Margreave Road

Margreave Road is a street on the Chaddesden Park Road Estate built by John Henry Greaves who was one of the largest house builders in Chaddesden during the housing boom of the 1930s. It was originally named Suffolk Road but renamed at the request of the Post Office to avoid confusion with nearby Suffolk Avenue. The name is unique in Britain and probably commemorates Greaves' marriage to Monica Marian Pearman in spring 1936 (Marian Greaves).

Greaves had been building houses in Chaddesden as early as 1928 when he lived at Arboretum Square, Derby. Among his first in this area were two bungalows at the beginning of Lime Grove. He survived the Great Depression of 1930-31 and built a number of houses at the junction of Meadow Lane and The Crescent in 1933. These houses are among the first in the distinctive Greaves style, with square front bays upstairs and down.

In 1935 he bought a site of around 20 acres on the west side of Chaddesden Park Road. This site had been intended as part of the Chaddesden Garden Suburb Estate but construction stopped during the depression and had not resumed when its developer, Thomas Coleman, died in 1933. Most of the site was in the Borough of Derby after the 1928 boundary extension but three fields remained in the Parish of Chaddesden.

Most of the estate built in the next four years was in Derby but the top of Aylesbury Avenue and Dorchester Avenue together with all of Margreave Road were outside the Borough. There would have been another street starting where Alison Close is now and joining Dorchester Avenue and Liverpool Street at its far end. Construction of 49 houses was approved but the Second World War started before construction could begin. Greaves' business closed during the war as many of his tradesmen joined the armed forces. The site of the proposed street is now a welcome green space in an otherwise built-up area.

Derby Corporation promptly allocated house numbers in their part of the estate and the houses at the top of Aylesbury Avenue and Dorchester Avenue were numbered in a continuation of the Derby series. Chaddesden Parish Council and Shardlow Rural District Council had a casual approach to house numbering and were content to let the houses on Margreave Road remain identified by builder's plot numbers as late as the early 1950s. The first house on the left hand side from Chaddesden Park Road was numbered 2 (it should have been 1), then came several empty plots and then numbers 120-108 in reverse order, evens only (now numbers 7-11 and 15-21). The two corner houses beyond Aylesbury Avenue were 137 and 138 (now 27 and 33). On the right hand side were several empty plots and then 94-81 consecutively (now 20-46).

An unusual feature of Margreave Road is the wide junction with Chaddesden Park Road, now used, together with the adjacent footway, as car parking outside the shops. Between 1936 and 1962 the junction had to be kept clear as it was the terminus of the number 60 trolleybus route. Imagine, if you can, the forest of traction poles supporting a cat's cradle of overhead wiring so that trolleybuses could do a U-turn ready for their return journey. The only other remnant of the former terminus is the bus stop directly across the road from the other Wilsthorpe Road stop when conventional placing would put it higher up the hill, beyond Margreave Road.

Margreave Road photographed from Dorchester Avenue by Gregg Marley in July 2007.
The road climbs gently from here to a summit just beyond Aylesbury Avenue then downhill more steeply to join Chaddesden Park Road. The distant building is the upper storey of one of the shops on Chaddesden Park Road.