Bygone Derbyshire (1892)
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YG -'r ;;.' it'T' •':'>• \. •';'"' f-^ '"i^'-mWI ''^.. ',:' :'^ ;• \'''f(I <f'-^'^ ;,*-v%'"- '-/'-. -; / , .-; ' ' , ,1 _ ''..-' J ' "^ ^i^'V^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES BYGONE DERBYSHIRE. Of this book 750 copies have been printed, and this is No. J/ Digitized by tine Internet Arcinive in 2007 witii funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.arcliive.org/details/bygonederbysliireOOandriala : BYGOXB DliRBYSHIRE. EDITED I'.V WILLIAM ANDREWS, F.R.H.S., Arniok oi- "ni.D CHURCH i.ork," " curiosiiiks ok iiik ciiurcm, " OI.D-IIMK IM'MsIlMKNTS," K |C. DERBY : FRANK MURRAY. HULL: WILLIAM ANDREWS & CO., THE HULL PRE.SS. LONDON SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, & CO., LIMITED. 1892. 670 . IPreface. ^ ^HE editing of this volume has been a labour I of love, recalling happy memories of the past. It is more than twenty-five years since I resided in Derbyshire, and made myself familiar with its historic byways and highways. I have continued my studies of its old-time lore since I left the county, never missing an opportunity of obtaining a local work, and making a note of matters I deemed of interest and importance. In the following pages will be found the result of some of my gleanings. In conclusion, I desire to tender my thanks to my contributors for assisting me to produce a book which I hope will not be regarded as an unwelcome addition to the literature of Derbyshire. William Andrews. IIui.i, Literary Club, yune loth, i8g2. Contents* PAGE Historic Dekbyshirk. By Thomas Frost .... i On an Early Ciikistian Tomb at Wirkswouiii. By Kev. Charles J. Cox, ll.d., f.s.a. ..... igi Curious Derbyshire Lead-Mining Customs. By William Andrews, f.r.h.s. ^^ The Pi.ace-Name Derby. By Frederick Davis, k.s.a. 38 DuFFiELD Castle. By Jno. Ward 54 IIai)IX)n Hall 92 The Ko-mance ok Haudon Hall . 106 The Ordeal of Touch in The Monumental Brasses at Tidkswell. By James L. Thornely 115 Bolsover Castle. By Enid A. M. Cox . 133 The Lamp of St. Helen. By T. Tindall Wildridge . 143 Peveril Castle. By James L. Thornely .... 155 Samuel Slater, the Father ok the American Cotton Manufacture. By William E. A. Axon . 170 The Bakewell Witches. By T. Tindall Wildridge . 180 Mary Queen of Scots in Derbyshire .... 185 The Babington Conspiracy 193 Evam and its Sad Memories. By W. G. Fretton, f.s.a. 199 Well-Dressing. By the Rev. Geo. S. Tyack, B.A. 208 Old-Time Football. By Theo. Arthur .... 216 After Thirty Years : An Incident of the Civil Wak. By Edward Lamplough . 224 Derbyshire and the '45. By the Kev. (ieo. S. Tyack, B.A. 228 Bess ok Hardavick. By Frederick Ross, f.r.h.s. 235 Shadows ok Romance 244 Lndex 255 < " BYGONE DERBYSHIRE. >- — 1bi0toric Berbi^sbirc. Bv Thomas Frost THE earliest records of the county of Derby have to be gathered from writers of the period of the Roman occupation, and they are exceedingly scanty. When the Roman emperors formed the central portion of England into the province of Flavia Csesariensis, Derbyshire was inhabited by a tribe called the Coritani, who also occupied the counties of Notts, Leicester, Lincoln, Rutland, and Northampton. The county was then very thinly populated, and remained so for several centuries. The towns, or rather villages, were few and far apart. Lead mines were worked, however, and pigs of the metal have been found in the neighbourhood of Matlock, one bearing the inscription, " Socio Romae (" To my partner at Rome.") One of these is 2 BYGONE DERBYSHIRE. now in the British Museum. Roman coins have been found near Chesterfield, and at Alfreton, Crich, Pleasley, and Burton Wood, near Ash- bourne ; and an altar was, in the last century, dug up in the grounds of Haddon Hall, near Bake- well, with the imperfect inscription, " Deo Marti brasiacse ositius Csecilian pref. ... J. Aquitano, V.S." One of the excellent roads made by the Romans entered the county from the south, and antiquaries have found traces of it at Egginton ; but it is now almost entirely obliterated by the present road, which it follows to Littleover, near Derby, there diverging in the direction of that town, and being continued over Nun's Green to Little Chester. Glover, in his history of the county, notes that in 1829, traces of this road still existed near Breadsall, and on Morley Moor, a hundred yards eastward of Brackley-gate. It could also be traced close to Horsley Park, whence it was continued through the fields, cross- ing the road from Wirksworth to Nottingham, to a bye-road leading from Heage to Ripley. Vestiges of its course were also discoverable near Pakerthorpe, along the road to Clay Cross ; but no traces of it could be found beyond Egstow. HISTORIC DERB YSHIRE. 