What makes Rolleston such a distinctive village that its personality needs the protection of a design statement?

A visitor cannot fail to be struck by the importance of the brick walls lining the village streets and the road from Tutbury. These include the walls surrounding the former Mosley estate, but also front the New Row cottages and protect Ivy House Farm from the eyes of curious strangers. If a property has no boundary walls it often has a close hedge to defend it, and many houses have a combination of both wall and hedge. Everywhere the distinctive red brick is softened by the use of ivy, and part of the charm of the village comes from the subtle blend of brick, ivy and privet, picket or lap fences are rarely used here.

The brook which is a central feature of the village is exposed to a main road only along Burnside; the lake is hidden away beyond the pool and weir of Brook Hollows, and the brookside walk from the Spread Eagle pub towards the Dove is hidden away from the main Station Road behind the houses occupying the old pinfold land, themselves hidden behind dense hedges. The bridge over the brook is part of the group of focal points: the Spread itself, the little island with the bus shelter and the anvil commemorating a former village smith, the Post Office with the adjacent topiary in a cottage garden, the village Sign in its own plot beside the weir commanding a vista along the Alderbrook. Motor traffic can hardly appreciate the existence of these miniature landscapes, which need to be seen from a pedestrian viewpoint.

Only the visitor on foot or in a wheelchair, taking advantage of the dropped kerbs, can become aware of the tiny yards or courts behind the main thoroughfares, where brick houses of all periods blend together, seventeenth century cottages in Bladon's yard, barn conversions at the rear of Brookside, a combination of the two at the junction of School Lane and Chapel Lane where Emery's row has red brick adjoining the timber framed, thatched cottage and a converted barn opposite.

These hidden treasures can be contrasted with the three-decker farmhouses which also hide away from Station Road, the nineteenth-Century replacement for the village street. Even the Brook House, now a hotel and restaurant, is tucked coyly behind its barn, beside the ford formed at a bend in the stream. Anyone driving through Rolleston, whether from Burton, Stretton or Tutbury, might think the Parish Church of St. Mary and the Spread Eagle were the only distinctive buildings among an eclectic mix of styles and periods. From a car it is unlikely you will even notice the plain, small scale but in their own way exquisite, row of almshouses set in a typically Rolleston style behind their tree-dotted lawn on the far side of the brook.

Looking down on the village from Beacon Hill, or looking up to the village from the banks of the Dove, you might almost be forgiven for thinking it a tiny hamlet, so little even of the more substantial housing developments can be seen from these vantage points. In keeping with its traditions, Rolleston hides The Lawns, Meadow View, Alderbrook Close, Twentylands and Walford Road. Only from the air can you see how completely Rolleston has absorbed its twentieth-century residential buildings.