Child Workers at the Strutt Owned Mills

Recently I’ve been busy renumbering our D6948 collection, which relates to W. G. and J. Strutt Ltd, who once ran mills at Belper, Milford and Derby. There is a collection which we are currently re-cataloguing, and there is a lot of material to get through, comprising of fifty-one boxes and eighty outsize volumes. Whilst going …

Derbyshire’s Barmote Court – The oldest court in England

Derbyshire’s barmote courts are unique and ancient. To find out more, take a look at this great blog by Buxton Museum and Art Gallery.

Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

Here at Buxton Museum, we display many aspects of Derbyshire’s mining history, whether it be our unique Blue John window, mining artifacts or our mineral collection. Due to its long mining history, Derbyshire is also the home of the Barmote Court, a mining court which is the oldest surviving court in England, having been created by the Duke of Lancaster in the 13^th Century.

To understand why the Duchy of Lancaster has a say in the courts of Derbyshire, we must look back to the Second Barons War (1262-7) in which King Henry III’s favourite, Simon De Montefort, rebelled against the King, aided by other English nobles. One of these nobles was Robert Ferrers, 6^th Earl of Derby, whose Derbyshire lands had been held since the Conquest. Ferrers was married to Henry III’s half-niece and used the political turmoil and his position during the war to lay claim…

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Gustav Hamel’s 1911 crash

When renumbering some of the photographs in the archive of Calke Abbey (our collection D2375), I came across some intriguing early aviation images, which roused my curiosity. There are quite a few aviation-related photographs in the collection - Richard Fynderne Harpur Crewe, who took the images, was a keen amateur photographer with a clear interest …

An Orange Pudding

It's been a while since I've made a historical recipe so here's a very rich, but also very delicious orange pudding from a 17th century recipe book in the Gell family archive. 'An Orange Pudding' from a 17th century recipe book, reference D258/32/15/1. There were two orange pudding recipes on the page: An Orange PuddingTake …

November news from the Local Studies Library

Lynda tells us what is happening in our Local Studies library this month: This month we are happy to open our 'community room' which is a warm space for Derbyshire residents and their families to use now that the weather is getting colder. The room, which was formally one of our meeting rooms, now has …

British Pudding Day

November 9th is British Pudding Day, which gives you the perfect excuse (if any excuse is needed) to indulge in arguably the best course of any meal. I would say that the most famous Derbyshire pudding, and definitely one of my favourites, is Bakewell Pudding but I wanted to try something new. So I looked …

Bonfire, treason and…Thor Cakes

Bonfire night will soon be here and is a perfect excuse to try another Derbyshire recipe. So I looked in one of my favourite books - Derbyshire Cookery by Janet Arthur - and very soon spotted a recipe for Thor cakes, named after the God of thunder. Very apt for 5th November. Looking at the …

#PhotoFriday – October Digest

It's time again for our monthly round up of #PhotoFriday tweets, where we look at images from the local studies collections across the county, which you can find on www.picturethepast.org.uk . We started off our October tweets by combining the themes of In Print for History Begins at Home and the Explore Your Archive theme of Community …

Twitter Digest October 2022

Welcome to the latest Twitter Digest! We’re going to bend the rules a little this month, as we got inspired by the Archives & Records Association for Scotland’s Archive Box initiative, which began on September 26th. Each morning they would release a number and we would find something in our collections to match. Here’s our …

Mining the Seams Exhibition

It’s been a long time since there was an exhibition in our vitrine wall which separates reception and the search room. Now though we have the exhibition space full of archival material again for our first exhibition on display in nearly three years. The exhibition showcases just some of the many items from the National …