Ada Belfield Centre: Council-Led Development in Rural Derbyshire

This article about quiet civicness in rural Derbyshire made the heart of our first issue of Public Notice magazine. Written by Krish Nathaniel, it deep dives into the challenge, process and impact of the Ada Belfield Centre and Belper Library development, led by Derbyshire County Council.

Regardless of the challenge of spending reductions faced by all local authorities, exemplar community projects which point a route to an alternate and emboldened civicness remain beacons of hope, particularly for rural and coastal communities, and Belper’s twin facilities show both a pride in localism and respect for local people. Read below for a snippet of the content.

In the Peak District, eight miles north of Derby lies the small town of Belper, set within the shallow valley of the River Derwent. Walking Belper’s streets, between grey-tan Derbyshire stone and red brick homes, the grain of this market town feels well-preserved.

A former centre for textiles and cotton, like many other towns along the Derwent Valley, Belper’s walkable streets are today host to a significant and eclectic range of independent shops, pubs, cafes and businesses. Sloping westward toward the Derwent, King Street is at the heart of this town of 20,000 people. Superdrug, Specsavers and a number of other nationwide chains punctuate the high street, but their presence hasn’t dampened the vibrancy of the town’s small businesses and shops. The town’s cinema, The Ritz, can be found at the top of the hill, while record and vintage shop Think Twice attracts a younger crowd.

Industrial heritage remains an enduring and pride-filled part of the area’s identity. Belper is particularly well-preserved, with over half of Amber Valley’s listed buildings in Belper alone and more than 600 heritage listings in the town. A place of international significance, both North and East Mills form part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site (DVMWHS)(1), awarded to the region by UNESCO, the UN’s culture agency in 2001, and putting the area on a par with the Acropolis and Stonehenge.

Today, the closeness of the street pattern and scale of buildings favour smaller, independent businesses, with a significant number of micro-pubs operating in the town. While small pockets of manufacturing remain (the cleaning gel Swarfega was invented here), the town’s main employers are dominated by the retail and service sectors.

Just behind Hunky Dory, on a factory site formerly owned by the Thorntons chocolate company is the Ada Belfield Centre and Belper Library. A co-located development, the scheme consists of a large residential care home, managed in-house by Derbyshire County Council, and a public library. Approaching the complex, the red brick of the retained factory facade, now the Belper Library, comes into view, set beside the local Derbyshire stone which clads the contemporary care home to its south.

A development of two parts, the Ada Belfield Centre replaces the Ada Belfield Home, a 1960s care home in the north of the town. At the same time, the new library supplants former space, which was housed across three floors of a converted detached house, formerly a doctor’s surgery.

This new development, funded and project-managed by Derbyshire County Council (DCC), brought not just the local planning authority, Amber Valley Borough Council (AVBC) to the table, but stakeholders from the County Council’s strategic care service, library service as well as third sector heritage and conservation organisations tasked with preserving the area’s world heritage character.

Set across a 0.6-hectare site, the redevelopment, which retains part of the old Thorntons factory, has also activated the space to its east, forming a paved public square between the town centre and care home. The care home itself, built as a horseshoe plan around a residents-only courtyard, has been designed for dementia care and carefully linked to the library through its entrance foyer and cafe.

Derbyshire County Council’s ambition for the development was to create an integrated scheme with complementary services and accommodation to create a successful and sustainable community development(2). The former care home in Belper, the Ada Belfield Home, had been identified as a striking but ultimately flawed facility. A two-storey flat-roofed building in use since its construction in 1965, its fabric had heavily deteriorated. Retention and retrofit might have been considered a preferred option, but the driver for a replacement came with the potential to restore a much-loved but derelict building, in the form of the former Thorntons factory.

Despite not being locally or nationally listed, the former factory was well-loved by local residents, with many of them previously employed there, and was a space of deep memory for the town. Originally the Castle Blouse Factory, manufacturing blouses and hosiery, during the Second World War Derby-based Rolls Royce used the site to store their iconic Merlin aero engines, used to power the RAF’s Spitfire and Hurricane fighters.

1. ‘Derwent Valley Mills’, UNESCO, December 2001.
2. ‘Design & Access Statement Application AVA/2017/0041’, Glancy Nicholls Architects, January 2017.