‘Forgive us our …’

On March 29, 2026March 29, 2026 By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment

The fear of being caught ‘trespassing’ is still common, which is perhaps why towpaths and ex-railway trails are so crowded with walkers. But defining exactly what trespassing means in law is difficult, and in most cases it is only a civil offence, meaning that few landowners would bother to prosecute. But the fear of being confronted by an angry farmer is still potent, even if the days of gamekeepers and their shotguns, or even mantraps, have long gone.

*Looking north to Brinsley and Underwood from track by High Park Wood.*

The situation is nicely depicted in DH Lawrence’s early (1910) story The Shades of Spring. A young man, Addy, who was brought up in this district on the Derbyshire/ Nottinghamshire border, but who has now moved away, is revisiting his old haunts. He is walking through the woods to the farm where his ex-sweetheart, Hilda, lives, but in the wood his path is blocked by a young gamekeeper:

‘Where might you be going this road, sir?’ The tone of his question had a challenging twang.

The use of ‘sir’ reveals the keeper’s dilemma: was he speaking to a gentleman or one of the local colliers? A guest at the ‘House’ would be free to go where they wished, but in the story Addy tells the keeper, Arthur, that he’s been away from the area for years, and he’s on his way to Hilda’s farm. Arthur then reveals that he’s now courting Hilda, and clearly resents Addy maintaining his friendship with her through correspondence. After a difficult conversation Addy continues on the path to the farm, despite Arthur’s sullen objections.

Like much of Lawrence’s early fiction this story is partly based on his own life. His unhappy relationship with Miriam Chambers, who lived at Haggs Farm near Felley Mill, Moorgreen, is famously depicted in his Bildungsroman ‘Sons and Lovers’. Lawrence had idealised Miriam as a spiritual being, when, as this story shows, she was more interested in a physical relationship than French poetry. The story concludes with her showing Addy the woodland love nest that Arthur had created for her, a cabin erotically if improbably furnished with animal skins. This is an interesting forerunner to the hut in ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, written much later, in which Mellors had his tryst with Connie. The model for both could have been this rather shabby shack in High Park Wood (below), almost certainly known to the young writer.

So the story deals with two kinds of trespass: entering private land, but also Addy’s attempted trespass on Hilda, who Arthur clearly believes is now his private property. The story concludes when Addy is about to reluctantly depart; Arthur is stung by a bee, and, in a powerful image, Hilda sucks the poison from his arm, and oblivious to the now-forgotten Addy, the couple begin a passionate kiss.

Acrostic Anthonie of the Frith

On March 24, 2026March 25, 2026 By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment

St Alkmund’s, Duffield church, seems to have a curious location. It’s right by the River Derwent and near the confluence with the Ecclesbourne, a position which has led to repeated flooding over the years, though the village was mainly built on higher ground. Yet the church is also on what was the main turnpike route from Derby north to Chesterfield, which crossed the Derwent close by, before heading uphill to Holbrook. Until the early nineteenth century there was no bridge at Milford.

To the north, the ridge of high ground is criss-crossed by many footpaths, and in this web of paths is Day Park, believed to have been the home of the Bradshaw family. In medieval times Duffield parish was much larger than today, including Heage, Belper and Holbrook, and some of these routes would have provided access to the parish church. By the end of the sixteenth century Duffield Frith, once famous for its deer and boar, was a decayed royal hunting park, and Anthony Bradshaw was the Deputy Steward.

In contrast to many notables of the period we know something of the man’s character, since he left a memorial to himself and his family in Duffield church. Unusually, this was erected in 1600, long before he died in 1614, and clearly was designed by himself. The memorial can be found in a side chapel on the north side of the nave, and has thumbnail pictures of himself and his family, with his first wife on the left and the second on the right.

His first wife was Grisilda Blackwall from Over Haddon, by whom he had four sons (no dates are given), as can be seen in the left-hand strip. Elizabeth Hawghton was his second wife, and she had produced 16 children by the time of the memorial, who are listed as:

Jacinth, Anthonie, Michaell, Elizabeth, Felix, Quyntin, Petronilla, Athanasia, Isidora, Mildrede, Brandona, Erasmus, Joseph, Millicant, Cassandra, Vicesim.

