29th May, 2024 in Local & Family History

Ten things, or thereabouts, you may not have known about Derbyshire

By Julia A. Hickey

I tend to think of Derbyshire’s landscape as a beautiful patchwork quilt stitched together by its dry-stone walls. The fabric of the past may be reused or altered but look closely and traces of the people and cultures who have lived here for thousands of years are still visible. Its almost impossible for me to choose just ten little known things about the county’s rich and varied history but here goes.

The Lismore Pot, which is about 5,500 years old is one of the oldest vessels ever discovered in Britain. The site where it was found near Buxton is one of the most important Neolithic settlements in England. As well as peaks and moors dotted with burial cairns and standing stones, there are prehistoric cup-and-ring art carved into rocks at places like Meg’s Walls near Gardom’s Edge.

When the Romans arrived in Derbyshire, they were quick to make the most of the county’s minerals. Lead production was administered at the lost town of Lutudarum. All that has ever been found are pigs, or ingots, of lead marked LVT. Carsington, Wirksworth and Crich have all been suggested as possible locations. Like many other people who visited Derbyshire across the centuries, the Romans also came to relax and enjoy the scenery. A hoard found at Buxton in 1917 contains coins depicting all the Roman emperors from the beginning to the end of imperial occupation of Britannia.  It’s thought that the coins were given as offerings to the local water gods, just as today pennies are still thrown into wells and fountains for good luck.

Mining operations continued after the legions departed. A carving known as T’Owd Man at St Mary’s Church in Wirksworth, depicts a lead miner with a pick and a workman’s basket known as a kibble. Dating from the Saxon period, T’Owd Man is thought to be the country’s earliest representation of a miner. 

Heath Wood, near Repton which was the Saxon capital of Mercia for a time, is the only known Viking cremation cemetery in Britain. It dates to the ninth century when the Great Viking Army spent the winter of AD 873-874 in Derbyshire. Repton, much more famously, was probably where Ivor the Boneless, one of the leaders of the army and a king of Viking Dublin was buried. Finds from the site, including a reconstruction of the face of a Viking warrior whose grave was excavated with his sword and other personal items, are housed at the Derby Museum and Art Gallery.

Armies have marched through Derbyshire throughout its history but, arguably, its most serious clash was the Battle of Chesterfield on 15 May 1266. Robert Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby was imprisoned in the Tower of London because he refused to obey Simon de Montfort’s orders to yield Peveril Castle, at Castleton, into the hands of Prince Edward. De Ferrers was pardoned by Henry III upon payment of a large fine. Soon after his release, the earl joined in a renewed rebellion against the king. Matters came to a head when the earl, pursued by Henry III’s nephew, Henry of Almain, was cornered in Chesterfield. There was fighting in the streets and the rebels were forced to scatter. The earl went into hiding near the town’s church but soon found and imprisoned. Henry III gave much of the Earl of Derby’s possessions to his own younger son, Edmund of Lancaster which is why, even today, Derbyshire is associated with the Duchy of Lancaster.

The Derbyshire gentry thrived during the later medieval period. Beautiful alabaster effigies made from Chellaston marble in parish churches across the county reflect the wealth of the men and women who commissioned them. Some, like the one of Ralph Fitzherbert of Norbury wearing a Yorkist livery collar depicting alternating suns and roses, and the White Boar livery badge of Richard III, demonstrate political loyalty. The most unusual may be the monument of Thomas Beresford and his wife which can be found in St Edmund’s Church in Fenny Bentley. They are fully shrouded. The effigies were sculpted during the Tudor period so it is possible that the wrapping was expedient because no one could remember what the couple looked like. Alternatively, and more likely, it was a way of reminding the people who visited Fenny Bentley Church of their own mortality as well as suggesting that the Beresfords were in need of prayers to speed their souls through purgatory to heaven.

The last army to make its way through Derbyshire was led by Bonnie Prince Charlie. Most people know that Derby was where the Young Pretender halted but it’s less well known that he sent a force of eighty men to secure the southern side of Swarkestone Bridge, or that a Chapel-en-le-Frith diarist, James Clegg, recorded the events of 1745.

The Jacobite rising was not the last time that the county witnessed warfare at first-hand. Most recently, in 1941, St Michael’s Church at Earl Sterndale was hit by a bomb meant for Sheffield, or even an ordinance depot located at a nearby quarry. It became the only church in Derbyshire to be bomb damaged during World War Two. The church was rebuilt in 1952 but in 2021, a controlled explosion was carried out when an unexploded bomb dating from the war years was found by workmen. 

Thorntons Chocolates have been producing its confectionary at Alfreton since 1985. A memorial window, designed by David Pilkington, in St Peter’s Church, Parwich depicts the brand’s famous continental chocolates. However, the bedrock of Derbyshire’s industrial heritage and distinctive landscape is its minerals and its stone. Its limestone was even used to build Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square while iron from Stanton Ironworks at Ilkeston was used in the construction of the London underground. Today, professional drystone wallers even export the traditions of building Derbyshire’s iconic walls around the world working for artist and sculptor, Andy Goldsworthy.