Littleover Farm Dairy and Littleover Farm

The Mysteries of Littleover Farm Dairy and Littleover Farm

A mystery photograph (No 1) was shown in The Derby Telegraph Bygones section in 2006 which was widely debated as to its location.  The photo was of a shop with the words Littleover Farm Dairy embossed on the shop window.  There had been a shop with a similar name called Littleover Dairy at 1, Thornhill Road in Littleover but the picture of the shop did not match the recollections of the villagers, including those of a previous owner of the shop.  Other shops in Littleover were suggested and given consideration but none matched the appearance of the one in the photograph.  Shops in Normanton including Stenson Road were also suggested but there again none looked like the shop in question.

During my research into the farms of Littleover a farm named Wright’s Farm on Burton Road was found but its location in the Parish of Littleover could not be found. Investigation in local newspaper adverts, revealed that this farm was near to the Varnish Works, Burton Road. The works which for many years was dominated by its tall chimney known as Mount Carmel Tower. That farm’s true name was Littleover Farm and that prior to 1875 was farmed by a family named Wright, hence its name. The stretch of Burton Road on which the farm stood was named Littleover Hill, this explains why the farm had Littleover in its name. Census records for a later occupant of that farm indicate that it was situated between Mount Carmel and Stonehill, Burton Road.

You might ask what has the farm got to do with the photograph, which I came across in my pile of Bygones. With the name Littleover Farm Dairy, I decided to look at shops more towards Derby, initially around the Abbey Street/Burton Road junction but to no avail. An advert in the 25th March 1899 edition of the Derby Daily Telegraph gave me a clue, it read as follows “Littleover Farm Dairy, 10, Burton-road (top of Green-lane) for new milk, fresh butter, and cream, cream cheese, new laid eggs, and high-class confectionary. Families supplied twice daily with new milk direct from the Farm.” The advert clearly gives the location of the shop and presumably its connection to Littleover Farm.

The shops’ location therefore was on the edge of an area of Derby once known as ‘Little City’, this area was cleared in 1959-61 as part of a slum clearance scheme. A search in Derby related books revealed a photograph of Burton Road at Little City in ‘The Winter’s Collection of Derby’ by Breedon Books. It showed Wright’s Bakery, which made me think that this was the Littleover Farm Dairy as it had similarities to the shop in the photograph above. The similarities in the windows suggested that it was the same builder who built Wright’s Bakery and the Littleover Farm Dairy although the bakery frontage looked wider than that of the dairy. Looking at the Census for 1881 showed that William Wright was a baker and he lived at number 14, Burton Road, which would place the Littleover Farm Dairy at number 10 to the right of the second photo. A close examination of the left side of the first photo and the right side of the second shows that the two overlap with the door lintel and shop window frame juxtaposed. So here we have it the location of the Littleover Farm Dairy shop.

Whether the Littleover Farm Dairy shop and Littleover Farm were connected is still unknown but at least their locations are known. The shop was where the Mercian Way/Burton Road side of the island is at their confluence and the farm was up hill from the Burton Road Auto Centre.

Research & Report

Chris Drury

April 2021