If you enjoy local history and you like nothing better than to stand looking at a scene and trying to conjure up in your mind’s eye how it once looked, then this cache is located at the perfect spot to really test your imagination! Having found the cache (hopefully), hidden in the trees at the side of the driveway then stand for a moment looking north-east up the driveway towards West Hallam. Imagine if you will that it’s a sunny autumn day in 1945. You have just walked down Cat and Fiddle Lane from your home at the neighbouring village of Dale Abbey to meet a relative off the Nottingham train – a father, son or brother returning home from the war perhaps! As you near the station you hear the distant whistle of the approaching train and stand at this spot to watch the train go by.
The railway passes across the driveway a few yards in front of you. To the right the tracks stretch off towards Ilkeston and beyond to Nottingham Victoria. To the left is West Hallam station, Morley tunnel, Breadsall station and then on to Derby Friargate and that wonderfully decorative low spanning bridge. The spot is less wooded than it is now and busier. To your right a field full of new army Nissan huts nestling up to the railway line which serves them. This recent invasion of huts is the army’s storage depot, designed to relieve some of the strain on Chilwell depot during the busy war years. Today many of the original huts remain, dwarfed by the gigantic buildings of the modern day storage and distribution depot, which brings a daily multitude of lorries thundering up and down Cat and Fiddle Lane.
The train saunters by from right to left on its last 200 yard curve into West Hallam Station. A pannier tank with a small rake of two or three coaches in tow. Looking to the left it seems impossible for the train to have ever reached the station – a large field rising steeply to the north firmly blocking its path. In 1945 however, neither the field nor the hill it sits upon existed. Instead your eyes would have fallen upon a vastly different scene. An expanse of sidings with numerous coal trucks, waiting their turn to be filled. In the background a winding tower and signal box. The colliery heralded your arrival at West Hallam. Looking across the field toward the station it’s hard to believe the pit ever existed – all traces having been completely obliterated!
All is not lost however, and if you wander on towards the station building you will be heartened to see that it remains in good condition and very similar to its original form; only the myriad of stone garden ornaments for sale on the long station driveway suggestive of its new use. Stand on the junction of Cat and Fiddle Lane with Station Road and the scene has hardly changed. Cars still use the brick built bridge next to the station which once allowed traffic to cross over the line. Even the two concrete posts of the station name sign remain. Little imagination is needed to replace the dark crimson sign with the cream lettering “West Hallam for Dale Abbey” – a train could so easily rumble under the bridge; smoke from its funnel curling over the parapet. But cross the road and look over the far side of the bridge and the dream disappears. Once again, infill of the cuttings and recent remodelling of the land has rubbed all traces of the track off the land and the map. So now the station sits marooned as an oasis of railway heritage, orphaned on both sides from the slightest suggestion of the tracks which once connected it to the rest of the world. Now take the road over the bridge and much more remains. Remarkably the goods yard and buildings survive, now in their retirement as industrial units. This was no sleepy country halt, but a thriving little station in its heyday.
Having greeted your relative off the train, you head back the way you came, up Cat and Fiddle Lane. In 1945 as you made your way up the hill you passed two buildings which are strong reminders of much earlier days. Fortunately both buildings survive to this day. Look from the cache site passed the entrance to the storage depot. Just around the next corner is Baldock Mill. This lovely building, next of course to the stream which passes under the road, was once an idyllic spot, long before the storage depot and railway arrived and when Cat and Fiddle lane was little more than a farm track. In your mind’s eye add a horse and cart crossing the bridge over the stream and you have an image befitting of a Constable landscape. At the top of the hill the Cat and Fiddle windmill remains, prominent on the skyline.
So the area around this cache has had a fascinating and diverse history; moving from a quiet rural landscape to busy industry and now part way back to rural again. If you are still not convinced as to how lovely this area once was, take a walk on a warm sunny afternoon up to the church in West Hallam. Walk round the back and you will find a wooden seat overlooking the area. Sit for a while and use your mind’s eye to paint out the hideous carbuncle of the storage depot which drowns out much of the floor of the valley and look beyond to the gently rising farmland, crowned by the windmill on the distant skyline. It’s easy to see that this gently sloping, sheltered valley was once a very green and pleasant land indeed!