1-3 Cavendish Place

Terrace of three houses, formerly two, with attached outbuildings and boundary wall, dating to around 1845 with late 19th and 20th-century alterations and additions. Built for George Hodgkinson Barrow, ironmaster of the Staveley Ironworks.

The building is constructed of regularly coursed squared and horizontally-channelled sandstone with ashlar dressings. It has ridge and side wall chimneys of stone and brick, and a hipped roof covered with Welsh slate.

The plan is symmetrical and linear in E-form, with projecting rear wings and service outbuildings built against an attached rear wall that encloses a sub-divided yard.

The south-west front elevation comprises a two-storey range of six bays rising from a deep ashlar plinth, with ashlar bands at first floor and eaves levels. At either end is a full-height canted bay window with fixed and casement lights and a moulded cornice. Between the bay windows are four bays with ashlar frames to door and window openings. The windows were originally fitted with glazing bar sash frames, though some have since been replaced with 20th-century joinery.

The right-hand return features a set-back range to the rear incorporating a stepped semi-circular headed surround to a doorway with a six-panel door beneath a fanlight with radiating glazing bars. Above this is a semi-circular-headed window with a glazing bar sash frame. To the left is a similar first-floor window to the rear wall of the main range, positioned above a six-pane sash window with a wedge lintel. Window openings with wedge lintels appear to the right of the doorway.

The rear wings to the ends are two storeys high. Between them are centrally placed paired lower two-storey ranges with glazing bar sash windows of various sizes, including four over four pane shallow pattern windows to the end walls. Windows to the rear of the main range are coupled sashes or fixed lights with glazing bars.

The rear yards are divided by walls attached to a tall stepped coursed masonry wall with ashlar half-round copings and plain gate piers at the south end. Against this wall, projecting into the yards, are single-storey outhouses that were formerly privies, coal stores and stabling, mostly now adapted for storage. Single doorways provide access to the yards from the roadway. At the north-west end is a two-storey outbuilding at right angles to the main range with a first-floor doorway to the north-west wall.

The interior of No. 3 retains panelled doors within wide architrave surrounds, semi-circular headed openings from the hallway into the main reception rooms, and panelled reveals to window openings. It also features deep moulded skirtings and a plain stick baluster stair. The other interiors were not inspected.

The dwellings were built for the works managers of the Staveley Ironworks by its founder, George Hodgkinson Barrow. They form the earliest surviving components of the industrial settlement of Barrow Hill, which was established by Barrow and subsequently developed and substantially enlarged by his successor, Richard Barrow, after whom the settlement was named.

These houses represent little-altered examples of superior working-class housing designed as part of a consciously-planned hierarchy of housing types of good quality within a planned industrial settlement. This concept, pioneered in Derbyshire in the textile manufacturing communities at Cromford and Belper, was further developed within the county in iron-making communities such as Ironville and Barrow Hill and colliery settlements such as New Bolsover. Such developments represent a medium for the continuous improvement of working-class housing which would ultimately influence early 20th-century developments such as Letchworth, through the work of Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker, who worked for the Staveley Coal and Iron Company in the 1890s.