Introduction
Lying on what was formerly the Derbyshire side of the
river Trent, Winshill was transformed in the mid 19th
century from a secluded settlement into a large village
with extensive housing for workers in Burton. Later in
the century middle-class houses were built along the
Ashby road, and there has also been extensive 20thcentury council and private housing development in
the south-eastern part of the township.
Winshill was a township in Burton ancient parish
and later a civil parish covering 1,150 a. (465.4 ha.). (fn. 15)
The southern part of the township, covering 607 a.
(245.6 ha.), was taken into Burton municipal borough
on its extension in 1878, (fn. 1) and under the Local Government Act of 1888 that area, then given as 642 a. (259.8
ha.), was treated for municipal purposes as part of
Staffordshire. (fn. 2) It was wholly transferred to Staffordshire in 1894, when the remaining part of the township
on the north and east sides of Dale brook was added to
the adjoining Derbyshire civil parish of Newton
Solney. (fn. 3) The acreage of the Winshill ward of East
Staffordshire district was 452 a. (183 ha.) in 1981. A
boundary change of 1991 added land from the Derbyshire parishes of Newton Solney and Bretby. (fn. 4) This
article treats the former township, including the part
added to Newton Solney in 1894 up to that date.
Figure 66:
Winshill township and village
The underlying rock is sandstone with some marl,
overlain with boulder clay in the south-eastern part of
the township along Ashby Road. The soil is loam. (fn. 5) An
outcrop of rock near the north end of the present
Newton Road recreation ground was called 'Aseclive'
in the mid 13th century, and the word 'cliff' was still
used in the later 18th century for outcrops to the north
of Dale brook. (fn. 1) The land rises from 149 ft. (45 m.)
beside the river Trent at the Newton Road recreation
ground to 414 ft. (122 m.) on Ashby Road near the
eastern boundary. The hill after which Winshill is
named rises to just over 300 ft. (91.5 m.) in the
centre of the township. To the north Dale brook
forms a broad valley which was taken as the boundary
when the township was split between Burton and
Newton Solney in 1894.
POPULATION
The adult population listed in an Easter Book probably
of the 1550s was 84. (fn. 2) The township's population in
1801 was 309, rising to 357 by 1821, falling to 342 by
1831, but rising again to 377 by 1841 and 405 by 1851.
It then doubled to 880 in 1861 as a result of new
housing in Winshill village, and it continued to
increase substantially, reaching 1,478 by 1871. (fn. 3) The
most populated part of the township was included in
Burton municipal borough in 1878, with populations
of 2,829 in 1881 and 3,644 in 1891. (fn. 4) In 1901 the
population was 4,266. Thereafter figures are not available for the same area, but in 1911 the population of
the Winshill and Wetmore ward of the county borough
was 5,551, rising to 5,680 by 1921 and 6,222 by 1931.
In 1951 the ward's population had increased only
slightly to 6,279, but it was 8,508 by 1961 and 9,358
by 1971; the rise was chiefly the result of new councilhouse estates. The population of the borough council's
Winshill ward was 7,201 in 1981, falling to 6,614 by
1991. (fn. 5)
COMMUNICATIONS
The east end of the medieval Burton bridge stood in
Winshill, where the road to Ashby-de-la-Zouch (Leics.)
