Webmaster, Derbyshire VCH Trust

Our blog of 14 August covered our use of His/Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools (HMI) reports and school log-books in our VCH red books. We used Barlborough school’s 19th and early 20th century brush with the inspectors as an example. But problems weren’t only confined to Barlborough!

When the local education authority took over Bolsover schools in 1903 there was dire overcrowding. This included Shuttlewood, where a temporary timber framed, corrugated iron-clad building was opened in 1905 for older children. It was condemned as ‘an awful affair’ by the HMI. To make matters worse the first headmaster was unable to control the children, who were regarded by HMI as backward and unruly. Only two years after opening the school was declared inefficient.

Despite extensions to the temporary building a permanent structure wasn’t opened until 1927. This building was designed by George Henry Widdows. It’s listed grade II and is now occupied by Brockley Primary School. The buildings illustrated here predate the Widdows school, but are next to it. They are empty and scheduled for demolition.

The first headmaster of the new schools (Henry Thomlinson) instituted such things as formal assembly and dinner, sports days and visits. As our volume III states he ‘sought to make the school a place of beauty’.

At this time Shuttlewood was very much a coal mining community. Thomlinson, recognising his pupils’ academic limitations, concentrated on handicraft, art and music, teaching ‘the children to speak the truth and be kind to animals’.

The HMI were somewhat sympathetic to Thomlinson’s aims, but raised some reservations. These included that some of the slower children (and some of the staff) couldn’t keep up with his ideals.

There’s more about the history of education in the Bolsover area and Shuttlewood schools in our Volume III. Our blog of 10 January charted a brief history of the school buildings.

The various HMI school reports shed a light not only on conditions in schools, teaching and the like, but also standards of discipline and social issues. They perhaps alter the sometimes held traditional view that schools used to teach the ‘three Rs’ in a haven of discipline and compliance.

In this post we take a very brief look at Chesterfield’s markets.

The first reference to a market in Chesterfield is in 1165 and the present market place (known throughout the Middle Ages as the New Market) had been built by 1199. This is before the burgesses (inhabitants of the borough with full rights of citizenship) were granted the right in 1204 to hold a Saturday market and an eight-day annual fair.

The old market place, was situated the north side of the parish church. This became known as the Weekday Market, presumably because a small number of traders stood there on days other than Saturdays. The chartered Saturday market was held in the present Market Place. The old market place had been built over the by the 15th century and may have gone out of use before then.

Construction of the New Market of the 1190s, by the Crown Officials who had charge of the Manor of Chesterfield, was undoubtedly a bold move. The existing market next to the parish church must have become constrained due to its position – being unable to be extended.

The New Market had three components: the open market place (basically the current market area), the lines of shops and houses along its northern and southern sides, and the block of shambles at its eastern end. The shambles were constructed for butchers, fishmongers and possibly other traders who would have stood in the market every day, not merely on Saturdays. The map extract from Potter’s 1803 plan of the town shows some of the layout of the market place area (note though, that not all properties are shown).

The Market Hall, originally built by a private company, dates from 1857. It replaced earlier buildings on the same site. These also provided covered accommodation for some traders and rooms for public meetings. The Market Hall was refurbished in the late 1970s, and again more recently.

Although other fairs were established in Chesterfield after 1204, alongside the main September fair, no additional markets were chartered. The practice of holding markets on Friday and Monday, as well as Saturday, appears to date only from the early 20th century. The practice of erecting stalls other than in the Market Place is much more recent.

In 1900 the livestock market, which had been held in the Market Place, was transferred to a new purposely laid out ste off Markham Road.

One important lesson that can be reached from the market’s long history is that retailing (including markets) evolves continuously and must alter, as it has in the past, to meet changing consumer demand.

You can find out lots more about the growth of Chesterfield town centre and the history of the town’s markets in our ‘Chesterfield Streets and Houses book’.

The above is an edited extract from Chesterfield & District Civic Society’s response to the borough council’s Market Place consultation (http://www.chesterfieldcivicsociety.org.uk/2021/08/chesterfield-market-place-consultation/). It was written by our VCH County editor – Philip Riden – in his role as Chairman of the society.

