8. Walker Street

Going up in the world

The Lawrence family would move into their third home in Eastwood in 1891 and remain there until 1905; the longest lived in of their rented houses and the one in which Lawrence would spend his most formative years, between six and twenty years old. It had a commanding view of the local countryside, dotted with evidence of the numerous mine shafts and other signs of industry, described by Lawrence as “…a curious cross between industrialism and the old agricultural England of Shakespeare and Milton, and Fielding and George Eliot,” (‘Nottinghamshire and the Mining Country’, D.H. Lawrence, 1929). In the same essay he goes on to say, “Whoever stands on Walker Street will see the whole landscape of Sons and Lovers before him: Underwood in front, the hills of Derbyshire on the left, the woods and hills of Annesley on the right. The road from Nottingham by Watnall, Moorgreen, up to Underwood and on to Annesley… gives you all the landscape of The White Peacock, Miriam’s farm in Sons and Lovers, and the home of the Crich family, and Willey Water, in Women in Love.”

The highly situated and often wind swept street that the house was on led Lawrence to describe it as Bleak House “because it stood so open to the winds”. He eloquently portrays this in Sons and Lovers, “When William was growing up, the family moved from the Bottoms to a house on the brow of the hill, which spread out like a convex cockle-shell, or a clamp shell before it. In front of the house was a huge old ash tree. The west wind, sweeping from Derbyshire, caught the houses with full force, and the tree shrieked again,” (Sons and Lovers, D.H. Lawrence, 1911).

Proceed along Walker street to see the “Moon and Stars”

The Three Tuns was D.H. Lawrence’s father’s favourite pub, where he would call for a drink on the way home from Brinsley Colliery after an extensive shift. The pub was used in Lawrence’s novel, Sons and Lovers, with the name changed to the Moon and Stars. It was on this site that the “hill top wakes” or fair was held for three days each September, causing much local excitement and higher rates than normal of truancy at the local schools.