Denby railway station

Denby railway station was a railway station which served the village of Denby in Derbyshire, England. It was opened in 1856 as Smithy Houses by the Midland Railway to on its Ripley branch from Little Eaton Junction (approximately 3 miles north of Derby) to Ripley.Denby itself is a fairly scattered community, but the main part was about a mile away. From November the timetables began to refer to "Denbey", with the correct Post Office spelling being adopted in February 1878.Initially there was a low platform on the up side, but a new higher platform to match those of the other stations was added at some time later on the down side.An important cargo was coal all from the many mines and opencast workings. An amount of ironstone was also worked but was of low quality. This meant that the local Denby Iron and Coal Company with their four furnaces 45 feet high - later increased to 60 feet - had to import their ironstone from outside the area. They also imported their coal since the local output was of domestic quality rather than being suitable for smelting.The railway provided a siding for this company and also built a facility for processing the slag from the iron production. It so happened in 1901, the Nottingham county surveyor, Edgar Purnell Hooley was visiting the site and noticed some tar that had been spilled and covered with iron foundry slag. A major trouble with highways at that time was the dust raised by increasingly speedy vehicles and various ways had been tried unsuccessfully for binding the road surface. He noticed that it had withstood the passage of traffic and obtained a British patent for producing what he called Tarmac. In 1903 he formed the TarMacadam (Purnell Hooley's Patents) Syndicate Limited.