We make extensive use of school inspectors reports and school log books in our VCH ‘Red Books’ as we plot the history of education in a particular parish. Here we look briefly a Barlborough, where some of the comments made by the Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools in the late 19^th century were quite severe.

With only a few exceptions, the inspectors made uniformly poor reports. For example in 1876 they found the school was unpopular with parents and numbers on role had decreased. Early in the 20^th century the inspectors found the schoolroom was dirty with a lack of separate classrooms. One of the problems appears to have been with the headmaster’s attitude and lack of staff. In 1898 an assistant was teaching 55 boys, with the headmaster only 18, both in the same room.

The school was transferred to the county education department in 1903. A new headmaster – David Barnfield – appointed two years later found the school in an ‘indescribable’ state with poor discipline and low standards of work. It was he who helped turn the school around. He was there for over 30-years – the school receiving excellent reports throughout.

The premises are pictured here in 2021. Part of the buildings probabaly date back to 1866, when they were originally erected by the Rodes estate. They were extended in 1911, with further new classrooms added in 2000 and 2002. For some time, the memorial gateway we featured in our recent post formed an entrance to the buildings.

Our VCH Derbyshire Volume III – Bolsover and adjoining parishes tells the fuller story of education in Barlborough.

This June 1985 view of Chesterfield taken from the parish church tower shows a familiar, if changed, view. But it’s not the by-pass under construction snaking away to the top left, the now demolished Trebor (once the Chesterfield Brewery Company) premises (left of centre) or the soon to be demolished Chesterfield Hotel just behind the tower to the Stephenson Memorial Hall (right), that we are discussing in this post, but a rather more elusive building ‘The Pump House’. 

As the map extract from our Chesterfield Streets and Houses book shows, this mysterious property sat in the area to the right of Tapton Lane – which can be seen travelling down out of town, to the bottom centre of the photograph. 

The house appears to have been built by a Marmaduke Carver (d. 1756).  It’s not shown on William Senior’s 1633 survey of Chesterfield. Joseph Hunter mentions this house by name in his book Familiae Minorium Gentium (‘Families of the Lesser Gentry’). This may be the only place the name appears! 

Marmaduke Carver married Ann Milward. One of their offspring – another Marmaduke – was town clerk of Chesterfield from 1711 to 1745. The house and its estate were then owned by other members of the Carver family (for the full story see Streets and Houses), until the estate was sold by John Carver in 1804, for £2,100, to Robert Malkin – a wholesale grocer of Chesterfield, who was already living there. This is where Malkin Street gets its name from. In 1833 Malkin purchased, from the Cavendish estate, a plot of land on the south and east sides of his house, at the top of Tapton Lane. This land was already occupied by him as a pleasure ground.

Malkin died in 1846. Two years later his daughter sold the house contents and the house was advertised to let in 1858. The following year the property was sold to John Marsden, also a Chesterfield grocer. He sold the house and some of the estate to Chesterfield corporation in 1870, when the house was demolished and Corporation Street was laid out through the grounds.

The Malkins were members of the Unitarian congregation at Elder Yard meeting house and were known for their benefactions to the poor in Chesterfield.

One mystery remains and that’s around the name ‘The Pump House’. Surviving deeds do not mention it by name, nor do various maps and surveys. Why the reference to a pump?

Unfortunately, although the house is shown on large-scale maps, no illustration of ‘The Pump House’ is known to exist. Oddly enough, there is a watercolour sketch of the church from the north made in 1824, when there were still houses standing in what is now the northern part of the churchyard, entitled ‘Chesterfield from Mr Malkin’s’, but the artist must have been sitting in the gateway to the house, with his back to it. The drawing was reproduced some years ago in the booklet, Chesterfield: Scenes from Yesterday.

Local historians are often asked what a particular place-name means and where it’s come from. In VCH we use the standard reference work on the subject, the multi-volumed English Place-Name Society (EPNS) volumes.

As the society’s website explains EPNS;

… was established in 1923 to conduct a county-by-county survey of the place-names of England. The first county survey of Buckinghamshire appeared in 1925.

