Ashbourne, Derbyshire, England

Origins and the Domesday Manor

Ashbourne takes its name from the Old English æsc-burna, meaning a stream where ash trees grow — a reference to the Henmore Brook, the small watercourse that runs through the heart of the town and which has shaped its geography, its street plan, and even its loyalties for the better part of a thousand years. The settlement lies in a shallow valley at the meeting point of the red sandstone lowlands of southern Derbyshire and the limestone uplands of the White Peak, fourteen miles west of Derby on the eastern side of the River Dove. Although no substantial Roman remains have been found at Ashbourne itself, the Roman military road of Rykneld Street passed through the county nearby, and the first documented settlement aligns with Anglo-Saxon patterns, probably dating to the eighth or ninth century.

At the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, Ashbourne was recorded as Esseburne, a royal manor in the Hundred of Hamston held by King William, with thirteen villagers, nineteen smallholders, a priest, a church, forty-five acres of meadow, and woodland half a league in extent. The manor had been held by King Edward before the Conquest, and it subsequently became part of the Duchy of Lancaster from the reign of Edward I until Charles I sold it with other duchy estates. The Henmore Brook divided the settlement from its earliest days: the town proper lay to the north of the stream, while to the south a smaller settlement called Compton developed, the two eventually merging though the name Compton persists to this day. By the thirteenth century, Compton enjoyed a commercial advantage, since traders there could avoid the taxes levied on crown property north of the brook.

The Church of St Oswald

The parish church of St Oswald, King and Martyr, dominates Ashbourne as it has done since the thirteenth century. The present building was dedicated in 1241 by Hugh de Pateshull, Bishop of Coventry, replacing an earlier Saxon structure and possibly a Norman one — a Norman crypt was discovered during excavations in 1913. Built in the Early English style in the form of a cross, St Oswald's is crowned by a lofty octagonal spire, ribbed with ball-flower mouldings and pierced with twenty dormer lights in five tiers, rising to a height of 212 feet. The spire is known locally as the Pride of the Peak, and George Eliot called it the finest single spire in England. It was thoroughly restored between 1891 and 1894 and raised to its original height at a cost of five thousand pounds.

The interior is rich with monuments to the families who dominated Ashbourne across the centuries — the Cockaynes, the Bradburnes, and the Boothbys. The most celebrated is the marble monument to Penelope Boothby, the only child of Sir Brooke Boothby, sixth Baronet, who died in 1791 at the age of five. Carved in Carrara marble by the sculptor Thomas Banks RA, the monument depicts the child as though sleeping, and bears the inscription: "She was in form and intellect most exquisite. The unfortunate Parents ventured their all on this frail Bark, and the wreck was total." Penelope had been painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds during a visit to Ashbourne Hall, and her early death became one of the most poignant stories of the Georgian age. The church also contains a canopied tomb attributed to Robert Kniveton of Underwood Grange, dating to 1471, and records show that at least three medieval chantries once existed within its walls.

Lords of the Manor

Ashbourne Hall, at the eastern end of the main street, was the seat of the Cockayne family from the twelfth century onward. Sir Thomas Cockayne, who died in 1537, is commemorated in the church by what is said to be the oldest rhyming epitaph in England, celebrating the three hunting parks he created from the ancient woodland and deer park that stretched some twelve miles eastward to Duffield. His grandson, also Sir Thomas, published the first English treatise on hunting in 1591. The Cavalier poet Sir Aston Cockayne, first Baronet, held the estate through the turmoil of the Civil War before selling it to the Boothby family in 1671.

The Boothbys transformed both the hall and its grounds, landscaping the park, diverting the Henmore into ornamental lakes, and rebuilding the house in the fashionable style of the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sir Brooke Boothby, sixth Baronet — translator, poet, and friend of Jean-Jacques Rousseau — was the last of the family to hold the estate; his extravagance and grief following Penelope's death led to the mortgaging and eventual sale of the property after his death in 1824.

Conflict and Rebellion

Ashbourne saw action during the English Civil War. Parliamentary forces captured the town in 1644, but it was retaken by the Royalists, and in 1645 Charles I himself visited, attending divine service at St Oswald's Church and staying the night at Ashbourne Hall as the guest of Lady Cockayne, her husband Sir Aston being away with the king's armies. Exactly a century later, in December 1745, the town found itself on the line of march of the Jacobite army advancing from Leek toward Derby. Charles Edward Stuart — Bonnie Prince Charlie — passed through Ashbourne with his officers, proclaimed his father King James III in the Market Place, and billeted his Highland troops in the grounds of Ashbourne Hall, whose Boothby owners had prudently retreated into the hills. The Jacobite advance continued to Derby before the fateful decision to retreat, and Ashbourne returned to its quieter rhythms.

