Tucked between Alvaston and Osmaston to the south of Derby city centre, Wilmorton runs along the A6 from Deadman’s Lane to the Canal Bridge. The suburb grew out of the Osmaston Hall estate after it was broken up in the 1880s, and the post office gave it the name Wilmorton in 1887, after Sir George Wilmot-Horton, 5th Baronet, of Osmaston.
The Derby Canal and its Legacy
In 1796 the Derby Canal was cut through Wilmorton, bringing trade to what had been a quiet corner of the estate. The canal operated for well over a century before closing in 1964, after which it was converted into a cycle track. Work is currently under way to restore it. A pub beside the canal, The Navigation, was first built in 1796 when the waterway opened, then rebuilt in 1895 to a design by Derby architect James Wright. The other local pub, the Portland Hotel, sits on the corner of London Road and Dickinson Street.
Housing, Education, and Later Development
Most of the original housing in Wilmorton was put up by the Midland Railway Company. A school opened in 1893, and in 1904 a red-brick church dedicated to Saint Osmund was constructed. Behind the housing, the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company built a railway college in 1937 in a neoclassical style; that building is now used as the Derby Conference Centre. The former Wilmorton campus of Derby College, which stood off Harrow Street and was known at various times as Derby College of Further Education and Derby Tertiary College, was demolished around 2006 and replaced by a housing development called City Point. Some of its facilities moved to a site on Nottingham Road called Mason’s Place, and others transferred to the main college site in Mackworth. In the late 1990s, a new stretch of the A6 was built from Wilmorton through Pride Park to the Cockpitt roundabout, a road now known as Pride Parkway.