Unwilling to stop at 20, the happy couple went on to have several more after the monument was built, including one called Penultima – clearly finding names had become a problem! Unfortunately we have no record of their dates of birth, nor how many survived infancy. Bradshaw was not just a proud father, but was also a wordsmith, and he devised an exemplary acrostic for the family memorial, setting out his wishes for his children:

B less them O Lord with peace

R esist their adverse fates

A lways them well increase

D efending them from bates

S uch livelode to them give

H ere whylst on earth they bee

A s they may love and live

W e praye O God quoth he

Bradshaw (1545 – 1614) was also a public benefactor, building four almshouses for poor widows on the site of the present Baptist Chapel , just opposite the sign below. In return for their house the widows were required to keep the family memorial clean and dust the family pew – presumably a convenient arrangement all round.

The stone contains another acrostic, on the same lines as the one in the chapel. Consistency was not a feature of Elizabethan spelling, and here is an alternative version of the family name:

Trinity mysteries

On February 22, 2026 By SteveIn People1 Comment

*Burdett’s map of 1791 showing Trinity Chapel north of Brackenfield*

The evocatively-named Coldharbour Lane runs along a ridge to High Oredish, and then becomes a holloway, dropping and twisting down to Brackenfield village. The views to the east are spectacluar, with Ogston Reservoir in the middle distance. Before the lane loses height, a public footpath is signed leading downhill though fields, then into a pine plantation. Here among the trees, are the ruins of Trinity Chapel, once Brackenfield’s church, despite being so far from the centre of the village.

The chapel, well-built of dressed stone, was apparently a rebuild in the sixteenth century of an earlier structure, constructed as a monument to Hugh Willoughby’s wife. All that remains today are the stone walls and gable ends, but the interior was originally divided in half by a screen, which was taken, in 1857, to the new parish church at the other end of the village. After this opened the chapel was abandoned, although there is believed to have been a village pilgrimage to the site on Trinity Sunday (first Sunday after Pentecost), which was only discontinued in 1997.

The obvious question is why a chapel was built here in the first place, so remote from people, today only accessible by a muddy footpath? But if we go back in time by removing the pine plantation, we have a site with spectacular views to the east, perhaps the ideal spot for a hermit to do whatever hermits do. And this is reinforced by the spring and drinking trough found by the path, the same water re-appearing at another trough by the road below. This supply would have been critical for any inhabitant, and in fact the village website claims that into the 1930s villagers had to walk to the roadside source in times of drought, since it was the only reliable well in the parish.

The chapel’s trough

Leaving the chapel, the footpath continues through a grassy field to the road to Ashover Hay. At the moment (late February) the path is edged with blue crocuses – not a native British flower – so planted by someone, for some reason. Mysterious …

Source: https://www.brackenfield.org/trinity-chapel-from-white-carr-lane

The (very) old roads

On February 15, 2026 By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment

Just how old are the ‘old roads’? How were the first roads developed?

These questions are difficult to answer, but worth a try! The last ice age ended about 10,000 years ago, and the landscape of Britain must have gradually become more wooded as temperatures rose. Mammals would have arrived via the land bridge to the continent, including large beasts such as aurochs (early cattle), horses, deer and boar. These creatures are mainly herd animals, and would have travelled with the seasons, moving north in spring looking for fresh pasture and water, then south in autumn.

A herd of any large mammals would follow the easiest routes, avoiding the choking, dense growth in river valleys, and in doing so created channels of movement along the high ground. Their progress would hinder plant growth and so keep these routes open. They could drink from streams, but kept river crossings to a minimum, due to the risk of autumn floods. So when the first paleolithic (Old Stone Age) nomadic people arrived they must have followed these herds, both for the chance of making a kill and also because a proto-road offered the easiest route.

The very rare cave art found at Cresswell Crags, on the north east Derbyshire border, portrays deer, elk, wolves, hyenas and bears, clearly suggesting that Stone Age man had a close relationship with these creatures. Today many of their prehistoric ridgeway routes are still in use, notably many sections of the Derbyshire Portway, the lane from Belper Lane End to Bolehill, the A61 from Higham to Clay Cross, and dozens more.

