Sinfin, Derby, Derbyshire, England.

Prince Charles Edward Stuart Well, all right, maybe a picture of Bonnie Prince Charlie is stretching credulity a little but in fact, before the 20th century, Sinfin's principal claim to fame was that the scouting party sent on ahead by him from Derby probably (!) crossed Sinfin Moor on their way to Swarkestone Bridge where, receiving intelligence that the King's armies were assembling near Lichfield, they turned back.

Sinfin Moor represents an extensive area to the south of Derby, bounded in the west by Stenson, in the east by Chellaston, in the north by Normanton and Allenton, and in the south by Swarkestone and Barrow-upon-Trent.

Sinfin is mentioned in the Domesday Book as Sedenefeld. It was shown as belonging to Henry of Ferrers, a fact commemorated by the present day Ferrers Arms pub. In later documents, it is Sidenfen, which appears to be an Anglo-Saxon name and probably means something like "Broad Fen". By 1675, in Ogilby's Road Maps, it is shown as Synfold and the road from Derby to Swarkestone at that time is clearly shown as crossing Synfold Moore.

Clearly, there was some farming taking place at the time of the Domesday book, but the area generally was probably not drained until much later. There are old references to snipe and duck hunting on Sinfin Moor.

Nevertheless, the image of the Moor as a vast marshy tract is erroneous. The neighbouring parishes had right of stray on the Moor until the land was enclosed in 1803, various landowners in those parishes receiving parcels of land by way of compensation for the loss of that right. Horse races were regularly held on the moor. White's 1857 Directory of Derbyshire describes the grandstand as being situated next to land owned by Elizabeth Bancroft (who was at that time the farmer at Sinfin House) but also notes that it had been taken down some years previously.

Sinfin in 1887

Image produced from the www.old-maps.co.uk service
with permission of Landmark Information Group Ltd and Ordnance Survey.

By the date of the 1887 Ordnance Survey map, most of the Moor had been enclosed as individual fields. This map of a small portion of the area shows the tiny hamlet known as Sinfin, located at what is now the junction of Sinfin Lane, Sinfin Moor Lane and Redwood Road; and Sinfin House. Even at this date, there is no visible trace of the medieval village of Sinfin, believed to have been located at the bend in the road just north of Sinfin House, near the present day junction of Arleston Lane and Redwood Road. The church that served the community has likewise gone, the parish of Sinfin and Arleston having become part of Normanton-by-Derby.

Sinfin House was located near the present Sinfin Church Centre, the various outbuildings extending onto what are now allotments. The road leading southwest from Sinfin House is the line of present day Arleston Lane. The road leading southeast ran along the line of what is now a bank separating the Community School from its playing fields, before becoming the present Deep Dale Lane at its junction with Farmhouse Road. No trace of Sinfin House remains today.

Just one house now remains of the settlement shown as Sinfin on the 1887 map, most of the other buildings having been the victims of redevelopment in the latter part of the 20th Century. The Methodist Chapel survived into the 1980s, having had various uses including a period as a scout hut. It was demolished after being made unsafe as the result of a fire. The foundatins of the building are just discernable on a patch of waste ground next to the gas pumping station on Sinfin Moor Lane. There is one other survivor from this period, Woodbine Cottage, a little further down Sinfin Moor Lane; then an isolated cottage, it is now part of a car servicing station.

Sinfin in the 1940s

Original mapping from Ordnance Survey New Popular Edition Maps, formerly Crown Copyright, copyright expired. This rendition © 2007 Glyn Williams based on scanned data © 2005-2007 Richard Fairhurst, Mike Calder, Nick Burch and Andrew Rowbottom and published on the New Popular Edition Maps website under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial Licence 2.5.

Note that although the original maps were published in the late 1940s, revision at the time was patchy and some features (notably buildings) that may have appeared during the 1930s or 1940s may not be shown.

What put Sinfin firmly on the map in the 20th Century was the massive preparations for the Second World War. Amongst other major industries, the Rolls-Royce aero engine factory was greatly extended and an Ordnance factory was built on a large site between Sinfin Lane and the main Derby to Birmingham railway line. The trolleybus wires were extended out from the town centre as far as the County pub, and a new housing estate was built for the workers: an area now known as "Old Sinfin".

The County was so named because at the time it was built it lay just inside the County Borough of Derby. It is a coincidence that a large field adjacent to it (now Amberley Drive) was at one time one of the training grounds for Derby County Football Club.

Farms in the area also changed as a result of the War. The somewhat primitive drainage introduced at the time of the enclosures was improved to allow the growing of grain crops. And the countryside had another role to play in the War effort: Lea Farm was the site of decoy lights, intended to divert German bombers away from the important target of the Rolls Royce aero engine works. In fact, Derby suffered few major air raids during the War, the worst being on January 15th, 1941, which targeted railway facilities rather than Rolls Royce. Nevertheless, at least one aircraft is known to have been lured away from the city by the decoy lights; and it is rumoured that one of a stick of bombs dropped on that occasion still remains buried, unexploded, deep in the soft clay of Sinfin Moor.

After the war, Sinfin was to remain pretty much unchanged until the 1970s; the most noticeable change on the ground being the demise of the trolleybuses in the 1960s. Then, the area became the focus of what at that time was a massive housing development (although since dwarfed by others).

