3-16, BRICK ROW

A range of 14 three-storey, brick-built, terraced houses, dating from 1797 to 1800, constructed by the Evans family for their mill workers. Number 16 has a stuccoed front with a stone base. The houses were altered in the 1820s when an adjacent school was built, and the configuration changed from incorporating school-rooms at second floor level.

The architecture is characterised by segmental brick-arched lintels to most openings, although this detail differs at the former school-rooms and at number 16. Many of the original windows and doors have been replaced, although some early cast-iron casements set into larger wooden-paned frames have survived, for example at number 11, both front and rear. The former school-rooms retain king-post roof trusses, now subdivided by brick party walls. A largely intact row of privies remains across the rear passage.

The Row was built in two phases: the first, comprising five houses and a school-room, was built between 1797 and 1798, followed by a second phase of eight houses and another school-room from 1798 to 1800. The original school-rooms on the second floor are identifiable by differences in the window arrangement above houses numbered 6 to 12. A former dedicated ground-floor entrance once served the schoolrooms. Number 16, at the northern end of the Row, served as a lodge for Darley House. The entrance door was repositioned from the main terrace frontage to the side when a single-storey bay was added and the elevation stuccoed around the 1820s.

The Row is notable as an early example of a mill owner providing custom-built educational facilities for their workforce, following an earlier school-room in the attic of Long Mill. The houses, along with other C18 and C19 houses and schoolrooms in Darley Abbey built by the Evans family, form a group of significance when considered alongside the Arkwright settlement at Cromford and the Strutt settlements at Belper and Milford.