IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Balwant Drive, SUTTON-IN-ASHFIELD, NG17 5NA

These are the rear of the steelworks pictured in Image

at the Maun Valley Industrial Estate in Sutton in Ashfield

By this modern house Sheepwash Lane becomes a footpath giving access to Lucknow Drive under King's Mill Road, the modern A38.

I am indebted to Robert Holland for the following information about this photo: "Close to the camera are the offices of Stokes, Taylor and Shaw and the buildings beyond are their workshops. STS were a firm of structural steel fabricators who supplied Bailey Bridges to the army throughout and after the 1945 war (up till 1950, I think), General structural steelwork for building structures, pressure vessels, heavy mechanical devices for handling colliery mine cars to several coal fields. But from 1948, and for several years thereafter, their principal products were for the new power stations (eg Connahs Quay, Chester, Drakelow, Staffordshire) and these included large gas ducts (sometimes of unimaginably complex geometry) and tubed internal walls for enormous furnaces made in the larger sheds which "appear" to cross Hamilton Road in the photograph. They were one of the last firms to employ a blacksmith and he fashioned wrought iron hangers from which the ducts were hung."

Level crossing, with former railway employee's house.

An East Midlands Trains service heads over the level crossing at Sutton Junction on its way to Nottingham. The line was reopened to passengers in stages during the 1990s having originally closed as a victim of the Beeching cuts in 1964. The route was always important for coal, but this traffic has now all but ceased with the demise of deep mining in the area, leaving only the passenger trains. Just to the south of the crossing was the site of Sutton Junction station where once the 'Penny Emma' service gave a link to the town centre. When the line was reopened it was decided not to rebuild the station here but to site a new one - Sutton Parkway - further south.

Heading east.

Despite the road's name, anybody expecting to find Sutton's station here will be disappointed. In fact, until 1964 Sutton Junction station was located just to the south of the level crossing; as the name implies it was a junction with, until 1951, a short branch to the centre of Sutton. The branch passenger service was affectionately known as the 'Penny Emma'. When the line reopened to passengers in 1995 it was decided not to reopen a station at this location but instead Sutton Parkway was opened further to the south