Category Archives: Counties

Dicky’s Skull – when folk lore and tourism collide to make history.

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https://www.nationalchurchestrust.org/church/taxal-st-james

It was said that the coming of the London and North Western Railway in 1863 from Stockport to Buxton was impacted by a supernatural skull, known as Dicky, when during the building work a railway embankment near Tunstead Farm when the line crossed the Coombs valley to Chapel-en-le-Frith slipped and the foundations of a bridge sank on several occasions.  Eventually the company had to relocate the bridge.  Local writers blamed Dicky for the expense and embellished the story with details of buried tools rather than consider that geology might have had its part to play.

The skull and the beleaguered inhabitants of Tunstead Farm was one of the most famous of the Peak District’s folk tales. In 1809, when John Hutchinson’s tour through the High Peak of Derbyshire was first published. Hutchinson met the owner of the farmhouse, Adam Fox, who claimed that the skull had been a feature of the property for the previous 200 years. There are several stories about the skull that used to be found at Tunstead Farm, near Chapel-en-le-Frith before its removal during the twentieth century to St James’ Church, Taxal, including the version that Ned Dixon was murdered by his cousin when he returned home after lengthy service as a soldier in Europe during the sixteenth century.  Dixon’s murderous cousin was troubled by the appearance of the skull which remained at the farm despite attempts to remove it.  By 1895, another story had sprouted: the skull belonged to a woman who was killed by her own sister during a quarrel over a man they both loved.  

In reality, how the farm came to be home to the skull is a matter for conjecture.  William Bunting, a historian writing in 1940, claimed that it was an archaeological find dating from the Iron Age.

Railway owners who developed lines and opened stations inside the Peak District discovered that passenger traffic was larger than they anticipated.  By the 1840s it accounted for two thirds of their revenue.  The Midland Railway opened at station at Buxton on 1 June 1863 from Derby while the London and North Western Railway opened its own, identical, station a fortnight later.  Affordable travel drew day trippers from the middle and working classes who lived in the industrial towns that surrounded the Peak District. The new arrivals wanted more than hills and dry-stone walls.  Dicky’s skull became part of the Peak District’s lore offering entertainment that appealed to the visitors and a method of boosting the local economy.  It was even possible to buy postcards featuring the farm and the skull.

Inevitably, Dicky is not the UK’s only haunted skull. There are several purportedly screaming skulls. At Burton Agnes, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Anne Griffiths was attacked and died soon afterwards having extracted a promise that her head would remain in the hall. Unsurprisingly her family did not comply with the request but soon wished that they had. To avoid continued disturbance Anne’s head was buried somewhere in the walls of the newly built house.

While history relies on recorded evidence – folk lore fills the gaps and there’s nothing like a spot of embellishment to improve a story in its telling!

Burton Agnes, East Yorkshire

Guide Stoops and turnpikes – a couple of random facts.

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Ashover – Stone Guide Stoop by Neil Theasby, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

I’ve settled down to read The Guide Stoops of Derbyshire by Howard Smith. Essentially prior to the establishment of Turnpike Roads travellers and pack ponies travelled by a network of roads and tracks without much in the way of sign posts – making longer journeys something of a dangerous activity – consider Celia Fiennes local guide who became lost in the Peak District at the end of the seventeenth century.

Derbyshire’s administrators – the local JPs- set about improving matters with the extension in the number of guide stones between 1717 and 1734, although the Hope Cross on the Roman road dates from 1737 and is probably a replacement of a medieval way marker. They were responding – somewhat late in the day to an act of Parliament dating from 1709 which required all parishes to set up way markers. The Peak District’s stoop stones catered for the more isolated routes. North Yorkshire’s justices had issued the same demands in 1711 while the West Riding’s guide stoops were expanded in 1700 in response to an earlier act of Parliament dating to 1697. In Yorkshire stoop stones are also known as hand stones – presumably because of the pointing hands that are sometimes carved on them.

However the arrival of turnpike roads changed matters quite considerably in terms of travelling by road and the marking of roads. In 1773 a Turnpike Act made fingerposts obligatory.

