People

  • The name of the bridge

    Whatstandwell must be one of the more bizarre place names in Derbyshire, mispelt on some old maps as ‘Hotstandwell’. In fact it commemorates Walter (Wat) Stonewell, who lived near the bridge, built by John de Stepul in 1391, according to records from Darley Abbey. The bridge was rebuilt in the late eighteenth century, and widened…

  • Derby at the crossroads

    This early plan of the town of Derby, drawn about 1760, shows how small the town was 250 years ago. The central area is framed by the Derwent to the east and Markeaton Brook to the west, at that time still an open stream. The town is divided into five parishes: All Saints (now the…

  • All you ever wanted to know about paths

    Jack Cornish is Head of Paths at the Ramblers, which must be an excellent qualification to write on the subject. His recent book, The Lost Paths, sets out to be ‘A History of How We Walk from Here to There’. Ambitious in scope, the 19 chapters include such familiar subjects as pilgrim routes and turnpikes,…

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  • What’s in a name?

    There are several ‘portways’ in England, such as the route over the Long Mynd in Shropshire, but the Derbyshire Portway seems to be the longest and the best-researched. The route in Derbyshire was first suggested by Cockerton, an historian from Bakewell in the 1930s, who based his idea of a long-distance route on a string…

  • Romantic Buxton?

    Arnold Bennett’s masterpiece, The Old Wives’ Tale, published in 1908, is set in the mid-nineteenth century, and tells the contrasting stories of two sisters, Sophia and Constance. The latter spends her life running the family drapers’ shop in Stoke on Trent, while her sister has a more adventurous life in Paris. When Constance marries, Buxton…