Searching for St Alkmund

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His stone sarcophagus?

Few people outside the Midlands have heard of this Saxon saint, but in Derbyshire he is commemorated by two churches, a well and a street, besides being the patron saint of the city of Derby. As with many saints from the Saxon period it is hard to sort the legends from the facts, but apparently he was King of Northumbria in the late eighth century until he was forced to flee south into Mercia when a rival branch of his family took the throne. He was murdered by Northumbrian agents about 800 CE and buried in Shropshire, after which a cult grew up around his name due to his reputation for acts of charity.

St Alkmund’s Well in Well Street

His remains were removed to Derby in 1140 and reburied in the church dedicated to him, which had a Saxon foundation, near the modern Jury’s Inn hotel. This church was re-built in the mid-nineteenth century but demolished in 1968 as part of Derby’s inner ring road development. A stone plaque marks the site today. The only positive aspect of this piece of urban vandalism (widely criticised at the time) was the discovery of what is believed to be St Alkmund’s stone sarcophagus, a fine piece of Anglo-Saxon stone carving, now in Derby museum. We must assume that this was brought from Shropshire, along with the saint’s remains, in the twelfth century, though this must have been a difficult operation, weighing as it does about a ton. The most likely route would have been by river, as the church was only two hundred yards from the Derwent. Not far away from the church, at the bottom of Well Street, which runs off North Parade, is St Alkmund’s Well. Now protected by iron railings, this had a rural setting until the early nineteenth century as it was in St Helen’s park. Today it must be one of the few holy wells in an urban setting, and was at one time the focus of church procession and well dressing.

Early postcard of St Alkmund’s Duffield

St Alkmund’s in Derby was conveniently near Ryknield Street, the old Roman road, which would have allowed regional pilgrims to travel to the shrine, while only a few miles north is another church with the same rare dedication, at Duffield. Here the church is sited curiously detached from the town and close to the river. Although the present church building is post-Conquest, this must have been a Saxon foundation in what was originally a very large parish. It is thought that the church’s siting may have been due to the use of the Derwent for baptism, although this has also led to severe and quite regular flooding of the building.

Hemlocked

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The Hemlock Stone

The Hemlock Stone on Stapleford Hill west of Nottingham is a sandstone pillar about five metres high, set in parkland. The name suggests that it may have acted as a boundary marker between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and it is found near the Portway’s crossing of the Erewash (the county boundary). It seems to have had more significance in the past, with eighteenth-century references to its use for Beltane celebrations, and was famous enough for DH Lawrence to include it in Sons and Lovers as the destination for an Easter walk.

A barefoot Lawrence at the University of Nottingham

The walk from Eastwood to the Hemlock Stone had actually taken place in 1905, organised by Lawrence for his family and friends. Beginning in the town, the original route is now difficult to follow due to the construction of the A610 on the line of the old railway, but the walking party first crossed the semi-derelict Nottingham Canal, then the Erewash, and thirdly the Erewash Canal, soon coming to a footbridge over the Midland mainline railway, whose express trains linked Eastwood and Langley Mill to London. The party next joined the Heanor-Ilkeston road and followed this through Ilkeston, a town Lawrence knew from his teacher training. Their route then turned towards Stapleford: today mostly built up but following pleasant country lanes a hundred years ago. It is interesting that the Stone was seen as a significant destination, worth a fourteen-mile walk (at least), and was clearly a popular spot:

‘Everywhere in the field below, factory girls and lads were eating lunch or sporting about’.

Jessie Chambers, the model for Miriam Leivers

In the novel the importance of this walk is the emerging love between the hero, Paul Morel, and Miriam, the girl from Haggs Farm (a thinly-disguised Lawrence and Jessie Chambers). Both felt rather alienated from the rest of the party, who were inclined to climb the Stone and carve their names there. On the way home they both fell behind the others, Lawrence struggling to repair an umbrella, and their mutual sympathy developed into a complicated affair which dominates the first half of Sons and Lovers and has become a classic of teenage angst.