Johnson's Ashbourne

The town's most celebrated literary connection is with Samuel Johnson, whose lifelong friendship with Dr John Taylor brought him to Ashbourne repeatedly between 1740 and 1784. The two had been schoolfellows under the Reverend John Hunter at Lichfield Grammar School in the early 1720s, and despite their very different temperaments — Johnson the restless intellectual, Taylor the wealthy clergyman, stockbreeder, and country magistrate whom Boswell described as a hearty English squire with the parson super-induced — they remained devoted companions for over sixty years. Taylor's home, The Mansion on Church Street, was one of the largest and most imposing town houses in Georgian Ashbourne, its façade redesigned around 1765 by the Derby architect Joseph Pickford. Taylor, known locally as the King of Ashbourne, exercised considerable patronage in the town, and it was Johnson who composed the Latin inscription above the front door: a wish that the house should stand until the tortoise walks around the world and the ant drains the ocean waves. James Boswell accompanied Johnson to Ashbourne in March 1776 and recorded their arrival in Taylor's large roomy post-chaise, drawn by four stout plump horses. Johnson also penned a number of sermons for Taylor, though his friend seldom preached more than four or five times a year. Taylor died in 1788 and was buried in St Oswald's Church; he had preached at Johnson's own funeral four years earlier.

Catherine Booth and the Nineteenth Century

On 17 January 1829, Catherine Mumford was born at 13 Sturston Lane in Ashbourne — the daughter of John Mumford, a wheelwright and occasional lay preacher. Her mother Sarah, an ardent Methodist convert, instilled in Catherine the religious conviction that would shape her extraordinary life. The family left Ashbourne for Boston, Lincolnshire, in 1834, and later moved to London, where Catherine met and married William Booth. Together they founded the East London Christian Mission in 1865, which by 1878 had become the Salvation Army. Catherine Booth, known as the Mother of the Salvation Army, was a powerful advocate for women's right to preach and a tireless campaigner against poverty and sweated labour. By the time of her death in 1890, the Army was operating in over thirty countries. A bust by the sculptor George Wade stands in Ashbourne Park, and a commemorative plaque marks her birthplace on Sturston Road.

Ashbourne's position at the junction of six coaching roads, including the important London to Manchester route, made it a prosperous staging town in the Georgian era, and its main street preserves a wealth of fine coaching inns, gentlemen's town houses, and almshouses dating from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — over two hundred buildings are now listed, and the town centre has held conservation area status since 1968. The oldest of the almshouses dates from 1640. The Green Man and Black's Head, a Georgian coaching inn, is notable for what is reputed to be the longest inn sign in England, spanning the street from the building to the opposite side. Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, founded in 1585 by Sir Thomas Cockayne, William Bradburn, and others, stands opposite the church. The railway, when it came, brought only a branch line rather than main-line status, which restricted industrial development but preserved the town's architectural character. The Ashbourne to Buxton line closed in the mid-1960s and its course has since been converted into the Tissington Trail, a popular walking and cycling path that serves as a green gateway into the Peak District.

Shrovetide Football and the Gateway to Dovedale

Ashbourne's most distinctive tradition is the Royal Shrovetide Football match, played annually on Shrove Tuesday and Ash Wednesday in a game whose origins stretch back centuries. The Henmore Brook once again defines the contest: those born north of the stream play as the Up'ards, those born to the south as the Down'ards, and the goals — a pub at Sturston to the north and a confluence of brooks to the south — lie some three miles apart. The game begins with the ceremonial throwing up of a hand-painted, cork-filled leather ball from the Market Place, and for two eight-hour days the surging mass of players known as the Hug moves through streets, fields, gardens, and even the bed of the Henmore itself, observed by only the most elemental of rules.

The town's position at the southern edge of the Peak District has earned it the title Gateway to Dovedale — the limestone valley of the River Dove, celebrated since Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton fished its waters in the seventeenth century and immortalised in The Compleat Angler. Today, Ashbourne remains what it has been for eight centuries: a handsome market town where the cobbled Market Place still hosts weekly trading on Thursdays and Saturdays, and where the spire of St Oswald's rises above the rooftops as it did when Hugh de Pateshull dedicated the church beneath it in the reign of Henry III.