Penny Soames
Penny was a WORK Records volunteer researching the Robinson and Sons archive at Derbyshire Record Office. Recently retired, Penny worked at Ashgate Hospice as a Visual Display Manager for 12 years. With an interest in social history and textile art, Penny has a link to Robinson and Sons through her maternal grandmother, Vera Ida Hunt, who worked for the company in the 1960s. Penny lives in Chesterfield.
I was first drawn to the WORK Records project through a family connection; my maternal grandmother, Vera Ida Hunt, worked for Robinsons in the early 1960s, though the family knew relatively little about her time there. Living close to the former Robinsons site in Chesterfield also sparked my interest in exploring the company’s links to my local area and community heritage.
I was intrigued by the many connections to Robinson and Sons in my local area. Walton Dam and Somersall Park and Playing Fields were acquired in 1930 as a gift from Robinson and Sons through the Derbyshire Playing Fields Association, in memory of founders of the company. I walk past the plaque commemorating this several times a week on my regular dog walk route but had not stopped to read it before. This is an area used by myself and many locals for recreational purposes and, in recognising its history, I started to look at it with different eyes - the cricket grounds and bowling club, first set up by Robinsons, are also still in existence.
One dreary damp Sunday, I walked my dog along a public footpath that cuts through part of the old Robinsons’ site and then runs into Chesterfield. I took photos along the way of the derelict buildings, graffiti and the wonderful iron fencing around the now Sonoco buildings, where you can see depictions of Robinson and Sons’ history that now form part of the Chesterfield Art Trail. The walk gave me a real sense of the huge scale of the area that Robinsons originally covered in Chesterfield and raised many questions: what’s going to happen to all of this brown field land? There’s been talk of re-development for many years, but what about some of the listed buildings?
My interest in local history has been renewed through the WORK Records project, and I have recently been exploring some of these ideas about place and community through my own artwork. These are just a few of the mixed media textile pieces I have been working on, based on my own sketches and photographs of the old Robinsons’ works including abandoned factory buildings, windows and gates. I have been developing these pieces with InSPIREation21, a Chesterfield-based group of textile artists, embroiderers and stitch enthusiasts, of which I am a member, and I hope to exhibit some of this work with the group in 2027.
Penny's artwork has been inspired by her research in the archives and her family connection, through her maternal grandmother, to Robinson and Sons. She writes about her research inspired by her family connection here.