A lovely day out in the Bath

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Today Matlock Bath rarely seems short of visitors; even in winter there will be customers for ice cream, and car parks fill up by mid-day. But in the past, especially before the railway arrived in 1849, and when road access was challenging, the village had to work harder to attract travellers. Early fame depended on the waters, of course, but wallowing in a lukewarm bath had limited appeal, yet the spectacular landscape of High Tor to one side and Masson Hill opposite was the subject of many paintings, helping spread its reputation. Local entrepreneurs began adding to the natural beauty, starting with Lovers’ Walks, on the east side of the Derwent, and originally only accessed by ferry or from Willersley. The Walks are first mentioned in 1742, making them possibly the earliest public ‘park’ in the country. Paths were created by the river and up the hillside, with seats, shelters and ornaments provided to enhance the views.

View of Matlock Bath from the Heights of Abraham c. 1840s

Presumably eighteenth-century visitors were more energetic than modern holidaymakers, since before the cable cars were installed reaching the Heights involved a steep-ish walk. Opened in 1787, the rather quirky name derives from the supposed similarity to the Heights of Abraham in Quebec, where General Wolfe died in 1759. These gardens offered views over the valley, improved by building the viewing platform of the Victoria Tower in 1844. Clearly, hillside walks were a limited attraction, so the old lead workings in Masson were opened up to visitors, now named Masson Cavern and Rutland Cavern, both continuing to offer some spectacular sights.

The Switchback Railway, Derwent Gardens c. 1910

About 1887 a craze for ‘switchback’ railways, a basic kind of gravity operated roller coaster, swept the country. The Buxton family bought and ran Matlock’s version, which had been built on the site of Derwent Gardens, and it continued operating until about 1930. Judging from the photos it would have never passed Health and Safety inspections, but was apparently extremely popular!

Matlock Bath Illuminations, or Venetian Nights, dates back to 1897, when it was an attempt to prolong the holiday season into the autumn by offering a spectacular display of illuminated boats, accompanied by fireworks. These have continued up to the present, with breaks for wars, floods and, of course, Covid-19. Especially in the 1920s and 30s there was strong competition for the prize for the best boat, and some of the remarkable winners can be seen on the Andrews pages at:

https://www.andrewsgen.com/matlock/pix/matlockbath_illuminations_boats.htm

Completing fishermen

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The elegant Mr Cotton

Charles Cotton (1630-1687) was the owner of (the now demolished) Beresford Hall in Beresford Dale, on the upper reaches of the River Dove. As a Royalist sympathiser he found it prudent to live quietly in the country after the Parliamentary victory, but he was also a notable writer who wrote poetry in praise of the Peak District, as well as a best-selling handbook on games. But today he is mainly remembered as a fishing enthusiast who built a fishing ‘temple’ in his grounds on the Staffordshire side of the river. This still stands, on private land but visible from the footpath on the Derbyshire side. Over the doorway the initials CC and IW are intertwined, commemorating his friendship with Izaak Walton.

The fishing temple

Walton (1593-1683) was born into an innkeeper’s family in Stafford but seems to have been socially mobile, moving to open a linen draper’s business in London and becoming friendly with the local vicar, John Donne. But he was also a committed Royalist, and retired to Staffordshire after the War, where he bought land. His political leanings may have cemented his friendship with Cotton, but angling was probably the main tie, and Walton’s most famous work was The Compleat Angler (1653), to which Cotton later added some chapters. This book has gone through scores of editions in the past 370 years, yet is frankly almost unreadable today. Walton, who was 37 years older than Cotton, must have been good company, for he spent the last half of his long life staying with friends, and in some cases writing their biographies, including George Herbert and Richard Hooker.

Izaak on the job

In Cotton’s part of The Compleat Angler he describes a journey from Asbourne north to Milldale, in the form of a dialogue between a traveller (Viator) and a fisherman (Piscator), which emphasises the horrors of Derbyshire roads – this is the descent into the Dale:

Viator: It is as steep as a penthouse.