To date, the Survey has produced 91 volumes, the most recent being The Place-Names of Leicestershire Part VII, published in 2016. Almost all English counties have been surveyed at least in part and work to complete the Survey is ongoing.

The Survey is used by researchers, academics, and those interested in the origins, meaning, and significance of English place-names.

Derbyshire has a complete survey, split across three parts. Part one includes a general introduction, survey of river names and covers the High Peak Hundred. Part two covers the Scarsdale, Wirksworth and Morleyston & Litchurch hundreds; part three the Appletree, Repton & Gresley hundreds with analysis and indexes. Despite being published in 1959, the volumes are still the ‘gold standard’ for place name study. There’s an entry for each place studied which consists of a list of names associated with it, followed by a description of the name’s meaning. Street names and field names are also identified – with some more notable ones being very briefly discussed.

So, as an example; for Chesterfield, (which is in part two) the survey identifies the name ‘Cestrafelda’ as being used in 955 and other variations thereafter, declaring the name means ‘open country near or belonging to a fortification’. At time the survey was published in 1959, existence of a fort in Chesterfield was still unproved, but we now know that indeed the town was a Roman fort.

You’ll need access to part one to identify what some of the abbreviations in the text for each place-name mean. Incidentally the ‘maps’ identified on the dust jacket of part one are actually in part three!

Some of the society’s publications (but not currently Derbyshire) are now available on-line  https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/epns/downloads.aspx. The Derbyshire volumes are now out-of-print, but you may be able to obtain second-hand copies. They are also available to consult in Derbyshire and Derby Libraries local studies.

Despite its age The Place-Names of Derbyshire is VCH’s first port-of-call when we look at place-name origins. It ought to be yours too, if you are interested in the subject of how your community came to have its name.

Our sister organisation – the Derbyshire Record Society – is just about to publish part one of The Derbyshire Musters of 1638–9. This part contains the introduction and indexes. We explore a little about this book in our blog, but it will be an important contribution to the history of the county and of great use to family historians. ‘The Muster book’, as it has become known, lists all men aged between 16 and 60 in each town and village.

Between the early sixteenth century and the mid seventeenth the Privy Council instructed local officials in each county to hold regular musters of able-bodied men who could be called upon to defend the kingdom in time of war. Men from every town and village had to assemble, usually in the early autumn, at a specified meeting place and show that they possessed suitable arms and armour. Gentry families had to provide horsemen. The musters were ordered by the lord lieutenant, summoned by the deputy lieutenants, and organised locally by the high constable of each hundred.

In 1638 the young 3rd earl of Devonshire had just become lord lieutenant of Derbyshire. He was evidently keen to impress the Council, as the earl ordered the constables to compile lists of all men aged between 16 and 60 in each town and village. He had the results copied into a volume to be sent up to London. The book, containing some 17,300 names, survives among the records of the State Paper Office in The National Archives. It provides a uniquely full record of the inhabitants of every community in Derbyshire on the eve of the Civil War. What we don’t know, of course, is what these men thought of being brought together, their names and place of residence being identified and listed.

The new publication should be fantastic source for family history in Derbyshire, as well as the demography of the county. It also sheds new light on local administration in the early seventeenth century.

In this two-part edition, the text of the 1638 muster book is printed in full alongside a shorter roll of 1639 and some ancillary documents (as part 2 – available in the autumn of 2021). In all about 18,400 individuals are named. Newly published Part 1 consists of a full index by person and place and is prefaced by a detailed introduction.  The record society has divided the book into two parts so that users can have the index and the lists of names in front of them at the same time. It also spreads the cost of a work that runs to over 400 pages.

To order new title you can complete the online order form here.

The Derbyshire Musters of 1638–9 (in two parts) is edited by Victor A. Rosewarne. Part 1 is £20 post free to members or £30 plus £3 postage to non-members.

Here we take a brief look at ‘The Rocket’ which was the ‘house journal’ of the Clay Cross Company which was first published the 1960s. This once well-known company was established in 1837 by George Stephenson and his associates. It’s now fast receding into memories, as the former manufacturing site, which closed in 1998, becomes developed particularly for housing.