Silly signs

On January 18, 2026January 18, 2026 By SteveIn People1 Comment

Travellers by road and rail have been confronted by baffling or unhelpful signs for many years. The example above, warning vagabonds who loiter in Alport that they may be ‘taken up’, supposes that such vagabonds can read, which seems unlikely in the (?) early nineteenth century. The modern equivalent must be the numerous ROAD CLOSED signs currently found all over the county, which either don’t specify which road is closed, or else mean the road is only half closed.

The tone of the wording on signs can vary from the curt (above) to the ultra-polite (below). To ‘request’ a pattern of behaviour is genteel, but to ‘earnestly request’ makes it impossible not to comply . Both these examples can be seen at Derby’s Museum of Making, which has a wonderful collection of these signs from the Midland Railway.

Other station signs are a reminder of the heyday of railway travel, when waiting rooms were not only provided for the different classes of ticket holders, but also separately for men and women. So presumably a large station like Derby would have had four different waiting rooms!

*Did they provide a blazing coal fire too?*

The railway authorities seem to have had a weakness for verbose and very formal inscriptions. Trespassers on the canal towpath or anyone having a dip in the canal was unlikely to bother to read all of this threat (below), while anyone about to spit might not understand language like ‘abstain’ or ‘objectionable’ – though the threat of TB was very real before the arrival of antibiotics.

More earnest requests

My favourite sign, which is quite unintelligible, must have been displayed in a works context, so presumably would be understood by those who worked there (below). There must have been hundreds of signs like these around the railway network, all nicely produced in iron or steel. It would be interesting to know if the railway company made them in-house, or if they used a specialist supplier.

However, the prize for the daftest sign of all must go to a modern effort, found on the A6 at Ambergate. What, you wonder, would be enforced by a helicopter? The speed limit? You imagine a ‘copter chasing a BMW down the road, and swooping onto the roof of the offending vehicle. This has all the making of a new reality TV programme …

Hermits of the Bridge

On January 2, 2026January 4, 2026 By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment

Today the image of a hermit is usually a scruffy-looking character living in a remote hovel. But although the route of the Derbyshire Portway is marked by several such hermitages in caves, the term was also used for men who were effectively toll collectors on key bridges. Such bridges were a common good, but expensive to build and maintain, especially on the major rivers of Derwent and Trent, and the church played a major role in their maintenance. A good example is St Mary’s bridge in Derby, whose hermit in 1488 was John Senton, a married man who (unusually) shared his duties with his wife. He had the job of guarding the many votive offerings given by locals, as well as collecting tolls from travellers. The right to collect tolls at bridges was known as ‘pontage’, and might be granted by the king or a bishop, usually for three years.

Today the chapel has quite an austere interior, but in the medieval period it would have been decorated with offerings, such as (spelling modernised):

One coat of crimson velvet, decorated with gold, covered in silver coins

A crown of silver and gold

A great brooch of silver and gilt with a stone in it

A crucifix of silver and gold

One pair of coral beads

One pair of black jet beads

(Taken from the inventory of 1488)

Notably, most of the benefactors were women, and they were possibly members of a female guild dedicated to maintaining the bridge.

Other Derbyshire bridges charging tolls included Cromford, Chesterfield and, notably, Swarkeston, which had to face repeated battering from the River Trent in flood. The list of tolls here gives a graphic picture of the variety of goods on the roads in the high Middle Ages, and the presence of two items imported from Spain indicates the extent of trading networks at this time:

Cask of wine 2d

Skins of lambs, goats, hares or foxes 1/4d

Pack saddle load of cloth 3d

Bale Cordova (i.e. Cordoban leather) 3d

Brushwood 1/4d

Flitches of bacon 1/4d

Source: C. Kerry, Hermits, Fords and Bridge-chapels, The Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, 1892, Vol.14 pp. 54-71

The next station stop is Duffield … and then Duffield

On December 15, 2025December 24, 2025 By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment

*Sir Arthur with Effie, his early model*

Today’s tech tycoons play with their spacecraft, but 150 years ago a wealthy Victorian built his own railway in his garden at Duffield Bank, complete with several tunnels and six stations. Sir Arthur Heywood had inherited money and the baronetcy from his father, and as a gifted amateur engineer wanted to test his belief in narrow gauge (15 inch) railways. Of course the standard gauge of four feet eight and a half inches had long been adopted in Britain, but Heywood thought that there was a role for much narrower gauge railways on private estates.