Piscator: To look down from hence it appears so, but the path winds and turns, and will not be found so troublesome.

Viator: Theses stones are so slippery I cannot stand. What’s here, a bridge? Do you travel in wheelbarrows in this country? This bridge was made for nothing else – ’tis not two fingers broad.

Piscator: I have rid over the bridge many a dark night.

Today the bridge at Milldale is still called Viator’s Bridge.

Unwillingly to school …

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The young Alison

Today few young children walk to primary school alone, for a variety of reasons including parental perceptions of danger. In fact, the image of mum in a large Range Rover driving her offspring to the school gates has become a cliche. Yet 150 years ago children who were lucky enough to go to school often had to walk for miles, especially in rural areas. To some extent this walking may have formed part of their education, as was the case with Alison Uttley, who later became famous for her Little Grey Rabbit books. Alison grew up in a struggling farming family at Castletop Farm between Cromford and Lea Bridge. She didn’t go to school until she was seven, due to the remoteness of their farm on Hearthstone Lane.

Lea Primary today

Lea Primary School on Church Street, Holloway was chosen by her parents due to its good reputation. But the journey home, although only a mile and a half long, meant walking from school down to Lea Road, past John Smedley’s mill at Lea Bridge and then climbing up through Bow Wood on what is now a rough track (but which was the old road before the turnpike was built by the Derwent), and emerging from the wood just below the farm. Alison had to do this walk twice a day, in all weathers, and in winter the homeward stretch would be in the dark, for which she was given a lantern.

The path through Bow Wood

Clearly the fears she felt on her walk had a major impact, for she describes the journey in several books:

“I set off home, running for the first mile, for it was downhill and easy. Then I passed a mill and walked up a steep field where cows grazed. I came to the wood, and stopped at the big gate to light the candle in my lantern. I shut the gate softly so that ‘they’ would not hear. The treees were alive and awake, they were waiting for me…”

She obviously had a powerful imagination, and perhaps this walk could be credited with launching her career as a storyteller, since she sometimes persuaded a school friend to walk with her, with the incentive of listening to the stories that Alison made up as they walked.

Alison’s walk to school can easily be followed today, either starting from Cromford Station and walking uphill to Castletop, and then through Bow Wood to Holloway, or the reverse route starting from Lea Primary School.

Sources

Judd, D (2010) Alison Uttley, Spinner of Tales, Manchester University Press

Uttley, A (1951) Ambush of Young Days, Faber & Faber

Mr Burdett, map maker and …

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Peter and Hannah

Peter Perez Burdett (c.1734-1793) is a fascinating example of an eighteenth-century artist, surveyor, amateur scientist and … serial debtor! His map of Derbyshire (1767) is the first accurate survey of the county, at the scale of an inch to a mile, and is invaluable to local historians. He was a friend of the painter Joseph Wright, whose portrait of Peter and his wife Hannah (1765) shows them al fresco, as if posing on their country estate. Apparently she was a widow, somewhat older than Peter, and the marriage may have helped him raise capital for his mapping project. He is holding his surveying telescope, while she appears most unsuitably dressed for a country ramble! (Wright was a master of drapery). This double portrait can now be seen at the Czech National Gallery in Prague.

Plan of Derby from Burdett’s map of 1767

Burdett appears in several of Wright’s paintings, notably as the figure making notes on the left in Wright’s masterpiece, A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery (see below). But despite their friendship and his map-making achievements, Burdett chose to move to Liverpool in 1768, possibly to seek a new range of clients, but certainly to evade his creditors. There he surveyed the Liverpool – Leeds canal, and was also involved in the development of the new technique of making aquatints in 1774, producing several himself, and thus demonstrating his versatility.

Burdett makes notes

However, Burdett seems to have been again less proficient at managing his finances, since in 1774 he had to flee to Baden, in modern Germany, to escape his debtors. Leaving Hannah behind he, curiously, took their joint portrait with him! In Baden he found a patron in the Grand Duke, and also found a new wife, Friederike Kotkowski, who he married in 1787 at the age of 53. They had a daughter, Anna, who married into the local aristocracy. Peter was clearly successful in his new milieu, surveying schemes for the Grand Duke until dying in 1793 at the age of 59. His story illustrates the extraordinary versatility of many men (and some women) in this period of rapid social change and scientific advances.

