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Does Anyone Remember Going Into Derbyshire At The Weekends And Staying In Wooden Huts


Guest cabanks1

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Guest cabanks1

Hi everyone,

When I was small in the 1940s we used to go and stay in Calver, Derbyshire. There were wooden huts there by the river. Does anyone else remember going there. I'm trying to put some information together on it for myself.

Catherine

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My wife and I used to have a caravan on, and also part-time managed, the caravan site that replaced the wooden huts. The owners lived in Hampshire and North Yorkshire.

The field originally belonged to Mrs. Broughton, the landlady of the Bridge Inn.

The original field backed on to the Bridge Inn but when the new bridge was built circa 1971 the Calver / Baslow road was re-aligned to the rear of the pub and the site was moved slightly south into the bend of the river.

Eventually the tenants began to replace wooden huts with static caravans.

On Mrs. Broughton's retirement the pub changed hands and the campsite became the property of Mrs. Broughtons grandson, grand-daughter and her grandson-in-law who ran a land agency in North Yorkshire.

They had an amenity block built and the site continued with a series of 10 year site licences and planning permissions until around the year 2000 when a river flood caused some damage to the site.

The Peak Park people then refused to renew the licence/planning permission unless the site was altered with the vans moved away from the low ground by the river bank. They also wanted services running to each caravan standing.

The owners were approaching retirement and decided to sell the site.

It was bought by a chap from Bakewell who already owned a site in the Peak District.

He had the pitches re-located and serviced and ran the site himself on a much more commercial basis.

The pitches are rented on a yearly licence for the use of the tenant and their family members.

We stopped on for a couple more years but because of ill health and a much less pleasing site layout we decided to give up camping after about eighteen years.

My original connection with Calver came about because I married a Calver lass who can remember many of the "hut dwellers".

HD

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Guest cabanks1

Thanks so much for the information hilldweller. I visited there last year and was trying to work out where the huts would have originally been sited. It's certainly different now. When we used to go the huts were just at the top of the field. There was no water on tap and and we had to go to the Bridge Inn to use the toilet there. It was lots of fun though - swimming in the river and having organised games on the field. (the huts were just along the top of the field).

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If you stand looking over the downstream new bridge parapet and look to the left, you will see a clump of trees by the riverbank.

In this clump is a large apple tree. One of the old tenants told me that this apple tree grew beside one of the huts.

I don't know if it's still there but there used to be a photo in the Bridge Inn taken before the new road/bridge was built showing the pub with some caravans immediately behind it.

HD

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Guest cabanks1

Yes - later on there were caravans behind the pub - my aunt had one there. When we first went there there wasn't even any water laid on and we also had to go to the bridge Inn to use their toilet. Happy days though!

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