In 1875, a marriage took place in St. Stephens Church, Sneinton, Nottingham, between a schoolteacher Lydia Beardsall and a coal miner Arthur Lawrence. They had five children and the youngest was named David Herbert Lawrence, born 11 September 1885. ‘Bert’ as he was known grew up to follow his mother’s profession in teaching and then – as history now shows – to become a literary legend.
The young D. H. Lawrence used to collect his father’s wages from the Mining Company’s office at Durban House, Mansfield Road. The building was built as the offices of the local owners of the coal mine, Barber Walker and Company.
Many of D. H. Lawrence’s writings used characters and locations from Eastwood and surrounding areas and the similarity was not lost on local people. Jesse Chambers of Hags Farm, for instance, took great exception to the similarity with the character Miriam in the world famous book ‘Sons and Lovers’.
Lawrence married a daughter of a German Aristocrat in 1914 and probably as a result of intimidation from local people during the 1914/18 war became progressively unsettled. It is also clear that Lawrence was increasingly disillusioned with the many unpleasant social consequences of industrialisation. As his fame as a writer grew – and his income – he travelled extensively with his wife to America, Asia, Australia and Europe, he spent much of his later life in Taos, New Mexico. He died on 2nd March 1930 at the Villa Robermond in Vence, France, from complications of tuberculosis; his remains were finally laid to rest in Mexico.