EPW020458 ENGLAND (1928). The Colour Works, Spondon, 1928

I'd suggest that this image does not arise from flight AFL3155.

Almost every detail of this scene has changed considerably in the last 80+ years - however the double-roofed houses(?) with their chimney stacks immediately beyond the level crossing in the foreground are still recognisable on modern aerial images

You can get to this image by typing "Nottingham" in the search box - not even in the same County!

This is the works near Spondon, east of Derby within OS grid square SK3935 The railway was (at one time) the London, Midland and Scottish Railway. The Derby Canal has now gone. The A6005 is seen in the extreme top corner of the shot.

Friargate's comments are fully supported.



It is fascinating to see the lants still evident in the fields from earlier arrangements for cultivation. I remember similar characteristics in the field behind our house in nearby Borrowash in the 1950s, now sadly long gone.



Has anyone located a photo of nearby Spondon Power Station?

This view is looking north-east at Spondon, just to the east of Derby. The railway line is the London Midland & Scottish Railway route from Derby to Nottingham, Leicester and London St Pancras; Spondon Junction signal box can just be seen in the bottom left-hand corner. The road running from top to bottom with a level crossing over the railway is Megaloughton Lane, while the large factory complex is the colour works of Messrs Leech, Neal & Company, some buildings of which survive today as part of a scrapyard. The canal is the Derby-Sandiacre arm of the Derby Canal on which traffic ceased in 1945 but which was not formally abandoned until 1964. The rows of cottages to the right of Megaloughton Lane look like 'navvy dwellings' and I wonder if they housed originally construction workers engaged on building the nearby British Cellulose & Chemical Manufacturing Company's factory (later British Celanese) just off-camera to the right? Their arrangement suggests there were once more of them - later all were demolished and the site used as a tip. Ridge and furrow is prominent in the fields beyond the canal - in the late 1970s this area was used to construct the Derby-Spondon section of the A52 (more recently named Brian Clough Way) and its associated junctions with the Derby Ring Road (A5111). This supplanted the road (Derby Road) at top left as the main route. Bottom right are settling ponds associated with Derby's main sewage works.

Comparison with view EPW007496 taken six years earlier does indeed confirm that there were more of the 'navvy dwellings' than survive here (see my previous comments).

Shadows from chimneys indicate photo taken from the West/ North-West. Convergence of Canal and Railway (bridge to left) should help identify.