Marble Hall, Nightingale Road, Derby, Derbyshire: Archaeological Building Record (OASIS ID: waterman2-173739)
Waterman Infrastructure & Environment Ltd (Waterman), 2015. https://doi.org/10.5284/1032951. How to cite using this DOI
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Tim
Murphy
Waterman Infrastructure & Environment Ltd (Waterman)
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Resource identifiers
- ADS Collection: 2078
- DOI:https://doi.org/10.5284/1032951
- How to cite using this DOI
Introduction
The site is located in Nightingale Road, Derby. The building is Grade II listed (List Entry Number: 1393116) and was formerly the street-fronting façade building of the Rolls-Royce main works at Nightingale Road. Marble Hall (also known as ‘The Commercial Block’) is the only remaining building of the factory complex after clearance of the site. Marble Hall will be refurbished as part of a wider regeneration scheme for the site.
The building was conceived by Rolls-Royce in the original plans for the factory works, but was not constructed until 1912. The land for its footprint had been left empty during the initial phase of the plant’s development.
In 1938 the Commercial Block underwent its most extensive phase of alteration and refurbishment. The central nine bays of the block were replaced with a grand new entrance. Apart from the unveiling of the stained glass window in 1949, little is specifically documented about Marble Hall or its post-war development. The structure is known to have been altered internally, and a concrete frame extension attached to the rear elevation in the 1960s/1970s. In 2008 Rolls-Royce had decided that the Nightingale Road Factory was too small and too expensive to modernise. This resulted in its closure and operations moved to the nearby Sinfin plant. After 100 years of operational use, all of the former factory buildings at the site were demolished by 2014 leaving Marble Hall as the only remaining structure.
The aim of this programme of building recording is to provide a long-term sustainable record of Marble Hall prior to its redevelopment. The building is considered significant as the most prominent, and only remaining structure, of the former Rolls-Royce plant. The record aims to: provide an outline history of the building, to set its historical context within the wider site, assess the significance of Marble Hall, record the external elevations of Marble Hall, and record the interior spaces within Marble Hall.
