People

  • A cold coming

    The image of a laden stagecoach arriving at a snowy inn has decorated millions of Christmas cards, along with robins and holly. The card above contains all the elements: the rural setting, icy roads, mine host on his doorstep to welcome the travellers, with the postern blowing his horn to announce (unnecessarily) their arrival, while…

  • The mystery of Fin Cop

    Fin Cop lies on the route of the Portway, about two kilometres north of Ashford in the Water. It is perched on a headland high above the sharp curve in the River Wye in Monsal Dale, and consists of a ditch and incomplete ramparts enclosing an area of about ten acres. Pennyunk Lane, which is…

  • Waterloo sunset?

    In an age of instant news, when an election result in the USA is available instantly on our phones, it’s hard to imagine a time when news of events even a hundred miles away could take weeks to reach Derbyshire. Before railways and national newspapers began to shrink distances a frequent source of information was…

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  • Mr Brown’s girls

    By 1878 the painter Ford Madox Brown, at the age of 57, was suffering from severe gout, that classic Victorian ailment. His wife and model Emma had become alcoholic, probably as a result of the cuckoo in their nest, the 37-year-old poet Mathilde Blind, the object of his unresolved passion. It was Mathilde who proposed…

  • The Clarion call

    The invention of the safety bicycle in the late nineteenth century created the possibility of leisure travel for working-class people. Derbyshire and the Peak District, close to the industrial cities of Sheffield, Nottingham and Manchester, were prime destinations for Sunday rides. These early cyclists clearly felt the need to organise themselves into clubs for mutual…