrible banging and clattering just outside the door. We shrieked with terror and sat with palpitating hearts, and in marched George, who had been instructed by Bert to create the pandemonium at the critical moment, and who, strange to say, had not been missed. Mother sat in the kitchen alone, but content because we were happy."

"Eddie" in the story who married Ada Lawrence, founded Clarkes department store in Ripley which only recently closed down... https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/derbyshire-department-store-close-down-4375130 which is still going in Belper https://www.weclarkes.co.uk/about/

Howitt's adaptable architecture https://samdawes.wordpress.com/