One new blue plaque is currently in production, with two more planned.

Our blue plaque for the United Reformed church at Rose Hill is now in production at the manufacturers Leander. We have been promised delivery in early June, but we don’t yet have an unveiling date.

The two other plaques we currently have in hand, for North Midland House near the station and the Portland Hotel, are ready to go into production, and we are merely waiting for Wetherspoons, as the owners of the Portland, to confirm permission to install their plaque. The Derbyshire Times reported a few weeks ago that this would be forthcoming but we have yet to hear from the company.

The proposed text for the two railway plaques is as follows:

Midland Railway Engineers’ Office Built c.1870. Incorporating masonry from the former North Midland Railway Chesterfield station of 1840 designed by Francis Thompson.

Portland Hotel Opened 1899. Architect James Ragg Wigfull (1864–1936). To the right of this plaque stood the Chesterfield Market Place station of the Lancashire, Derbyshire & East Coast Railway. Architect Cole Alfred Adams (1844–1909) Opened 1897. Closed 1951. Demolished 1973.

Both these plaques are to be paid for by East Midlands Railway community fund.