3 There was another Roman road from Brouorh to Braxton, which could be traced on the Brough side of Bathom Edge, and thence to a stone wall dividing the Bradwell and Tideswell Moors, "sweeping," says Whittaker, " in a long straight streak of vivid green over the purple surface of the heath." A third road of the Roman period entered the county from Cheshire, and joined that just described ; while traces of a fourth, from Buxton to Ashbourne, were formerly visible on Brassington Moor. Penny Long Lane is also believed to have been a Roman road, entering the county on the Staffordshire side. It seems to have crossed the Dove a little below Rocester, and the road from Ashbourne to Derby between the second and third mile-stones, from which spot it was continued to Little Chester, where traces of Roman buildings were found by Stukely, in 1721. When the tide of Anglo-Saxon conquest rolled over the country, Derbyshire and the adjoining counties were formed into the Kingdom of Mercia, the largest and most powerful of the seven petty monarchies known as the Saxon Heptarchy. The county was still sparsely inhabited, there being, according to Bede, only seven thousand families 4 BYGONE DERBYSHIRE. in Derbyshire and Notts. It was the scene of many internecine wars before the seven kingdoms were united under Egbert. Repton appears to have been the Mercian capital, and several of the kings were buried in the abbey church there, in- cluding Ethelbald, killed in battle with the West Saxons, in 753, at Sekinton, in Warwickshire, and Withlaffe, who died there shortly after the final defeat of the Mercians by Egbert. The abbey was demolished by the Danes in one of their irruptions, during the reign of Alfred. The invaders were allowed to hold that part of the county on the condition of acknowledging Alfred as king. But in 912, in the reign of Edward the Elder, they rebelled, threw off their allegiance, and invited the Welsh to aid them in maintaining that position. The invaders were defeated, how- ever, and took refuge in Derby, then a very small town, though, according to Camden, it existed in the time of the Roman occupation, when it was called Derventio. Edward's sister, the widowed Countess of Mercia, marched against the town, and took it by assault. The Welsh Prince was killed, the Danish leader fled northward, and the castle was entirely destroyed. This fortress, of which no trace now remains, appears to have been HISTORIC DERBYSHIRE. 5 situated in what was then the south-eastern quarter of the town, and has given its name to one of the municipal divisions of the borough. Under the Saxon kings, Derby had the privilege of a mint, and coins struck there in the reigns of Athelstan and Edgar have at various times been discovered. Yet there were only one hundred and forty-three burgesses in the town in the reign of Edward the Confessor, and this number had diminished to one hundred when the Domesday Book was compiled. We learn from that record of the Conqueror's survey that these were under an obligation to pay to the King twelve thraves of corn annually on the feast of St. Martin. The county was thriving as badly at this time as its principal towns, and the abortive revolts of the Derbyshire men against the Nor- man rule were not conducive to its prosperity. The possessions of most of the landowners became forfeited to the King, and were conferred by him upon the nobles and knights who had followed him from Normandy. Twenty Derby- shire manors rewarded his illegitimate son, William de Peveril, who wielded almost as much power in the county as the Earls of Mercia had done under the old order of things. Twenty 6 B YGONE DERB YSHIRE. manors were given to Ralph Fitzherbert, and one hundred and twelve others, with the town of Derby, were reserved by William for himself. Few events of importance occurred during the century following the Norman conquest. Henry I. bestowed upon Derby its first charter, and from this circumstance it may be inferred that the town was then growing and prospering more than it had done during the three preceding reigns. The county did not, however, pass unscathed through the turmoil and strife of the civil wars which, at a later period, arose out of the resolve of the barons to curb the arbitrary power of the monarchs of the Plantagenet dynasty. When Henry HI. threw off the restraints which had been imposed upon the Crown by the Great Charter of the preceding reign, and the nobles resorted to the arbitration of the sword in defence of their rights, Robert Ferrers, Earl of Derby, joined the baronial league. Prince Henry, a nephew of the King, marched into Derbyshire at the head of a large force of foreign mercenaries, and devastated the estates of all the opponents of absolutism in the southern portion of the county.