People

  • The road goes on ….

    South-east of Ashbourne, the villages of Shirley and Osmaston are linked by a road which has survived for hundreds of years in something like its original form. Now a bridleway, it has never been asphalted, and in places is surfaced with small stones, providing a lovely walk through rolling parkland. Clearly marked on Burdett’s eighteenth-century…

  • Pedalling to freedom

    ‘Escape to the country’ has become a cliche; an empty phrase at a time when the countryside has become increasingly suburban. But a century ago, before mass car ownership, leaving the city was more difficult, dependent on bus, train or bike. Yet factory workers then probably had more incentive to escape, at least for a…

  • Inn with the inn-crowd

    As turnpike roads made travel more comfortable in the eighteenth century, roadside inns had to provide more services for coach teams as well as refreshments for the passengers. Previously they would have catered for travellers on horseback, or jaggers with their packhorse trains, but by the mid-century they might need stabling for 80 horses, as…

  • Searching for Derventio

    The Roman settlement at Little Chester, near Derby, is the key to Derbyshire’s Roman road network, a network that still influences the modern road system. We are fortunate that the antiquarian William Stukeley left this detailled plan, showing that three hundred years ago the Roman fort was still clearly defined on the east bank of…

  • The elusive Elizabeth Strutt

    There’s a common misconception that few people travelled before the nineteenth century, due to the state of the roads. In fact, the economic and agricultural progress of the eighteenth century would have never happened without extensive journeying, as illustrated by the letters of Jedediah and Elizabeth Strutt, who both grew up in Derbyshire in the…