And finally, here is my favourite fact of the day – on page 14 of Howard’s work. A 3-ton waggon needed 8 horses to pull it. The same amount carried on the backs of the animals required 30 horses making the waggon a much more economical way of carrying heavy goods.

St Luke’s Church, Sheen and its gargoyles

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Sheen is on the boundary between Staffordshire and Derbyshire within the Peak District. In 1327, when Edward II had been deposed and Isabella of France and her lover – Roger Mortimer- were acting as regents for Edward III, 8 people were assessed for tax in the village which continued to expand across the centuries.

In 1666, 33 people paid hearth tax. This was a tax granted by Parliament to Charles II in 1662 to fund his household. Householders were required to pay 1 shilling per year for each hearth, stove or fireplace in their property – so basically it was a wealth tax. The more fireplaces you had, the bigger your home was and thus the more you were required to pay.

The population reached 458 by 1871 but began to decline after that. It was during the 1850s that the church was rebuilt and a new house provided for the vicar as well as a school and a reading room.

The manor of Sheen originally belonged to Wulfric Spot, an Anglo Saxon noble who lived during the reign of Æthelred the Unready. He was a patron of Burton Abbey dedicated to St Modwen. In about 1003 he granted land at Sheen to the abbey but by 1086 the manor lay in the hands of William the Conqueror. However, the conqueror and the papacy confirmed Burton Abbey’s ownership of the chapel at Sheen and granted them the tithes accruing from it. At that time the chapel was described as being dependent upon the church at Ilam.

In 1529, with the Reformation Parliament settling in to make the break with Rome so that Henry VIII could divorce Katherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn, the abbey leased the chapel along with its glebe (the plot of land belonging to the church), the tithes and offerings to the curate of Sheen -Henry Longworth and his brother Thomas for their lives. In 1536, Henry was granted a 30 year lease on the church and the responsibility for providing a priest. Evidently the monks at Burton were anxious to ensure that their property remained, if possible, out of the hands of the Crown. it seems that Henry left money for the building of the church tower when he died in 1541.

However, the Crown was not to be thwarted. In 1546 Henry VIII granted Burton Abbey’s possessions – together with the chapel at Sheen to Sir William Paget who began his political career as the MP for Lichfield in 1529. By the time of the grant he was one of Henry’s privy councillors. In his turn Paget leased the chapel to Ralph Crane of Middleton – and the chapel ceased to be part of Ilam’s parish. Crane’s family inherited the right to appoint the curate but in 1743, as part of Queen Anne’s Bounty, the curacy became a perpetual curacy.

Queen Anne’s Bounty was a fund established in 1704 to improve the incomes of poor clerics in the Church of England – it effectively returned church taxes to Sheen so that the curate’s salary could be improved. The idea was that the Bounty would make donations made by local landowners

The current church at Sheen dates from 1852 when it was rebuilt by A.J.B. Hope in the style of the original 14th century church. The tower was buttressed and raised. Instead of a spire it was covered with a copper cap. Locally it is believed that the four gargoyles at the bottom of the tower (who appear to retain their interest in water if the watering cans and buckets are anything to go by!) were destined to sit atop another storey but that the architect feared the foundations weren’t strong enough – it’s certainly the reason why the projected spire was abandoned. Porteous’ book, entitled Peakland, written in 1954 and the Historic England website state that they belong to the earlier medieval church that stood upon the same site.

A P Baggs, M F Cleverdon, D A Johnson, N J Tringham, ‘Sheen’, in A History of the County of Stafford: Volume 7, Leek and the Moorlands, ed. C R J Currie, M W Greenslade (London, 1996), British History Online https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/staffs/vol7/pp239-250 [accessed 23 May 2026].

Deserted villages

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There’re a variety of reasons why villages and settlements might have been deserted in the past. The obvious reason relates to the Black Death of 1348. Other reasons include landlords deciding to use an area for a new purpose. For instance, at Nether Haddon in the Peak District, the settlement was moved so that a new deer park could be created, Other settlements were relocated or abandoned due to an increase in wool production, enclosure and even the end of the monasteries which saw former monastic land end up in the hands of private landowners.

