Mr Ordish and his Avenue

Born in 1851, Arthur worked for 35 years in the boiler-shop department of the old Midland Railway, and also served for a while as the task-master and constable at the Derby Workhouse before taking up the position of sexton here at St. Mary's Church. In May 1936, at the age of 85, he was able to tell a Derby Evening Telegraph reporter that he had lived in Chaddesden for most of his life, except for a spell of Army service abroad with the Oxfordshire & Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, and believed (erroneously) that he was then the oldest living tenant of the late Sir Henry Wilmot of Chaddesden Hall, who had died many years previously in 1901; Arthur also added that his own father, John Ordish, had served as Sir Henry's gamekeeper.

Sometime around 1926 Arthur Ordish bought an old LMS railway carriage from the nearby Derby works and he and his wife set up home in it on a plot of land in Wilmot Avenue (itself named after his old landlord, Sir Henry Wilmot); the name of his new home – "Windy Nook" – was probably quite an apt one! A few years later, Arthur must have been delighted when the road just to the south of Wilmot Avenue was named Ordish Avenue in his honour.

Arthur also told the Telegraph reporter that he was in the process of compiling a history of the village which he intended to call "The Chaddesden Budget". Since he left his unconventional dwelling soon afterwards and moved into one of the Almshouses where he died in October 1937, I wonder whether he ever finished his work and, if so, what became of it?