The builder doing our house is from there and we got talking about mines. He says there are lots of mines for alabaster and that collapses happen a lot.
does anyone know of any u/g access or details about them?

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When the A50 was being built past Chellaston around 1994, we were contracted to check out potential mining problems to the excavations for the big cutting for the roundabout at Aston-on-Trent (next along from Chellaston roundabout).
There have been workings from the woods next to the roundabout, going into the hill but the entrances there had all collapsed. They looked diggable but it is private land and some sort of reserve so it didn't get done at that time.
There was also a brick lined shaft upon the hill shown on plans a ventilation shaft. We winched that but it had been used as a dustbin and was well short of full depth.
Also there had been an adit over the back of the hill and some bits of buildings remained but the adit was long gone.
It was probable that the cutting excavation would just graze the ends of some of the workings but we never found out if it actually did.
I think the deposits there are part of the general line of gypsum deposits running through from Fauld to East Leake area so other small workings on outcrops are quite possible.

Stretching my memory back to 1952 when I lived in Derby and was studying geology, we cycled one evening down to Chellaston to look at the brick works and also collect some gypsum/alabaster specimans. The gypsum seemed have been more quarried than mined. We were given a tour of the brickworks and I remember being told that often very small particles of gypsum got into the clay that was used for the bricks, and whilst the bricks were being fired in the kiln the gypsum particles would explode and spoil the bricks.

Staffordshirechina is correct that these deposits at Chellaston are part of the line of gypsum deposits that run eastwards from the Hanbury/Fauld area of S. Staffordshire, through South Derbyshire to East Leake in Nottinghamshire. I think the trend here though was to quarry rather than mine, different to the mines over in Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire. I think the wood where the workings and brickworks were sited is now a County Council Nature Reserve, correct me if I'm wrong.

If you go into a search engine and feed in "gypsum deposits, Chellaston" you will find some interesting information about it and the working of it. Apparently some of it was used for the decoration of Bess of Hardwick's tomb (that great Elizabethan Lady who built the old Chatsworth, The Little Castle at Bolsover and Hardwick Hall amonst her many building projects)in All Saints Cathedral, Derby, and numerous other churches, tombs, etc., in the area and much further afield. Apparently it was shipped down the River Trent to Nottingham where many marble workers were based.

Sorry I can't be of anymore help.

The Aston Glebe mine near the A50 bend was owned by the Gotham Company, which I think also bought the Chellaston mine. The Gotham Company eventually became part of BPB. Aston was an u/g operation whilst Chellaston was originally u/g and then opencast in connection with the brickworks. Both worked the Tutbury Seam, which runs sporadically from Fauld over through south Notts and is still being worked at East Leake and Barrow on Soar. The seam changes in character as it goes east. The top tends to be much better defined than the bottom, with large masses of gypsum interspersed with red marl. About 12" to 18" above the top of the seam is another layer of very high quality semi-transluscent gypsum that was known as the "ballstone". This was part of a sequence of at least 4 gypsum/marl layers, each about 6' apart. The first ball (about 12-18" thick) was often worked on the retreat, after the main seam had been extracted, a risky operation as the marl above would then drop leaving the 2nd ball as a roof, or not if it was too weak. Gypsum workings of the Aston Glebe period tend to meander as they followed the best quality stone and where they have been worked for ballstone will consist (at best) of a cavity above the original roof level. Oh, and not brilliant from the radon point of view.

Thanks for that information - very interesting.

A report of the mineral development committee (1949) is as follows: The Turbury gypsum horizon carries workable mineral here as in Staffordshire, although there is practically no production and the area is of little importance. The mineral in the form of Alabaster has been quarried extensively from a 10' thick bed in the Chellaston and Aston districts, a few miles S.W. of Derby. There appears to be no information as to the extent of the deposit which is near the surface and broken into pillars by infillings of glacial drift.

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http://www.bgs.ac.uk/nocomico/  includes the following details of ones for Derbyshire gypsum mines, all available at the Derbyshire Record Office:

Catalogue No, Mine Name, Mineral, County, Plan Date, Plan Location, Scan Location
OM983, ASTON, GYPSUM, DERBYSHIRE , NOT RECORDED , DERBYSHIRE RECORDS OFFICE, MATLOCK , COAL AUTHORITY
OM4656, ASTON HOLME, GYPSUM, DERBYSHIRE , 3/1904 , DERBYSHIRE RECORDS OFFICE, MATLOCK , COAL AUTHORITY
OM12751, ASTON NO.1, CALIFORNIA, GYPSUM, DERBYSHIRE , 8/1/1937 , DERBYSHIRE RECORDS OFFICE, MATLOCK , COAL AUTHORITY
OM923, CHELLASTON, GYPSUM, DERBYSHIRE , NOT RECORDED , DERBYSHIRE RECORDS OFFICE, MATLOCK , COAL AUTHORITY
OM143, CHELLASTON GLEBE, GYPSUM, DERBYSHIRE , NOT RECORDED , DERBYSHIRE RECORDS OFFICE, MATLOCK , COAL AUTHORITY
OM763, WESTON ON TRENT, GYPSUM, DERBYSHIRE , 9/1877 , DERBYSHIRE RECORDS OFFICE, MATLOCK , COAL AUTHORITY