Roofers in Maltby

The roofs of Maltby

Old Maltby is built in pale grey Permian dolomitic limestone, "used ubiquitously in the area for building" according to a local study of the town's geology and architecture, with red clay pantiles as the traditional roof covering. Kingwood View on the High Street, a Grade II listed house from the mid-to-late 18th century, is a named example of squared and coursed limestone walling under a pantiled roof, and the medieval Market Cross, also Grade II listed, still stands on the same street.

Everything changed in 1905, when the Earl of Scarbrough signed a 60-year agreement with the Sheepbridge (Chesterfield) Coal & Iron Co. to mine the coal beneath the Sandbeck estate. The Maltby Model Village, built between 1909 and 1912 to a plan by Maurice Deacon and built by a local firm headed by Herbert Mollekin, is laid out in concentric circles linked by "spokes", a shape a neighbourhood-plan character study describes as "evocative of a pit-wheel"; streets include Deacon Crescent and McLaren Crescent, named for the colliery's Overmen and Deputies, and wider avenues such as King Avenue and Earl Avenue. That same study is direct about the building fabric: "Buildings are overwhelming of brick construction with slate roofs," in short terraced rows of six to twelve houses with chimneys and porches. There is not one listed building inside the Model Village itself, though it is protected as a Local Area of Special Character under the Maltby Neighbourhood Plan, a lesser designation than a full conservation area.

Maltby Main Colliery closed in 2013, and the non-traditional dwellings at Chesterhill were demolished between 2009 and 2011 under Housing Market Renewal, both signs of a coalfield town moving past the industry that built it. Maltby Crags, a Magnesian Limestone bryozoan reef outcrop and Site of Special Scientific Interest on the edge of town, is the same limestone ridge that gave the older High Street its building stone.