Staveley Coal and Iron Company

[2] It exploited local ironstone quarried from land owned by the Duke of Devonshire on the outskirts of the village.

During the First World War the company began producing sulphuric, nitric and picric acids, TNT and guncotton.

After the war the company developed a range of chlorinated organics, purchasing salt-bearing land near Sandbach, Cheshire.

By 1980, BSC sold off sections of the site as they divested themselves of non-core activities and by 2007 most of the former works at Staveley has been shut down and cleared.

Eric Varley, a former Chesterfield Labour MP and cabinet minister, was an apprentice with the company after leaving school before becoming a trade union official and, much later, Chairman of another local firm Coalite.

The works was unusual in hiring locomotives for internal shunting work from the Main Line Railways as in 1963
Stanton & Staveley manhole cover