Climate change has its own story to tell – and at places like Hungry Bentley – also in Derbyshire which can’t have been particularly prosperous in the first place given its name – a couple of bad years would be enough to see a village deserted. Of course, living close to the coast could bring its own problems. Dunwich was once a thriving port but now its a ruin thanks to storms and coastal erosion.

In all there are about 3,000 deserted or vanished settlements in England – from across the centuries. The number of deserted medieval settlements in 1968 stood at 2,263 which was updated in 1977. Derbyshire had gained five lost settlements by that time rising from 33 to 37; the West Riding held steady at 75 settlements while Nottinghamshire had actually lost a settlement dropping from 67 to 66. The county with the biggest number of lost settlements is the North Riding of Yorkshire with 176 missing settlements. The University of Hull maintains a database of more than 2,200 sites.

Once upon a time Conksbury, which is on private property and not accessible, was part of the royal manor of Bakewell which William the Conqueror granted to William Peverel. He in turn granted land near Conksbury to Lenton Priory which he founded in Nottinghamshire while Conksbury was later given to St Mary de Pratis Abbey, Leicester by William Avenal – where it remained until the dissolution of the monasteries.

Henry VI hung on to it for a while as did the later Tudors but by 1610 it was part of the Cavendish family land holdings and as such remains part of the Devonshire estate. Magna Britannia states that Meadow Place Grange was given to Sir William Cavendish in 1552. The packhorse bridge at Conksbury was rebuilt in the 18th century to carry traffic and there were tolls for its upkeep from 1758 onwards.

A Little History of Nottinghamshire

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I’m not sure what happened to December – other than the usual! And now having started physio on my shoulder I’m back at the keyboard which is probably just as well, because as ever in January I’m running behind.

Currently this year I have a talk in February in Nottingham at Waterstones on the evening of Thursday 26th February on the subject of Nottinghamshire. If you’re interested please follow the link to the Waterstones page.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/the-little-history-of-nottinghamshire-an-evening-with-julia-a-hickey/nottingham

Hopefully by the end of today I will have my first Zoom class for 2026 set up. It’s going to be on the subject of remarkable women of the Seventeenth Century – Lady Anne Clifford, Christina Duchess of Devonshire, Lady Mary Vere and her daughters, Aphra Benn, Brilliana Harley, Lady Jane Cavendish, Mary Somerset, Duchess of Beaufort are among the women that spring to mind as well as Lady Ann Middleton from York and Mary Ward who became a Poor Clare. I will also be covering Lucy Hutchinson who wrote an account of her husband’s life and, less well known, Alice Thornton a northern diarist. In fact there are rather a lot of remarkable seventeenth century women when I come to think about it, I just need to martial the dates and organise them into some kind of order.

Medieval Roads in the Peak District.

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Minninglow

After the Romans departed from Britain’s shores the towns and roads that they established began to decay. Even so, the roads continued to be used as did earlier prehistoric trackways. A road running between Buxton and Wirksworth, known as The Street, was still being used in the eighteenth century and lets not forget that King Alfred used Watling Street to mark the boundary between his own realm and Danelaw. The addition of the name ‘Gate’ to any road was originally the Norse ‘gata’ meaning road while street, meaning a paved road, originated from Latin but which was adopted by Anglo-Saxon road users.

It wasn’t until 1285 that the Statute of Winchester required individual manors to maintain highways that passed across them. It also required tracks and bridleways to be maintained. At Norbury, Sir Henry FitzHerbert was required to obtain a licence in 1305 to divert the old road which rather inconveniently passed through the courtyard of his house.

More people began to travel as markets were established and monastic houses founded. The Earl’s Way, heading east, from Leek was established by the Norman earls of Chester using some preexisting tracks. In addition to the earl using the route to travel to various parts of his estates in meant that his tax gatherers could also access the area more easily. Other routes from Leek to Macclesfield permitted monks to send wool towards Chester for export.

