The town was built on coal, iron and lace, and grew from under 2,500 people in 1801 to over 30,000 by 1911. Cotmanhay's two main industries were textiles and coal mining, and Erewash Borough Council credits the local brick, often made alongside the collieries, with much of the town centre's character. Since the station reopened in 2017, Ilkeston has been easier to reach than it was for half a century.
Kirk Hallam and the post-war homes
Kirk Hallam was built up in the 1950s with public housing by Ilkeston Corporation and the Stanton and Staveley company around St Norbert Drive, then mixed public and private housing around Godfrey Drive in the 1960s and 1970s. Homes from these decades commonly have plasterboard ceilings, and over the years the joints between the boards tend to show as long, straight cracks. Walls are usually firm, so a skim there is about covering decades of decorating, fixings and filler.
Why ceilings crack, and how a skim helps
A ceiling takes more movement than a wall. Floorboards above flex every time someone walks across the room, joists shrink and swell with the seasons, and light fittings get swapped and moved. Cracks gather along board joints and around the rose. Filling them rarely lasts, because the movement is still there. The more durable fix is to screw back any loose boards, tape every joint with scrim, and skim the whole ceiling as one continuous surface. If a ceiling is sagging or badly damaged, new plasterboard goes up first and is then skimmed.
Patches around light fittings are another common sight. When a fitting is moved or a cable rerouted, the plaster around it gets cut and filled, and the repair shows as a ring or a raised patch. A full skim brings all of those back to one flat plane.
Older homes near the town centre
The town centre conservation area runs along Bath Street and South Street to the Market Place, with Wharncliffe Road a mainly residential stretch of wider plots and detached houses. Older homes like these may still have lath and plaster ceilings. Each one is checked for loose areas before skimming; sound ones are skimmed, and anything that has lost its key is overboarded. If a house is listed, check with Erewash Borough Council before original plaster is removed.
Let a skimmed ceiling dry with the room ventilated and no heater blasting at it, then give it a thinned coat of matt emulsion before the final colour.
Ring 07877 353120 or use the enquiry form to talk about skimming in Ilkeston, Cotmanhay or Kirk Hallam. We're on hand seven days a week, 7am to 5pm.
