Memorials of old Derbyshire

by Unknown

After making due allowance for a natural prejudice in favour of the county of one’s birth and early associations, it may, I think, be reasonably maintained that the comparatively small shire of Derby not only contains within its limits most exceptionally wild, beautiful and varied scenery, but that its social and political history is exceedingly diversified and full of interest. In all, too, that pertains to almost every branch of archæology, Derbyshire is well able to hold its own with any other county that could be named.

The proofs of the residence of early man in the district are afforded by the considerable variety of remains that have been discovered in the bone caves of the High Peak near Buxton, in those of the high lands above Wirksworth, and more especially in the Creswell caves on the verge of Nottinghamshire. In Grant Allen’s remarkable and generally accurate book on the beginnings of county history throughout England, a singular blunder is made with regard to Derbyshire; it is there stated that this county “was almost uninhabited until long after the English settlement of Britain, with the solitary exception of a few isolated Roman stations.” Archæology, however, puts such a statement as this to complete rout. Difficult as it is to understand how such large bands of savage men were able to maintain themselves in so wild a district, it is the fact that the Peak of Derbyshire was, so to speak, thickly populated by prehistoric tribes. A glance at the map of prehistoric remains, given in the first volume of the Victoria History of the County of Derby, to illustrate Mr. Ward’s article, will at once show that the whole of that part of North Derbyshire which extends from Ashbourne to Chapel-en-le-Frith on the west, from thence to Derwent Chapel on the north, and then southward through Hathersage and Winster back again to Ashbourne, is peppered all over with the red symbols that betoken the barrows or lows which were the burial places of our forefathers during the neolithic and subsequent ages. Round Stanton-in-the-Peak and Hathersage the barrows, circles and other early remains occur with such frequency that it is difficult to mark even small dots on the map without them running into each other.

When the Romans held Derbyshire they had five chief stations in the county, namely, at Little Chester, near Derby; at Brough, near Hope; at Buxton; at Melandra Castle, on the verge of Cheshire; and near Wirksworth. The chief Roman road, termed Ryknield Street, entered the county at Monksbridge, between Repton and Egginton; crossing the Derwent by Derby to Little Chester, the road proceeded to Chesterfield, and thence into Yorkshire. Another road crossed the south of the county, entering Derbyshire on the east near Sawley, and passing through Little Chester to Rocester, in Staffordshire. A whole group of other roads radiated throughout the Peak from Buxton as a centre.

Doubtless one of the chief reasons why the Romans were so determined to occupy, after a military fashion, the north of the county was because of the lead mining which they so actively pursued. The chief district of this lead mining extended between Wirksworth on the south and Castleton on the north. Between these two places groups of disused mines appear with frequency. Most of those that have been closely examined yield obvious traces of having been worked by our conquerors. Six pigs of inscribed Roman lead have been found in the county. One of them bears the name of Hadrian (A.D. 117–138). The probabilities, however, are strong that the Roman miners were at work in this county half a century earlier, for there is evidence of lead working in western Yorkshire in A.D. 81, and it is most unlikely that mining began in that part of Yorkshire before Derbyshire had been touched.

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the interest and importance pertaining to Dr. Haverfield’s article on Romano-British Derbyshire, as set forth in the first volume of the Victoria History of the county.

When the Romans left this county at the dawn of the fifth century, the first English or Saxon settlement speedily followed. The north of Derbyshire formed the southern extremity of that long range of broken primary hills—termed the Pennine Chain—which extended from the Cheviots down to the district long known as Peakland or the Peak. As the Romans withdrew, Peakland seems to have been overrun by hordes of the Picts; but when the pagan English settled in Northumbria a new element of strife was introduced which affected the line of Pennine Hills from end to end. This range became a boundary between two hostile races dissimilar in habits, tongue and creed. The older British race, Christianized to a considerable extent, took up their position on the western side, and also held their own in certain parts of the actual dividing ridge.

It seems likely that the Peakland, for about 150 years after the first coming of the English—and possibly other parts to the east and south afterwards known under the common name of Derbyshire—was retained by the Celts, or Welsh, after the same fashion as they undoubtedly held the districts round the modern town of Leeds.

With the opening of the seventh century substantial historic data begin. Ethelfrith, the last pagan king of Northumbria, crossed the southern end of the Pennine Chain in 603, and by a notable victory at Chester extended, as Bede tells us, the dominions of the English to the Mersey and the Dee. The actual conquest of Peakland probably soon followed. Mr. Grant Allen’s supposition that it was never actually overrun by a military force, but that the scanty numbers of the Welsh were by degrees absorbed into the surrounding English population, may, however, be the true explanation. The general story of English place-names shows that the majority of our hill and river names are earlier than the English occupation; but in North Derbyshire there is not a single river or hill that does not bear a Welsh name, whilst not a few of the homestead names have a like origin, and even words of Cymric etymology still linger in the fast disappearing dialect.

It is of interest to remember that those Mercians who settled from time to time in small groups throughout the wilder parts of Derbyshire bore the local name of Pecsaete, that is to say, settlers in the Peak; so that the future county, as Mr. Allen remarks, narrowly escaped being styled Pecsetshire, after the fashion of Dorsetshire or Somersetshire.