When I began university, I was told that by the time I finished I would be able to unwrap layers of history in the landscape where I lived, rather like an onion. I’m not so sure about the onion simile and the word palimpsest doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.

A palimpsest was originally a term used to described text written over an older layer of writing at a time when parchment was expensive. One layer is scraped off and another applied.

The truth of the matter is that in Derbyshire, and all the counties I’ve ever lived, elements of the past sit alongside the present, intertwining with one another like different fabrics in a patchwork quilt. Each one adds a new layer of meaning and in Derbyshire, it begins with geology. The landscape has shaped the people who lived here just as much as they shaped it.

One of my favourite links between landscape and the people who lived in Derbyshire is T’Owd Man of Wirksworth. He’s a small carved figure of a miner with a pick and workman’s basket, or kibble, dating from the Saxon period. He can be found on one of the stones in the south transept of St Mary’s Church.

Not that he began life in Wirksworth – The old man, or ‘T’Owd Man’ as the carving is known, was found during the restoration of the largely fourteenth century St James’ Church in the nearby village of Bonsall. T’Owd Man is thought to have originated from an earlier church and was reused as part of the foundations of the medieval building.  From Bonsall he found his way to the garden of the local churchwarden, John Broxup Coates. At some time between 1870 and 1874 T’Owd Man was rescued from his role as a garden ornament and incorporated into the walls of St Mary’s which was undergoing its own restoration.

The carving is thought to be Britain’s earliest representation of a miner – which is a seriously cool claim.

The Little History of Derbyshire will be available at the end of May.

https://www.thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-little-history-of-derbyshire/9781803994154/