How to confuse a stranger to Derby tell them to meet you at the Barracks ...or Shot Tower corner
How do you prove you’re from Derby? There are many things we share with our East Midlands neighbours, such as aspects of our language. But here Anton Rippon suggests some things that only a true Derbeian would know...
TELL a stranger to Derby that you’ll meet them at the Barracks and you’ll probably never see them again. The 19th-century military headquarters after which the area on the corner of Osmaston Park Road and Sinfin Lane is known was demolished 40 years ago.
It is one of those Derby locational names, a bit like the Shot Tower corner or the Palm Court Island, that lives on long after what once stood there disappeared.
The Shot Tower corner? Yes, the Morledge building that today houses a business hub is named after the 180ft-tall structure, built in 1809, that was demolished to make way for Derby’s 1932 Central Improvement Plan.
It was designed to produce smalldiameter shot balls by the free fall of molten lead that was the caught in a water basin. Actually, it wasn’t on that corner at all; it stood across the road, on what is now the Council House car park.
And that Palm Court Island? That was home of the restaurant of the same name, at the bottom of Devonshire Avenue, at its junction with the A6 Duffield Road.
The restaurant unexpectedly closed after serving Sunday lunch on April 3, 2005. Derby City Council approved plans to replace the building with flats. It was scheduled for demolition in 2007 but arsonists got there first and it was severely damaged by fire in July that year. Now it’s just a name on a map.
It’s these little things that make our city different, although claims that some of our familiar expressions are peculiar to Derby are often wide of the mark.
It’s a bit black over Bill’s mother’s? I read recently that this is a Derby expression. And a Nottingham one. Well, it might well be both. But neither can claim ownership. From Sussex to Scotland, it’s said whenever lowering skies threaten rain.
Meanwhile, the argument over whether it’s a jitty, a snicket or twitchel has long raged.
When I was a child, we called the narrow walkway between Harcourt Street and Burton Road “the Jitty” as if it almost had a life of its own. But it’s not just in Derby.
The term is used in elsewhere in the Midlands, and in mining communities in the south-east of England. But a visitor from Lancashire or Yorkshire might be puzzled. They’d call it a ginnel.
We are one nation occasionally separated by a common language, as the old saying goes. In Coronation Street they’ll ask you if you’d like a brew. In Derbyshire we want to know if you’ll be mashing. Either way, there is a cup of tea at the end of it.
Nottingham has recently tried to own “mardy” – acting childishly or
sulking – and Derby also lays claim to a word that probably derived from “moody”. But it’s used as far south as Northamptonshire, and as far north as Manchester. And in Hull, too, so I’m reliably informed.
“Ey up” is a greeting thought to be of Old Norse origin (“se upp”) used widely throughout the North Midlands and Yorkshire. Which makes sense because in the ninth century we were part of the Norse-controlled Danelaw.
However, “mi duck” is thought to be derived from a respectful Anglo Saxon form of address, “duka” (literally “duke”). From wherever it derived, it has nothing to do with waterfowl.
Few words are specific to one town, city or even county. We’re all part of that East Midlands dialect that was the medial point when the northern and southern groups of Middle English dialects diverged in about 1500.
In other words, we’re a compromise between two extremes.
So, when you think about it, it’s a puzzle that there are people who still don’t understand us. Although if we sent them to the Barracks …