Lying to the south of Derby, Sunny Hill (sometimes written as Sunnyhill) sits between the city districts of Normanton and Littleover, with Sinfin to the south and the South Derbyshire parish of Stenson Fields beyond that. The suburb runs mainly along Stenson Road, which heads out to the small hamlet of Stenson on the Trent and Mersey Canal. To the south and east, the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway line – now the Derby-Birmingham section of the Cross Country Route, built in the 1830s – forms a clear physical boundary.
History and Development
The name Sunny Hill does not appear in the Domesday Book; the land would have fallen within Normanton in the hundred of Litchurch. Ordnance Survey maps from at least 1883 place it as a small hamlet along Stenson Road, between the junctions with Sunnyhill Avenue and Blagreaves Lane. The high point along that stretch of road is almost certainly the hill the name refers to. Early maps also show Sunny Hill House, visible until the 1960s when Bideford Drive was laid out, and an associated farmhouse near the current Oadby Rise. Significant housebuilding began during the 1930s, gradually replacing farmland, a wartime prisoner of war camp, and an industrial site. The German prisoner of war camp, constructed south of Sunnyhill Avenue, held nearly 400 men when it opened in 1941 and was enlarged in 1942 to hold a further 200. After the war it housed eastern European displaced persons as European Voluntary Workers, and a row of officers’ houses – addressed as Sunnyhill Camp – survives today as part of Staunton Avenue. Officers from nearby Normanton Barracks were also billeted there through the 1950s.
Industry and Local Landmarks
In early 1939, five acres of land near the railway line – now the area of Mimosa Crescent – were sold to Clarke Aircraft Products, whose factory produced aircraft engine components, including parts connected to Henry Clarke’s patented oil viscosity control valves. In 1951, Qualcast purchased the site and ran a lawnmower production factory there until 1991. A notable local landmark was the Blue Pool public house on Stenson Road, built in 1936 in art deco style – one of three similar pubs constructed in Derby at the time, alongside the Blue Peter in Alvaston and the Blue Boy in Chaddesden. The Blue Pool closed in 2009 and has since been a Tesco Express convenience store. Today Sunny Hill is a predominantly residential suburb with a ethnically mixed population that includes a significant Asian community.