Long distance packhorse routes including Portway and Doctor’s Gate near Glossop carried goods from Manchester to Nottingham. It is thought that some of the way originated during the Bronze Age. Pack horse routes, often in the form of hollow ways, caused by the erosion of countless feet, carried salt, wool, lead and any other merchandise that required transport. Hartington which had its own market from 1203 onwards was at the hub of a number of pack horse routes including a route passing Minninglow in the direction of Wirksworth.

One of the paths running eastwards is called Gallowlow Lane. The low refers to a Bronze Age bowl barrow, long since robbed out. Its name is suggestive of a place of execution but there’s no extant evidence for a gallows there other than the name and its position in a prominent place in the landscape. More cheerily there’s also a Jaggers Gate heading from Buxton in the direction of Macclesfield. A jagger was another name for a carrier or packhorse man while a jag was the load that a mule carried. In Derbyshire the term began as a name for the packhorse trains that carried lead ore. Meanwhile, Doctor’s Gate was named after Dr John Talbot who is recorded as improving a section of the old road during the late fifteenth century. Black Harry Gate is an eighteenth century addition to the names of Derbyshire’s roads. He was a highwayman – which possibly explains why there are so many references to gallows and gibbets scattered across the area. Daniel Defoe would call the region a ‘howling wilderness’ when he visited, so it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t necessarily always particularly law abiding.

There are also coffin roads that enabled isolated communities to carry the coffins of their loved ones to the nearest church. The best known one runs from Edale to Castleton. Hollins Cross marked the point where funeral parties might stop for a rest and to offer prayers. The Peak District has nowhere near as many of this kind of path as Yorkshire and Cumbria.

Dodd, A.E. and Dodd, E.M. Peakland Roads and Trackways

The Little History of Nottinghamshire

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The monastery at Dunstable and its lands in the Peak District

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Ballidon Chapel of ease.

I’ve written about the Augustinians of Dunstable before but I’m trying to decide whether I want to keep Medieval Dunstable (edited by Yates, Jean ) or not. It was one of five houses founded by King Henry I. By the time he died there were nearly two hundred Augustinian monastic houses in England which just goes to show how keen his nobility were to get into his good books. Apparently The Augustinians were not an enclosed order. The canons were all ordained priests who chose to live as a monastic community; they served the neighbourhoods where they lived as priests and offered hospitality. And that’s one of the reasons why Dunstable ended up with lands in Derbyshire. Situated on Watling Street, it was one of the busiest medieval roads in the kingdom but unlike the hotel chain which advertises a good night’s sleep the canons were unable to charge for the food and lodgings they offered. Instead, they were given gifts by grateful travellers.

Much of the monastic land was in the Dunstable environs as were the churches to which the canons held the advowson – or the right to appoint the priest. They also held land and churches in Buckinghamshire and, this is where I become interested, Derbyshire. Bradbourne Manor which was part of the Honour of Tutbury lay in the hands of the Cauceis family. Sir Godfrey de Cauceis granted the chapels at Ballidon, Brassington, Tissington and Atlow to the canons as well as the tithes at Aldwark and Lee Hall. (Yates, Jean, (Ed.), ‘Churches and Lands: Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire & Oxfordshire’, in Medieval Dunstable, p.231.)

Unfortunately Godfrey died the following year and although the gift was confirmed, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Coventry kept episcopal and parish rights for himself. With so many fingers in the pie it is perhaps not surprising that the prior at Dunstable took matters further. In 1215 the case went to Rome and three judges were appointed to take a closer look at the Peak District churches. The rector at Bradbourne, Robert, was the son of the previous incumbent and yes, Henry the vicar at Ballidon was also the progeny of the previous cleric. Both men were described as being incontinent – which has nothing to do with the modern meaning and more to do with the keeping of mistresses. I suppose that it’s only fair that William who was the chaplain at Tissington kept moth mistresses and hunting dogs. As a result of these discoveries, which all three men denied, the canons at Dunstable were allowed to appoint new vicars.

And just when it seems you’ve got a handle on these things in 1230, Pope Gregory extracted a tenth tax on the income from Dunstable’s Peak District churches. In 1242 the canons required a new charter for the church at Bradbourne because the old one was nibbled by mice. In the decades that followed the canons made an annual visit to the Peak District to inspect the books – and possibly to enjoy the countryside. Not that it was always plain sailing. Sheep, as any hill farmer will tell you, are quite keen on finding innovative ways to die and there were several years when disease took its toll but in general the wool trade was a profitable one at this time.