Goodbye to another pub?

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The Jug and Glass at Lea Green, pictured above, is the latest in a long list of Derbyshire pubs that have closed in recent years. Just in the Matlock area these include the Lime Tree and the Crown in Matlock itself, the Jovial Dutchman and the King’s Head in Crich, the Yew Tree in Holloway, the Nelson at Bullbridge, the Derwent Hotel at Whatstandwell, the Homesford Cottage on the A6, the George and the Vaults in Wirksworth, and many more. So what accounts for this spectacular collapse of what is still seen as an important English institution?

For sale in Chesterfield – The historic Royal Oak

Although pubs are now seen mainly as a community resource and valued for providing a meeting space for local clubs, inns (as opposed to alehouses) originally catered to travellers, and provided meals, beds and a change of horses, as well as drink and company. Inns must certainly date back to Chaucer’s time (c. 1370), since his pilgrims stay at the Tabard in Southwark, and are probably much older. But the arrival of railways reduced their importance, and drink drive legislation was a further blow. Today’s traveller is lucky to find any wayside pub or inn open, since so many have had to restrict their opening hours.

The classic look

There are many reasons for the recent decline in pub-going. The price of beer, pushing £5 a pint in places, and the shortage of staff willing to work unsocial hours, made worse by the folly of Brexit, all contribute. But perhaps the critical factor has been the reluctance of many to enter a communal space, which was exacerbated by the pandemic. ‘Pub’ stands for public house, which means a place where you can meet your neighbours on neutral ground. Yet it seems that more and more people prefer to drink in the safety of home, where the drinks are cheap, and there’s no danger of having to talk to a stranger.

A wandering minstrel I …

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There is plenty of evidence that minstrels travelled around the country in the Middle Ages, performing in halls and taverns, and at fairs. But very little is known of the material they performed for their audiences, whether lordly or peasant. Nor do we know how far afield they travelled. However, James Wade of Cambridge University has recently published an article which may provide some answers. He has studied a manuscript in the National Library of Scotland which dates from about 1480, known as the Heege Ms. It was written by a Richard Heege, presumably a native of Heage, near Belper, who was a tutor to the Sherbrooke family at Tibshelf. The manuscript consists of three pieces which might well have formed part of a minstrel’s repertoire.

The items recorded are mainly comical/ nonsensical: a poem called The Hunting of the Hare, a mock sermon, and a nonsense verse called The Battle of Brackonwet (thought to be Brackenfield). The style is clearly suited to oral performance and contains plenty of drinking references, which point to delivery at a feast or celebration: Christmas, a wedding, etc. The place names mentioned are Holbrook, Radford (near Nottingham), Brackenfield and Codnor, which suggest that the minstrel had a circuit or regular beat since all these places are within a couple of hours’ walk of each other.

It is hard to imagine how dull the long winter evenings must have been five hundred years ago, when even for the literate there was little reading material available, and certainly no internet! So the arrival of a minstrel must have been welcome, for both rich and poor. The material that Wade has studied was clearly intended for a mixed audience, since it satirises the behaviour of both landowners and peasants. Although this small collection of minstrel material cannot provide a full picture, it does allow us to imagine how a possibly part-time entertainer could amuse his audience with jokes about local communities behaving badly.

Source: James Wade, Entertainments from a Medieval Minstrel’s Repertoire Book, The Review of English Studies, 2023;, hgad053, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgad053

On the road to Dale

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Compared with neighbouring Yorkshire, Derbyshire has hardly any visible remains of its abbeys. Even the location of Darley Abbey in Derby is uncertain, while Dale Abbey, between Ilkeston and Ockbrook, has just one solitary surviving arch (see below). The engraving above shows the state of the ruins in the eighteenth century, before the robbing of dressed stone had been completed. Yet at its height in the fifteenth century this abbey owned about 24,000 acres of land, throughout the county and beyond; endowments it had accumulated over the years. With only about 15 canons in residence, the job of administering these estates may have been given to lay people, but this task must have involved constant travelling. In addition, abbeys like Dale attracted pilgrims who came to pray before relics, in this case a phial of St Mary’s milk. For both reasons, Dale Abbey must have been sited on a good long-distance route.