We recently posted on how we use company magazines to help chart the history of particular businesses. We also pointed out that family historians may find photographs and a brief account of their relative’s time at the company, in these magazines. Such articles might include retirement, long-service, marriage and death. It’s a feature of these magazines not to be over-looked.

Latterly the Clay Cross company became known for its pipe castings, but it had owned collieries, quarries, foundries and even a large farm and a light railway out to its quarries at Ashover.

‘The Rocket’– number 36, Summer 1987 – shown here, celebrated the Clay Cross Company’s 150th anniversary. The front cover of this special edition is shown with an engraving taken from FS Williams’ 1876 book ‘The Midland Railway: its rise and progress’. It shows the Clay Cross Company in the ‘V’ of the railway lines. The right-hand line is to Derby, the left is the Erewash Valley line.

For some years ‘The Rocket’ usually featured an article from RF Childs, who was the company estates manager. Our illustration of him is taken from issue 27, from late 1979. It shows him in the company’s ‘archive room’ which he had helped create in that year. Dick Childs retired in 1986. The company archive included Stephenson letters, minute books, photographs, plans and other records. The company archives are now split between the Derbyshire Record Office and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

The yellow covered edition featured here is number 35 (winter 1986) – the first to be fully produced under the Biwater group’s ownership. The front cover shows pipes for a contract in Malaya stocked within the works car park. It was taken by the works Technical Department’s Adrian Smith. For those who know the area North Wingfield parish church might just be discerned on the centre horizon.

‘The Rocket’ was usually around 20 pages in length. Like many of its kind, it paints a picture of corporate life including newly opened production facilities, management changes and acquisitions. Sports and other social activities, along with marriages, retirements and deaths are also carried within its pages. Our final illustration is taken from issue number 8 of January 1968. It features some of those little snippets of information that we feel may be of interest to family historians. Note that Mr LV Clarke was retiring after 51½ years of service to the company!

Like Clay Cross works itself, ‘The Rocket’ is now a memory, but a tangible one. For as the works is regenerated and disappears copies of the magazine will survive in local studies libraries and perhaps become treasured family possessions.

We’re heading to Barlborough for this brief review of the Rodes family in the parish and a couple of distinctive indicators of their influence.

The Rodes family were influential in the north eastern part of Derbyshire, in particular in the Barlborough area. Our Derbyshire Victoria County History (VCH) Volume III charts their involvement. The holders of Barlborough Hall (Rodes family) and Park Hall (Pole family) estates were generally regarded as joint lords of Barlborough manor from the 18th century. (Incidentally, landownership in the parish is described by our County Editor as ‘complex’).

Francis Rodes of Staveley, Woodthorpe (a rising lawyer) purchased land in Barlborough in the early 1570s. He had Barlborough Hall built in 1583-4.

By the 1840s a descendant (through various branches of the family), William Hatfield Glossop, changed his surname to de Rodes. Succeeded by his daughter Sophia Felicité in 1883, she married Godfrey Lampson Tennyson Locker-Lampson in 1905. Their eldest daughter (also Felicité or Felicity) married Henry E Rimington-Wilson. He inherited the estate in 1935. Barlborough Hall was sold the following year and the year after sold again to a Roman Catholic body. It became and still is a junior department of Mount St Mary’s College, Spinkhill. The Rimington-Wilsons subsequently sold all or most of what remained of their estate in Barlbrough to Osbert Sitwell of Renishaw.

Though Barlborough Hall, which is at the very least closely related to houses designed by Robert Smythson, if not by him, is the most well-known symbol of the Rodes era in the area, there are others.

Perhaps a more unusual one is the memorial archway in the village centre, originally to the school. Erected by WH de Rodes in 1869 it was in memory of his wife Sophia Felicité. It’s complete with Latin and Hebrew inscriptions and features a mosaic with gold and silver leaf.

Much more about the Rodes family and about Barlborough can be found in our VCH Volume III ‘Bolsover and Adjoining parishes…’ which can be found in local studies libraries. It’s also still available for purchase.

Don’t forget to visit Barlborough Heritage Centre and their recently revamped website. They also have a range of publications available about the parish.