took the line of Bearwood Hill Road and High Bank
Road. The road was turnpiked in 1753 and a tollgate
was erected near the foot of Bearwood Hill Road. (fn. 6) After
the present Ashby Road was laid out on a more direct
line in the later 1830s, a tollgate was erected near Moat
Bank. A tollhouse there was demolished in the 1930s. (fn. 7)
SETTLEMENT
Winshill Village The name Winshill is Old English
and means Wine's hill. (fn. 8) If there was not already a
settlement in the Anglo-Saxon period, one evidently
existed in the later 11th century when William I
installed privileged tenants at Winshill, and a village
certainly existed in the later 13th century, when there is
mention of Ralph at the town end (ad finem ville) of
Winshill. (fn. 9) In the later 18th century the village stood
around a green on a declivity on the east side of the hill,
mostly along the north end of Church Hill Street and
Berry Hedge Lane. (fn. 10) A National school was opened at
the north end of the village in 1846, and a Methodist
chapel opened in 1845 possibly stood in the same
area. (fn. 11)
When an Anglican church was built in 1869, a
prominent site was chosen on the top of the hill
overlooking the developing part of the village along
the southern stretch of Church Hill Street. (fn. 12) West, East,
and North Streets occupying the block of land in the
angle of Church Hill Street and Hawfield Lane were
built up with rows of workers' cottages in the mid
1850s by Burton Freehold Land Society. (fn. 13) Nearly half
the township's population lived there in 1861, when
the area was known as the Freehold Society's 'New
Village'. (fn. 14) The houses were demolished in the mid
1970s as part of a slum clearance programme. (fn. 15) To
the south Eldon Street had been laid out by 1879, and a
row of houses called Eldon Buildings on the east side of
Church Hill Street existed by 1881. (fn. 16) By the late 1870s
rows of houses stretched south-west of the village along
Bearwood Hill Road, some with polychrome brickwork; Alexandra Road was also then being laid out
with large detached and terraced houses, many with
decorative brickwork and Gothic details. (fn. 17)
Ashby Road Development Having been laid out in the
later 1830s, Ashby Road was built up first from the
Burton end. Arthurlie House, of brick with stone
dressings set back off the north side of the road, was
built in the 1850s, probably for Oscar Stephen, who
was living there in 1861. (fn. 18) The grander Highfield
House near by had been built by 1857 for Francis
Wardle, whose son Henry was a senior partner in Salt
& Co. brewery in Burton and Liberal M.P. for South
Derbyshire from 1885 until his death in 1892. (fn. 19) Ashfield House, built in the mid 1870s on the opposite side
of Ashby Road, is an irregularly-shaped brick house
decorated with polychrome diaper patterns and has a
dentilled cornice along the gables. Since 1933 it has
been a freemasons' hall. (fn. 1) Smaller houses were also
being built by the 1860s, (fn. 2) and the Swan inn at the
foot of Ashby Road, certainly in existence by 1869, was
probably built soon after the opening of the present
Burton bridge in 1864. (fn. 3) A Gothic mansion called Moat
Bank at the east end of Ashby Road on the Derbyshire
boundary was designed c. 1860 by 'Mr. Street' of
London (probably G. E. Street) for a Burton solicitor
Abraham Bass. The name is derived from a ditch which
surrounded a medieval rabbit warren there. (fn. 4)
Figure 67:
FIG. 67. Winshill in 1879
Several large houses in Ashby Road have been
converted into nursing homes. They include the
Rowans, at the corner with Alexandra Road, opened
with a new accommodation block in 1991 and owned
since 1996 by the Rider House group. (fn. 5)
Winshill Wood Area Ashby Road runs across part of
the former Winshill wood, which was possibly the site
of a hermitage in the early 12th century: a holy woman
(sanctimonialis) named Aethelgifu then held land in
Winshill. (fn. 6) There was a settlement called 'le Wodehuses'
in the mid 13th century, and families were living at
Winshill wood in the mid 18th century. (fn. 7) The woodland
was felled in the late 18th or earlier 19th century, the
only new planting being Waterloo Clump in or shortly
after 1815. (fn. 8) The nearby house called Waterloo Mount
was built in 1897. (fn. 9) The water tower on the summit was
built in 1907 by the South Staffordshire Waterworks
Company. (fn. 10)
Newton Road Area A corn mill stood on the Winshill bank of the Trent at the foot of Mill Hill Lane by
the 11th century, but it seems not to have attracted
much settlement around it. A fulling mill was built in
the 14th century on an adjoining island, and in the
late 18th century it became a cotton mill. (fn. 11) The
present Royal Oak inn on the main road south of
the mill existed under that name by 1829. (fn. 12) The
nearby Trent Cottage was built in the early 1840s
for William Cooke, a smallwares manufacturer from
Measham (Derb.), who had recently taken over the
cotton mill. The house was converted into sheltered
housing for the elderly and renamed Abbeyfield
House in 1969. (fn. 13) Another villa, the Woodlands on
high ground at the southern end of Newton Road,
was built by 1846 for a Burton surgeon, Robert
Tomlinson (d. 1877). (fn. 14) The house is now occupied
as a sixth-form centre for the adjoining comprehensive school. A row of houses called Clifton Terrace
along the west side of Newton Road near Burton
bridge dates from 1880. (fn. 15)
Bladon House What was called Bladon Cottage in
1836 (fn. 16) may have stood on the site of the present
Bladon House, built probably c. 1860 for John Gretton
(d. 1867), a director of the Burton brewing firm of
Bass, Ratcliff, and Gretton. His son, also John (d.