The remains of the east window, Dale Abbey

The conventional view is that monasteries and abbeys were sited in remote, inaccessible places where the inmates could spiritually benefit from the tranquility of isolation. That may have been true at one time, but the running costs of both the abbey and its agricultural lands meant that two-way traffic steadily developed. In fact Dale was on the route of the Derbyshire Portway, linking it directly with Nottingham to the east, and to the northwest with Wirksworth and its estates at Griff Grange just beyond that town (‘grange’ suggests a monastic farm).

Dale church today

Dale Abbey was closed in 1538 (by William Cavendish) and its huge estates, consisting of churches and mills in addition to moors, woods and fields were sold off. By this time the influence of Protestantism was undermining the twin ideals of the monastic life and pilgrimage. The buildings were soon pillaged: some stained glass, for example, being taken to nearby Morley church. Today the village of Dale provides good walking, one of England’s few semi-detached churches (another survival from the Abbey) and a remarkable hermitage above in the woods, supposed to have been created by a Derby baker who sought a religious life there in the twelfth century.

Chaps with maps

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Part of Speed’s Derbyshire map of 1611: Wirksworth in centre.

It is a mystery of history that maps in the modern sense, as aids to travel, did not appear until the early eighteenth century. A few maps survive from the Roman and medieval periods, but they seem to have been rare and would not have helped the traveller. Presumably wayfarers simply had to ask the way. The first county maps of England, and probably the first in Europe, were produced by Christopher Saxton in the 1570s, and these were plagiarised by John Speed, whose 1611 Derbyshire map is shown above. This might have been of some use to travellers, although roads are not shown: the dotted lines are boundaries of hundreds. However his map does show rivers, some bridges (e.g. Belper bridge), and the fenced estates of the wealthy. Although it has the modern convention of north at the top it is still semi-pictorial in style, with little mountains and water mills. Note the erratic spelling: two versions of Wirksworth!

The first practical map for travellers was Ogilby’s strip map of 1675. As can be seen above, this maps the route from Derby (top right) to Manchester (bottom left), and shows villages, side roads, hills and some inns. This map is part of Britannia, a book of 100 major routes in the kingdom, at the innovative scale of one mile to an inch. However, this is the only Derbyshire road in the book, and it was not until 1767 that the whole county was surveyed for Peter Perez Burdett’s map (below). Although far from perfect, this is an invaluable reference for historians, depicting in detail the county’s villages, forests, and, for the first time, the main roads.

Burdett’s map of 1767 – the Derwent runs from top to bottom on right.

The map was revised in 1791 and so shows the turnpike roads (and mileages) as solid double lines. However, minor roads, lanes and paths are not marked. (The very thick black line is a hundred boundary). Upland is now shown by hatching, but it is obvious that the Via Gellia, west of Cromford, did not yet exist (or had not been recently surveyed). The names of some landowners are included, for instance Richard Arkwright at Cromford, and the maps were probably aimed at this class of customers, rather than ordinary travellers.

Ordnance Survey map of Youlgreave 1898: 25 inches = 1 mile

The first Ordnance Survey maps of Derbyshire, at a one inch to one mile scale, were not produced until 1840. Perhaps for the first time, accurate maps were available at a reasonable price. Later in the century larger scale maps were produced, such as the one above, which show every footpath, field and house, and so are a valuable resource for historians. Today we are so used to planning trips on cheap folding paper maps, or, increasingly map apps using GPS on our phones, that it’s easy to forget how recent these resources are. But perhaps the biggest mystery is how our ancestors moved around the country not only without maps, but without ever having seen a map in their lives?