Despite being a mile long, Heywood’s railway had no regular passengers and was really built as a testbed for his engineering experiments – a rich man’s passion. However, as can be seen, open days were held for people from the Duffield area. Remarkably, the rolling stock – all built in Heywood’s own workshop – included a dining car with a stove and a sleeper car, probably only used by his children! Several steam engines were built on site: the earliest was little Effie, pictured above at top, but later models were 0-6-0 tank engines Ella and Muriel.

Rather sadly, despite all his efforts, there was little interest in building new lines on this gauge, the only taker was on the Eaton Hall estate in Cheshire, owned by the Duke of Westminster. Sir Arthur died in 1916 and his railway was broken up, with some equipment sold to other narrow gauge companies such as the Ravenglass and Eskdale line. Clearly Heywood underestimated the advantages of road travel, as did various attempts to operate light railways for passengers in the district. The Ashover and Clay Cross Railway was a two foot gauge line that ran a passenger service from 1924 to 1934, while the Leek and Manifold Railway was a two foot six inch line that operated from 1904 to 1934. Obviously, by the mid 30s competition from buses and private cars was killing off these marginal railways.

Source: Duffield Bank and Eaton Railways, Clayton Howard

Christmas at Mountain Cottage

On December 4, 2025December 4, 2025 By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment

*Mountain Cottage, Middleton by Wirksworth*, *today*

In summer 1918, near the end of the First World War, DH Lawrence and his wife Frieda were forced to move from the south of England to Derbyshire, in the Midlands he thought he had escaped from years before. Out of work and hard up, having been harassed by officialdom for his wife’s supposed pro-German sympathies, Mountain Cottage offered them a refuge, with the rent paid by his relatively affluent sister, Ada, in Ripley. Refuge maybe, but in those days not a luxurious one. Steep field paths ran downhill to the Via Gellia, Cromford and Matlock Bath, or the road through Middleton would take him to Wirksworth station a couple of miles away. Water had to be fetched from a well in the lower garden, and of course there was no electricity, though this would be normal in rural Derbyshire at that date.

*Happier days* – *Lawrence (right) and Frieda in 1914*

On Friday, December 27th, 1918, Lawrence wrote to Katherine Mansfield:

“We got your parcel on Christmas morning. We had started off, and were on the brow of the hill, when the postman loomed round the corner, over the snow … I wish you could have been there on the hill summit – the valley all white and hairy with trees below us, and grey with rocks – and just round us on our side the grey stone fences drawn in a network over the snow, all very clear in the sun. We ate the sweets and slithered downhill, very steep and tottering … at Ambergate my sister had sent a motor-car for us – so we were at Ripley in time for turkey and Christmas pudding”.

Remarkable to discover that the postman delivered on Christmas Day, and even more surprising that they must have walked at least seven miles to Ambergate – unless the trains were also running!

Later that winter, on February 9th, he again wrote to Katherine:

“But it is immensely cold – everything frozen solid – milk, mustard, everything …Wonderful it is to see the footmarks in the snow – beautiful ropes of rabbit prints, trailing away over the brows; heavy hare marks, a fox, so sharp and dainty … Pamela is lamenting because the eggs in the pantry have all frozen and burst. I have spent half an hour hacking ice out of the water tub – now I am going out”. (Pamela was his name for another sister).

By spring the Lawrences had moved south, and were soon en route for Italy, which must have been a welcome relief after living above a frozen Via Gellia. But he never forgot this corner of Derbyshire, since he set his novella, The Virgin and the Gypsy in a village clearly based on Cromford, called Papplewick in the story:

“Further on, beyond where the road crosses the stream, were the big old stone cotton mills, once driven by water. The road curved uphill, into the bleak stone streets of the village”.

NB: Mountain Cottage can be seen from the road, on the right descending from Middleton to the Via Gellia. If walking take care as the road is quite narrow, busy, and there is no pavement.