And it turns out that the canons held church rights along Watling Street while at Pattishall, the lord of the manor came to an agreement with the prior for him to stay three times a year depending on the number of horses he had with him (Yates, p.240.). The Augustinians already owned land in Northamptonshire – think of it as joining the dots. And there was the Augustinian Priory at Repton, virtually on the doorstep.

Dunstable’s ownership of various Peak District lands and churches came to an end in 1540 with its dissolution. However, Medieval Dunstable is going back to its place on the bookshelf – the section about Derbyshire is small but extremely useful and I have been reminded that I need to retake photos of the various churches that Dunstable held but possibly not on a day when the rain is coming in horizontally.

Nottinghamshire before 1066 and a Friday afternoon meander across my bookshelf.

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By Richard Croft, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12966437

I’d forgotten how wonderful the Ordinance Survey historical maps and guides can be. The Ancient Britain incarnation of the map reminded me about the Anglo-Saxon Church at Carlton in Lindrick. It also reassured me that I hadn’t missed anything of national significance, listing as it does only Cresswell Crags (prehistoric) and the Anglo-Saxon Cross in Stapleford Churchyard as items of interest.

There’s not a lot above ground from Ancient Nottinghamshire’s past – many settlements have been constantly inhabited, but at Carlton in Lindrick, near Worksop, within there is a church that dates from about 860AD. Not much of the original church remains. It was certainly extended during the tenth century and the west tower is, apparently, a good example of a Saxon west tower. Someone listed it as one of the top three west church tower (the Saxons did other varieties of tower) – though true to form I can’t find the source of my quote…an unfortunate habit that’s tripped me up for several decades now, you’d think I’d have learned.

Inevitably I did some more digging about and there are 400 or so churches in Britain which have some Anglo-Saxon fabric or which sixty or so come in the form of late Saxon church towers. This is a little complicated by the fact that when it came to church building after the Conquest, it may have been the Normans who gave the orders but it was the Saxons who did the building. And let’s not forget all those later additions stuck on various churches by patrons determined to ensure a) their place in Heaven, b) that everyone should know how wealthy they were and c) because keeping up with the Joneses isn’t a new phenomena.

Anyway back to Carlton in Lindrick’s tower – which may have served as a look out tower and place of refuge as well as part of the church. It’s the only tower of its kind in Nottinghamshire although places like Littleborough also contain fragments of their Saxon past. Both places contain distinctive Saxon herring-bone brickwork.

Part of the reason behind Carlton’s prestigious appearance may lay in a clue provided by the Domesday Book. Before 1066, six thegns each had a hall at Carlton, or at least nearby. A thegn was somewhere between a freeman and a member of the nobility. The thegns worked together to build their church but there were also two mills at Carlton. But who the six thegns were and what happened to them is another matter entirely.

I’m still wading around Saxon cross shafts in Nottinghamshire and the tympanum at Southwell. Not to mention trying to remember which churches I’ve visited in the county with the distinctive narrow faces with rounded, or even triangular, tops. So far I’ve got Southwell on my list and Carlton – which isn’t entirely helpful. A quick google revealed All Saints Church at Babworth which I know I’ve never been to. All of which means, I think, a delve into Arthur Mee’s King’s England for Nottinghamshire which is fortuitous in its own way – he’s a Nottinghamshire lad, who I am very much looking forward to writing about.

Wollaton and the Willoughbys

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Wollaton Hall, Enchufla Con Clave, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Prior to the Conquest Wollaton was known as Olaveston – medieval spelling and pronunciation resulted in the change of name. The manor was in the hands of Alfa the Saxon who paid Danegeld for about 180 acres of land. After 1066 the manor was granted to William Peverell and continued in his family until Henry II confiscated it and the land became Crown property. In 1174, Henry II gave it to his youngest son John. The land was held throughout by a tenant who paid a Knight’s fee in order to hold the manor.