1899), left it to his younger son Hugh Frederick. (fn. 17)
Hugh died in 1928, and the ownership passed to his
elder brother John, created Baron Gretton of Stapleford (Leics.) in 1944. In 1945 Lord Gretton gave the
house and 23 a. to Burton infirmary for use as a
convalescent home. The scheme came to nothing,
and in 1947 the house was acquired by the Staffordshire Yeomanry as its headquarters and was renamed
Yeomanry House. (fn. 18) It reverted to the name Bladon
House in 1968 when bought by the Honormead
Schools group as a school for emotionally damaged
children, still its use in 1999. (fn. 19)
20th-Century Housing Estates Council houses were
built by Burton corporation in the later 1920s in an
extension of Eldon Street, in streets off its west side,
and also in a new street called Bladon Street running
over a recreation ground on the north side of Hawfield
Lane. A large council estate on the east side of the
township stretching from Vancouver Drive to Empire
Road was built mostly in the early 1950s, and a block of
flats called Elizabeth Court in Brough Road was
opened as warden-controlled retirement housing in
1978. (fn. 20) The Dalebrook Road private estate off the
north end of Newton Road dates from the late 1960s,
and in 1999 another private estate called Trent Gardens
was built on the south side of Mill Hill Lane on the site
of a demolished secondary school.
Services Although the built-up part of Winshill was
taken into Burton borough in 1878, it was not until the
early 20th century that it fully benefited from a mains
water supply and sewage system. (fn. 1)
Figure 68:
Former Winshill
Institute (now Roman
Catholic church), Mount
Strefset, from west
SOCIAL LIFE
Winshill had its own wake in 1871, when it was held in
May. It was still held in the early 20th century. (fn. 2)
A lodge of Foresters was established in 1860 and the
Wardle lodge of Oddfellows (Manchester Unity) in
1878. In 1990 the latter was amalgamated with the
newly-formed Trent Lodge in Burton. (fn. 3)
The Royal Sussex Lodge of Freemasons, consecrated
at Repton (Derb.) in 1817, moved in 1869 to the Swan
inn in Winshill. From 1888 it met in the newly-opened
Winshill Institute in Mount Street, where it remained
until 1933 when Ashfield House in Ashby Road was
converted into a masonic hall, a temple being added to
the house at its south-east corner. The hall was also used
from 1933 by Trisantona Lodge, consecrated at Stapenhill Institute in 1919, and from 1947 by Tutbury Castle
Lodge, consecrated at Hatton (Derb.) in 1897 and
moving to the institute in 1926. Staffordshire lodges
which met in Burton moved to Ashfield House in 1976. (fn. 4)
Winshill Institute in Mount Street, built of red brick,
was opened in 1888 and was paid for by subscription.
It became the present Roman Catholic church in
1967. (fn. 5)
A 4-a. recreation ground on the north side of
Hawfield Lane was opened in 1895. When houses
were built there in Bladon Street in the later 1920s, it
was replaced by the present ground on the north side of
Mill Hill Lane. (fn. 6) A recreation ground occupying
meadow land beside the river Trent on the west side
of Newton Road was opened in 1956. (fn. 7) A ground in the
angle of Canterbury Road and Melbourne Avenue was
provided when the surrounding council estate was laid
out in the 1950s, and Winshill New Community
Centre was opened there in 1990. (fn. 8)
Winshill tennis club, in existence by 1912, opened
courts on the south side of Ashby Road in 1921 and
ch
anged its name to Ashby Road tennis club. A
squash court was added in 1971 and a clubhouse
was opened in 1980. The club changed its name
again to the present Burton Tennis and Squash club
in 1994. (fn. 9)