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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Well this is very exciting – I’m in the window of Waterstones in Derby! The History Press publication The Little History of Derbyshire is in the window…yes I did a little dance of happiness and have been photographed standing next to it.
Someone asked me how much I enjoyed writing it – and the answer is that I absolutely loved it the research process. I guess one of the things we’re all slightly guilty of is not visiting places on our own doorsteps, so it was a real pleasure to revisit locations I hadn’t been to for years and others that I’d never seen. I also became fascinated by the importance of geology and the development of infrastructure which impact on the prosperity of different locations as well as their evolution as settlements. Derbyshire is quite unusual in that there was no dominant noble family for many centuries after the de Ferrers earls of Derby blotted their copy books and Henry III ordered that Duffield Castle should be demolished, thus removing the county’s largest and most significant keep. Instead, more middling families assumed roles and responsibilities within the county working for the Dukes of Lancaster and, in due course, Lancastrian monarchs. By the fifteenth century Derbyshire’s gentry, of which there were about 30 families, were both prosperous and influential.
And the other thing I really enjoyed was turning my hand to some pen and ink drawings to illustrate the book. This pair didn’t make it into the book. It’s a quick sketch of the Thomas Cokayne and his wife Dorothy in St Oswald’s Church, Ashbourne. The Cokaynes were one of the gentry families who played a significant role in Medieval Derbyshire. Thomas was in the household of the 5th Earl of Shrewsbury, he took part in Henry VIII’s Rough Wooing in 1544 and was knighted by Edward Seymour for his part in it – notably the burning of Edinburgh. In 1587, he was one of the gentleman warders of Mary Queen of Scots on the orders of the 6th Earl of Shrewsbury. The following year, again on the orders of Shrewsbury, he joined other members of the Derbyshire gentry, as justices of the peace, recruiting men and arming them in preparation for the Spanish Armada.
My starting point for this post is Ralph FitzHubert who was one of Wiliam the Conqueror’s tenants in Derbyshire. He made his home at Crich even though the majority of his Derbyshire manors were closer to Chesterfield and he held other estates in Nottinghamshire – Crich was perhaps convenient to access his manors. Crich, with its woodland pasture, was home to the king’s deer – which all belonged to the Crown. So far so good. Ralph is sometimes called Hubert of Ryes because he was the eldest son of the lord of Ryes near Bayeux and in Derbyshire he had six under tenants and was required to put a total of 30 knights in the field in return for all his land holdings.
Rather unexpectedly I found his younger brother was someone I’ve written about before. Ralph’s brother Eudo, who along with his three other brothers and father, arrived in England after 1066. Eudo held extensive lands in ten counties and by 1072 he was the steward or dapifer to the royal household. He was with William the Conqueror in Rouen when he died and he accompanied William II or William Rufus as he’s better known back to England. He continued as dapifer. Basically, he was a very powerful man and he married into a powerful family – his wife was Rohese de Clare.
He is also part of the group of men suspected of having William Rufus assassinated in August 1100. As conspiracy theories go the idea that the de Clares and their extended kinship network gave William’s little brother Henry a helping hand to the throne is not a new one and like all good theories there’s not a lot of evidence kicking around. Nor should it be added that he was ‘heaped with rewards’ if he did play a part in William’s demise (Frank Barlow, p.172).
Dapifer held extensive estates in East Anglia and played an intrinsic part in the building of Colchester Castle. His only child, a daughter called Margaret, was married to William de Mandeville. Eudo was the grandfather of Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex. After Eudo’s death his estates largely reverted to the Crown – which led to a disagreement between the king and Geoffrey in the matter of who owned Saffron Walden, Sawbridgeworth and Great Waltham. The case was only resolved during the Anarchy when King Stephen granted Geoffrey the estates that he claimed the Crown had taken unlawfully.
All in all, I’m a long way from brother Ralph in Crich. His descendants took on the name FitzRalph and his son Odo FitzRalph of Bunny in Nottinghamshire inherited the lot. However, the estates were broken up by female inheritance. And as a final aside, the place name has nothing to do with bunny rabbits – I was always taught that the Normans introduced rabbits to Britain but it turns out from archaeological finds at Fishbourne Roman palace that it was the Romans and even more amazing it wasn’t lunch – it seems to have been someone’s pet lepus.
Barlow, Frank, William Rufus, (2008)
Warren Hollister, C, ‘The Strange Death of William Rufus’, Speculum, Vol 48. no.4 (Oct 1973), pp.637-653
Here we are for the History jar advent calendar 2022 – where did the year go? It’s going to be a bit random this year but I will attempt to sneak something festive into each post – ok very tenuously- which is why we’re starting 800,000 years ago during the Ice Age which is well outside the History Jar’s usual remit.
For much of the ice Age, ice sheets several meters thick covered Derbyshire so people could not live in the area. These ice sheets covered much of the northern hemisphere – further south the conditions were more akin to the tundra of Siberia. However, as the ice sheets retreated the conditions became sub-Artic or if you want to call it by the right name periglacial. This resulted in very cold winters but milder summers. Occasional finds of flint hand axes show that people hunted in the area.
Thor’s Cave in the Manifold Valley – which is in Staffordshire rather than Derbyshire yielded stone tools, pots and amber beads when it was excavated by the Victorians and again during the 1920s. These finds are thought to come from the end of the Palaeolithic Period.
Even more spectacular are the limestone caves at Creswell Crags on the Derbyshire/Nottinghamshire border which is believed to be among the most northerly of dwelling places during the last Ice Age. Finds included stone arrowheads, woolly mammoth bones, woolly rhinoceros and giant deer bones – yup- all this for giant deer –
Evidence suggests that hunters moved into the caves before the ice sheets advanced south and that the people who lived there were forced south themselves along with the rhinoceros, horse and bison that they hunted. They returned when the ice sheets retreated. Eventually the woolly mammoth and rhinoceros disappeared as the climate grew milder. Hunters relied on deer for their meat and the tools that archeologists have discovered changed as well.
The earliest British art comes from Cresswell Crags – the British Museum is home to a bone discovered here engraved with a drawing of a horse. The walls of Church Hole Cave contain marks that are deer and bison.