During the thirteenth century a wool merchant named Ralph Bugge purchased lands in Willoughby-on-the-Wolds. Across the next hundred years the family, who changed their name to Willoughby, accrued more wealth, made judicious marriage alliances and ended up with the Wollaton estate on the outskirts of modern Nottingham. They also acquired Cossal and the following century added the estate of Middleton in Warwickshire to their portfolio. As they made good marriages and acquired land they became part of the gentry and served in various administrative capacities. In 1427, Hugh Willoughby served as one of Nottinghamshire’s MPs before becoming Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire. It helped that some of the Willoughbys’ land was sitting on coal seams. Sir Henry Willoughby, who lived at the end of the fifteenth century was regarded as a very wealthy man, who invested his income in land and through making judicious marriages for his children.

Sir Henry Willoughby looked to Lord Hastings as his patron and as a consequence fought for the Tudors at Bosworth in 1485. He was also on the field at Blackheath in 1497 and won favour from Henry VII. Not that Sir Henry was without blemish, in 1485 he abducted Jane Sacheverell who was both a widow and an heiress and forced her to marry his brother, Richard. The following year Jane was granted a divorce and married William Zouche, who she had been contracted to prior to her kidnap.

And now we come to Sir Francis Willoughby – who built Wollaton Hall. His father, (another Henry) married Anne Grey, the sister of the Duke of Suffolk. The Willoughbys were closely tied by marriage to the Greys several times over. When Francis was two, his father died. He and his brother became wards of their uncle. In 1554 Francis’ cousin Lady Jane Grey, was executed as was the duke. In 1559, Francis’ elder brother died and Francis became heir to his father’s estates.

Francis married Elizabeth Lyttleton when they were both in their teens. It was not a happy relationship. Eventually the Earl of Leicester adjudicated between the couple and they went their separate ways, although Francis was required to pay Elizabeth £200 per year.

Sir Francis initially tried to sell Bess of Hardwick land at Willoughby to try and raise funds to begin building Wollaton Hall. She told him his asking price was too mach and declined the offer. Instead, she leant him the money on the understanding that the land would be security for the debt. He began to build his hall with Ancaster stone from Lincolnshire, in 1580 and finished it in 1588. He died less than a decade after its completion and still in debt from the construction of the hall. It is thought that the building cost about £8,000. It did not help that he had six daughters who all required dowries.

In Derbyshire, Bess of Hardwick, watched the building take shape with keen interest, she even visited it when it was nearing completion on a journey home from London. In 1591 she signed Willoughby’s mason, John Roses, to complete the stonework on her own grand design at Hardwick which was designed, as was Wollaton, by Robert Smythson. Situated on a hill, with large windows covering the walls it has been described as a ‘lantern house’ which seems an appropriate description of both Wollaton and Hardwick.

Willoughby did not forget to emblazon his coat of arms above the front entrance but it was a nineteenth century extension designed by Jeffrey Wyatville, (real name Wyatt) who remodelled the interior of the hall, adding a large hall with a hammer-beam ceiling and rather gothic corbels and grotesques.

Francis had no sons so the estate passed to his eldest daughter and her husband – who also happened to be a cousin, named Sir Percival Willoughby.

There was a fire in 1641 which caused extensive damage, so the house was unoccupied for the better part of fifty years. When the Willoughbys returned, Cassandra Willoughby, Duchess of Chandos, ordered that the house should be changed on its exterior to reflect a more Italianate style with the addition of statues from Italy. Cassandra’s efforts to resurrect her family home included cataloguing the family papers.

In 1801 there was yet another fire which allowed Wyatville’s extensive remodelling.

Nottingham crept ever closer to the hall and its fourteenth century deer park. In 1881 the Willoughby family sold Wollaton to the Nottingham Corporation who turned it into a natural history museum.

Strauss, Sheila M., Wollaton and Wollaton Hall, A Short History (Nottingham: Nottingham City Council Leisure Department, 1989)

And it turns out that you can even buy a vintage travel poster for Wollaton Hall – just goes to show how popular visiting stately stacks and natural history museums can be!

Amazon Associate link – click on picture to open new tab.