Celestial journeys

On November 22, 2025November 27, 2025 By SteveIn PeopleLeave a comment

The Pilgrim’s Progress, from this World to that Which is to Come must be one of the most influential books ever published in English. Today it has become common to speak of ‘my cancer journey’ or ‘our journey through bankruptcy’, using the metaphor of life, or part of life, as a journey. It is also normal to talk about making a ‘pilgrimage’: to Lennon’s birthplace, for instance. But this is not a new concept, as shown by the extraordinary popularity of John Bunyan’s work from the late seventeenth century into modern times – the concept of life as a spiritual journey or pilgrimage has not gone away. First published in 1678, Pilgrim’s Progress has been translated into 200 languages, and never been out of print. An allegorical story of a man’s (Pilgrim’s) search for spiritual salvation, a quest which takes the form of a journey through a series of dramatic dangers, the work was in many ways a proto-novel, presenting an exciting story in vivid language.

John Bunyan was born in 1628, in Bedfordshire, and enlisted in the Parliamentary army aged 16, during the English Civil War. It was a time of fervent religious and political debate, and Bunyan was probably influenced by the more radical, puritan elements in the army. He left the army after three years and became a tinker, a trade he had learned from his father. This peripatetic occupation must have made him more conscious of the dangers of travel. He also began preaching for a nonconformist group in Bedford. But the return of the monarchy in 1660 made it an offence to preach outside the Anglican church, and Bunyan was arrested, tried and imprisoned. As he refused to obey the law he went on to spend 12 years in Bedford Gaol, during which time he wrote the first part of Pilgrim’s Progress. The book was an immediate success, so that on his release he was able to devote his time to further religious writings. This meant that until his death in 1688 he, his wife and children had some financial security, after the sufferings of the years in prison.

*A handy road map to the Celestial City*

Perhaps the secret of the book’s enduring appeal is its simplicity. Who could forget characters such as Mr Worldly Wiseman or Lord Hate-good, or places like the Slough of Despond, The Valley of the Shadow of Death or Vanity Fair (a name invented by Bunyan but borrowed by Thackeray)? Pilgrim’s Progress was repeatedly cited by radicals in the nineteenth century as a major influence on their political development. For instance:

‘For the founding fathers of the Labour Party, it was a revolutionary manifesto to “‘create a new heaven and a new earth” … Robert Blatchford, who had practically memorized Pilgrim’s Progress by age ten, always found its political message supremely relevant: Mr Pliable we all know, he still votes for the old Parties. Mr Worldly Wiseman writes books and articles against Socialism …’.

(Source: The Intellectual life of the British Working Classes, Jonathan Rose)

That elusive cromlech at Riber

On November 7, 2025 By SteveIn People5 Comments

Cromlechs are ancient megalithic structures, thought to pre-date stone circles, so possibly over 6,000 years old. Welsh examples consist of a flat cap stone supported by several upright stones, as in the photo above. They may have been burial sites, but they certainly were not ‘Druidical altars’, as was imagined by early antiquarians. As far as I know there are now none in Derbyshire, but there is some evidence that at least one existed until the early nineteenth century.

Hearthstone Lane is an ancient route that runs south from Riber to Cromford and beyond. Writing in the Derbyshire Archaeological Journal for 1887, Benjamin Bryan looked at the evidence for a cromlech in this area. There were a surprising number of guide books to the county in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and Bray’s Tour of Derbyshire of 1783 mentions a structure on Riber hill consisting of one capstone resting on uprights. A similar monument is mentioned in Pilkington’s View of Derbyshire of 1789, and then Beauties of England and Wales (1803) names this as the Hirst Stones, and describes a hole sunk into the top slab. Frustratingly, none of these writers provides an illustration or an exact position.

The Matlock Companion of 1835 describes the cromlech as recently broken up, and claims that it had been destroyed by the farmer looking for material for stone walls. In 1866 the editor of the DAJ questioned two old ‘cottagers’ of Riber about the stones, and was told that they both used to play on the monument as children. So there seems little doubt that there had been a cromlech on Riber hill until the early nineteenth century, and it seems likely that the name Hearthstone Lane is a corruption of Hirststone. Several roads in the area are named after prominent stones e.g. Holestone Lane and Cuckoostone Lane. The obvious site of the cromlech is at the top of Bilberry Knoll, the highest point on the lane, providing impressive views in every direction.

This story is a reminder of the chance nature of survival of ancient structures, and how recently and easily they could have been lost. Yet Hearthstone Lane remains as a rewarding historical walk, easily accessible from Cromford station: one of the finest green lanes in the district.