New Sinfin now covers almost 2 square km of the City of Derby, and merges imperceptibly into the almost equally large development of Stenson Fields, in South Derbyshire.

jet fan image Although the aero engine factory is still here and continues to expand, many of the old businesses, including the Ordnance Factory, are gone or at least severely diminished in size.

However, new light industry has been brought in so that, although by no means a net employer, the area does have a useful amount of local work available. Much of this development is located on the old Ordnance Factory site.

The Sinfin District Centre has a large ASDA supermarket, together with the Ferrers Arms pub already mentioned, Post Office, a number of small shops, takeaway, library and doctor's surgery. The present ASDA store opened in 2000, replacing a smaller store on another part of the site. Various other small shops and takeaways are dotted in convenient small groups around Sinfin.

On the northern outskirts of Sinfin is the Foresters' Leisure Park with a multiplex cinema, bingo hall, bowling alley, fast food restaurants and the Oast House hotel and pub. The Park takes its name from the Sherwood Foresters Regiment, whose Normanton Barracks used to occupy the site.

Other leisure facilities are the Golf Course accessed from Wilmore Road and the playing fields located on Sinfin Moor Park.

Beer engines "Fighting Cocks" bus stop There are a number of pubs in Sinfin. Apart from the Ferrers Arms, the County and the Oast House already mentioned, there are the Cock and Bull (originally the Sinfin Hotel, later the Saxon Arms) and the Grampian. Just outside the city boundary are the Stenson Fields in (you guessed!) Stenson Fields; and the Ragley Boat Stop, a converted farmhouse just off Deep Dale Lane, the road leading to Barrow-upon-Trent. It has a small landing stage for boats on the Trent & Mersey Canal, hence its name. There is also a club, the Sinfin Moor Social Club. Another pub, the Fighting Cocks, was demolished in 1998 after a lifespan of only about 20 years. Oddly, the pub's name is still preserved at a nearby bus stop, as witness the accompanying picture.

Sinfin has four primary schools, a pre-school day centre and a secondary school. The secondary school was badly damaged by fire in 2006. and classes are being held in temporary accommodation while it is being rebuilt.

There are Church of England (St Stephen's) and Roman Catholic churches, and a Church Centre which holds services for Church of England, United Reformed and Methodist. Perhaps surprisingly, for an area whose population includes many Asians, there are no mosques or temples: the nearest are situated in Normanton.

Communications: Sinfin has an excellent daytime bus service to Derby and, while buses are a bit few and far between in the evenings and on Sundays, at least there are some.

Class 150 DMU in Centro colours But, in spite of the nearness of the main lines from Derby to Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent, Sinfin has no rail station. Two stations, Sinfin North and Sinfin Central, were opened in the 1976 on a branch line that formerly served Chellaston, but were not a success, partly because of the decline of the factories they were intended to serve. Because of technical difficulties with new rolling stock, passenger trains ceased to run in 1993. The line had not been officially sanctioned for closure, so a substitute service had to be provided. Passenger numbers had declined to such an extent by this time that a taxicab was sufficient to provide the service! Closure was finally sanctioned in 1998, and the taxicab service withdrawn.

Meanwhile, Peartree station, near the Foresters' Leisure Park, has had its service enhanced, and a new station has been opened at Willington, about 7 km away. So perhaps there is hope for a new station to serve Sinfin, one day.

The land to the south of the City boundary is still farmed, and though by no stretch of the imagination outstandingly beautiful, there are some pleasant walks, and paths for cycling and horse riding.

Our own house has a pleasant outlook. Built on what was the team yard of Poplars Farm (once owned by Ted Moult, a well known TV personality in the 1950s and 60s), an elder and hawthorn hedge to the rear has been allowed to outgrow which, with a row of willows a little further off, gives an enjoyable leafy vista, with plenty of scope for visits by small animals and birds.

A bridle path and cycleway runs to Chellaston, connecting with the Derby to Melbourne cycleway along the line of the old Derby Canal. Other paths lead over the high ground to the south and into the valley of the Trent, once a major travel artery with the Willington to Swarkestone road, the Stenson to Sawley freight railway line and the Trent and Mersey Canal (the towpath of which provides another pleasant walk, but preferably not while there is a fishing match in progress!) running closely parallel to one another on the left bank of the river. The more recent A50 road linking M1 and M6 tries to hide itself away (with tolerable success) in the rising ground between them and Sinfin Moor.

Sinfin Today

Image produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service.
Image reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.

With my confessed interest in metaphysical and mystical matters, you may be wondering whether there are any major mysterious phenomena associated with Sinfin Moor. The answer is, as far as I can tell, that there aren't any.

There are some reports of UFO sightings. This may be because powerful Ley Lines run across the Moor, associated with the ancient and mysterious tumuli known as Swarkestone Lowes, or it could be because Sinfin is close to one of the flight paths into East Midlands Airport (UFOs may very well be a real phenomenon, but not every light in the sky is a UFO). Too much Marstons Pedigree (a plug for the Grampian!) has also been known to be the cause of strange visions.

I am also doubtful about reports of witchcraft ceremonies at the Lowes. It is not that there is any shortage of witches in Derbyshire; merely that the site is so close to the main building of Lowes Farm that it would not provide the necessary degree of privacy.

So, if it is mysteries you want, you will have to go elsewhere: for example, HERE.