The Mews

 

The Mews is older than it looks, we estimate built not long after the final addition to the hall in 1777. Originally designed for the stabling of horses, it has also served as a schoolroom for Breedon children just before and throughout WW2 because of fears that the village school house, that is still standing adjacent to the quarry, was dangerous due to the blasting works. Known as the 'blue room' because the walls were painted a vivid cobalt blue, presumably to brighten up what had previously been bare brickwork, the memory of the makeshift school still lingers on in the memories of some of our oldest parishioners.

 

However in 2011 we found the old building in a forlorn state. It had suffered from an unsympathetic 1970's maisonette flat conversion that flipped the orientation of the building 180 degrees so that it faced out onto the Delph road. It had been renamed unimaginatively 'No.8 The Delph' and at the same time the floor levels had been raised to enable a different front door entrance. In the process the original facade of the building had been butchered, with inappropriate uPvc windows haphazardly inserted, and a heavy concrete ramp built for disabled access up to the 'new' floor level. The pictures below show it as we first knew it and some of the early demolition work that revealed what had been done in the past.