About Us

Foston

Foston lies to the north of the A50 (Derby to Stoke truck road), around 12 miles from Derby City centre and 23 from Stoke-on-Trent.

Foston

Scropton

Scropton

Scropton lies to the south of the A50 (Derby to Stoke trunk road) around 12 miles from the centre of Derby, and just under 23 miles from Stoke-on-Trent.
Despite it’s peaceful rural environment, it’s easy access to the A50 gives it excellent east-west communications, making it a very attractive area in which to live.

History

Scropton and Foston have formed one ecclesiastical parish for over 1,300 years and one civil parish (as Foston and Scropton) since 1868. the first Parish Council being elected in 1894. The boundaries of both parishes being the same.

For centuries, Foston was on the coach and wagon route between Derby and Uttoxeter, and Scropton on the Tutbury and Burton upon Trent routes. Consequently, residents of the two villages looked in different geographical directions for their needs, interests and influences.

The 1996 opening of the A50 dual carriageway, running east to west, further separated Foston and Scropton.

The North Staffordshire Railway Station at Scropton opened in 1848 and served passengers on the Derby to Stoke upon Trent line until it ceased to be a train halt in 1886.

Stevenson’s Bus Services operated a service between Burton upon Trent and Uttoxeter via Foston until the company was taken over by Arriva in 1998. The Potteries Motor Traction ran buses through Foston on the Derby to Hanley route.

For centuries, the principal activity was farming and its related activities, with local cottage industries satisfying such needs as clothes, footwear, food and drink,

During the second half of the twentieth century the number of working farms reduced, the number of small industries increased an Dove Valley Business Park was established in Foston. A Gypsy caravan site opened in Foston in 1979.

Principal landowners from 1100 to 1954 lived in Foston, and Foston Hall was a private residence from 1310 to 1947, although requisitioned by the Home Office to be temporary accommodation for children and staff of the Railway Servants’ Orphanage, Derby from 1940 to 1946, during the Second World War.

Since 1947, it has served as an approved school, Junior detention centre, immigration detention centre, men’s open prison and women’s closed prison.

There has been a parish church on the same site in Scropton since at least 1086. and there was a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Scropton from 1812 to 1969.

A school in Scropton served the Parish’s Children from 1852 to 1951.

There was an ale house in Foston in 1577, and 3 guest beds and stabling for six horses at an alehouse in 1686. More recent facilities include the Crown Inn at Foston until the 1890s, when it was replaced by the new Forester’s Arms, Scropton, which closed in 2012.

The was a Post Office and general store in Foston until 1980s and in Scropton until the 1990s.

A petrol filling station in Scropton closed in the 1970s and one in Foston closed in the 1990s.

The first Parish hall was erected in Scropton in 1926 and the present on, on the same site in 2010.

Potted history kindly provided by Gordon Thornhill MBE (2008 and updated September 2013)

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