School built to help ‘avoid drunkenness’ saw scholars paid in beer and cheese
Ashbourne heritage tour guide GEOF COLE continues his virtual tour of the town, this week focusing on the north side of Church Street
we’ll return along Church Street, starting opposite the church gates.
The gates date from around 1730 and are probably by the respected Derbyshire ironsmith, Robert Bakewell.
I like the tops of the gate pillars with flaming urns on top of obelisks, each resting on four skulls. They may derive from an Egyptian motif popular at the time, but I like to think they are intended to remind churchgoers of their mortality and what will happen to them if they are bad.
John Ruskin, leading art critic of the Victorian age, did not share my views. When he visited in 1875, he suggested the pillars should be broken up and used to fill holes in the road.
Immediately opposite the Gates, is Hanson Mount, a restored 17th century house.
During the 1700s, it was divided into three separate homes, but is now a single home again.
Next door is the Old Grammar School, an Elizabethan building that had a central ground-floor schoolroom with a dormitory above, and houses for the master and undermaster on either side. Five townsfolk petitioned Queen Elizabeth I for a school on the grounds that “for lack of education, the inhabitants were given over to wickedness and vices such as idleness, swearing, drunkenness, whoredom, and the like”.
The foundation charter was granted in 1585, but the work was not complete until 1603.
Scholars laid the cobbles in front of the school in 1607 using stones collected from the nearby River Dove. Despite the aims of the school to avoid drunkenness, they were paid in beer (and cheese).
The next building is the Grey House, with the best Georgian frontage in Ashbourne.
The house was originally built around 1750 for Francis Higginbotham, a local lawyer. He did not enjoy his new home for long. He appears to have been forced to leave town by the local squire, Leek Okeover, for marrying his sister.
The house was sold to Brian Hodgson, a businessman with interest in inns and copper mining. Hodgson added a stone front, probably by the Derby architect Joseph Pickford. The new front was in line with the latest architectural developments, possibly influenced by the work of Robert Adam at Kedleston, where Pickford was the clerk of works.
The red brick house to the right of the Grey House was its former coach house. The right side was for the coachman and the left for the coach. It was converted into two houses in the 1920s.
The next major building is the Ivies, built around 1785 for the Dale family, who had INTODAY, vested in local cotton spinning mills. It has the appearance of a London townhouse with a large doorway approached by steps flanked by railings.
An interesting feature is the speaking tube to the left of the door. Does the saltire cross on the front door panel (unusual in Ashbourne) indicate support for Bonnie Prince Charlie who was in Ashbourne in 1745? At the side of the Ivies, a yard leads to its former coach house.
The extension of the railway line from Ashbourne to Buxton in 1899 resulted in the demolition of a row of houses and two yards to allow for a bridge and tunnel entrance.
The railway line was never profitable and regular passenger services ended in 1954. When they stopped, Dr Jack Hollick, whose surgery was at the Grey House, obtained an assurance that British Rail would provide him with a special train if he was unable to reach a patient by road because of snow.
BR had to honour this commitment early one the morning in January 1955.
The line continued to be used for freight, emergencies, and special excursions – including train trips for Ashbourne schools – until its final closure in 1964.
It has left a good legacy as the route is now the Tissington Trail and, with the reopening of the tunnel in 2000, runs into the town centre.
It attracts more walkers and cyclists now than ever travelled on the trains.
And there we end our look at the first part of the north side of Church Street.