With 2,000 years of history Derby has, of course, had many a strange event occur within its locale, writes David Turner.
And at Derby Uncovered CIC, where we champion the very best of Derby and Derbyshire, we specialise in bringing that history to both our citizens and our visitors.
We don’t just do this because of our passion for our local history, though.
In 2022 Historic England proved a direct link between increasing someone’s knowledge of their local history and the subsequent increase in civic pride that they felt in their area.
And let’s face it, an increase in local civic pride would be massively beneficial to our city and counterbalance the negativity we often see on local social media groups and pages.
On top of that, history equals tourism, and tourism equals new and fresh money introduced to our local economy and we definitely need that.
All that being said, our local history is genuinely bloody brilliant in its own right, and I’d like to share with you 10 strange but true snippets from it….
The donkey and the tower
Derby Cathedral Tower is around 500 years old – it was built between 1510 and 1530 – but did you know that in 1732 a man attached a rope from the top of it to the bottom of St. Mary’s Gate and walked down the rope carrying a live donkey?
Earlier on in his death-defying performance he had also walked down the rope whilst resting a wheelbarrow on it with a small child sitting in the wheelbarrow!
You’ll be glad to know the child, the man and the donkey all survived this performance.
Hot dogs on a cold day
Derby-born Harry Stevens, inventor of the hotdog
The man who invented the hot dog – Harry Stevens – was a Derby man.
He was born here in 1855 but emigrated to the USA in 1882, and many years later gained the concession to sell food at New York Giants baseball games.
One cold day, when ice creams weren’t selling well, he began selling hot frankfurter sausages in buns with a dollop of mustard on. They were dubbed ‘hot dogs’ after a local sports cartoonist named them that in a cartoon he drew.
He initially wanted to call them ‘hot dachshunds’ but was not sure how to spell the word dachshund.
A spooky final resting place
Did you know that an innocuous door in Derby Cathedral is actually an entry to something incredibly historical and spooky?
The door can be found in St. Katharine’s Chapel which is on the right-hand side of the Cathedral as you look towards the altar and it’s actually the entrance to the vaults underneath the building where many people – including Bess of Hardwick – have been laid to rest.
From poacher to executioner
The remains of one of Derby’s most notorious ever citizens were also laid to rest somewhere in the Derby Cathedral grounds.
They are the remains of a man called John Crossland who in the 1660s executed his own father and brother in return for a pardon from his own impending execution after all three of the men had been found guilty of horse stealing.
He did the job so efficiently and with such a lack of remorse that he was ultimately given the job of town and county executioner.
Stealing the secrets of silk
The former Silk Mill was built following an Italian (inside) job
Derby’s Silk Mill – now the site of the Museum of Making – was created off the back of one of the first ever examples of industrial espionage when it was built for Thomas and John Lombe in 1721.
Desiring to learn the secrets of the Italian silk industry, Thomas sent John over to Piedmont, Italy. Whilst there John got a job in an Italian mill where he spent his time memorising the designs of the machines whilst working.
Each night he would sketch what he had remembered enabling him to steal the machine designs.
In modern day money the idea they stole was worth literally millions of pounds.
A proper football derby
Shrovetide Football wasn’t always just an Ashbourne thing. It was played for many years in Derby with the parish of St. Peter’s taking on the parish of All Saints – now Derby Cathedral.
For many years the authorities tried unsuccessfully to ban the playing of the game, and by 1846 it had become the biggest and most notorious football event in the UK.
It was last played in Derby in 1846 when the authorities brought in Special Constables and two platoons of Dragoon Guards to disrupt the game and discourage people from playing.
Get out of gaol free
Derby has had various gaols over its history. One of these gaols was built where the junction of the Corn Market and Victoria Street meets today and one of its prisoners was once its own gaoler!
His name was John Greatorex and he’d been arrested in 1731 for playing the aforementioned game of Shrovetide Football – a sport of which the then Mayor Isaac Borrow strongly disapproved.
Declaring that he knew all the secrets of the gaol and that ‘the prison should not hold him one night’, Greatorex promptly fulfilled his boast, broke out and fled before morning.
Scheming Noah’s life aboard
Derby’s Noah’s Ark pub pays tribute to a scheming counterfeiter
Derby once has its very own Noah, and he built his very own Ark on the River Derwent in the Morledge in Derby.
This happened in the 17th century when a local counterfeiter called Noah Bullock built an Ark on the river to try and hide his nefarious schemes from both the public and the local authorities.
His schemes were eventually uncovered, and he faced a potential death penalty for them.
Luckily for Noah he had a personal relationship with Sir Simon Degge – the Court Recorder at his trial – and he accepted a deal in which he turned his back on his life of crime in return for a pardon.
Streets of death
An outbreak of the Black Death or Bubonic Plague was so severe in Derby in 1349 that it killed over a third of the population.
Certain street names in Derby can trace their names back to plague outbreaks with Deadman’s Lane off London Road and Blagreaves Lane, which was formerly Black Graves Lane, both being the locations of plaque pits where many of the infected dead were buried.
What lies beneath
Underneath the Derby Fish Market lies a tunnel which runs directly to the Guildhall. There are also gaol cells down there.
This tunnel is full of history and is different to the barrel-vaulted cells that people used to visit down there.
It was used to move the accused from the Police Lock-Up that used to be in the Fish Market to the Guildhall for their trial. It’s a huge tourist attraction waiting to happen!
If you’d like to know more about what we do here at Derby Uncovered CIC – or if you’ve recently won the lottery and are in desperate need of places to donate your new-found wealth to – let us know!
We’re always delighted to link up with fellow Derby folk who believe that while our city is great, it could be so much more, and also believe that one of the biggest keys to making more of our city is its history.
After all, as the author Michael Crichton once said, “If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything.
“You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree.”
