Geoff’s virtual town tour can help banish those lockdown blues
ASHBOURNE’S volunteer tour guides have been unable to show visitors and residents around the town’s historic highlights this season. The heritage guides, overseen by the town’s Visitor Information Centre, usually lead free tours on Thursdays and Saturdays during the warmer months but, as they retreat to their homes during the coronavirus restrictions, they have been helping The News Telegraph with virtual tours, and stories of Ashbourne’s past. In our first instalment, heritage guide GEOFF COLE walks us around Market Place, where his tour would usually begin.
IT is still possible to explore the town from the comfort of your home, or as part of your daily exercise. I am your guide today as we head down the Market Place to St John’s Street, which may figure in later articles.
Look at the two milestones on either side of the town hall entrance. You will see that they are eight miles apart: One gives the distance to London as 139 miles, while the other states it is 147.
One on the left of the building is Georgian and was erected during the coaching era when six coaching routes passed through the town, and it refers to the distance to Charing Cross in London (139 miles).
The other milestone is modern: it is one of
11 in Derbyshire that commemorate the passage of the Olympic torch through Derbyshire in 2012 and shows the distance to the Olympic Stadium, in Stratford, east London. The poem at the top refers to the Register Office, which was in the town hall when the stone was erected.
At the entrance to Town Hall Yard are two plaques. One is for Bonnie Prince Charlie, who stayed at Ashbourne Hall in 1745 before marching his troops to Derby.
The other is a memorial to Mr Tom Fearn, who was killed when the balance bar fell from the fire bell, which was above this entrance, and was being rung to report a fire. Sadly, it proved to be a false alarm. Some of Mr Fearn’s descendants still live in the town and arranged for this monument to be erected in his honour.
Heading down the Market Place are two red phone boxes, which are now protected as listed buildings. This design of phone box – the K2 – is considered a classic of British design, alongside the Mini, Spitfire and London Tube map.
It was produced by Sir Giles
Gilbert Scott, the grandson of Sir George Gilbert Scott who worked on the Chancel in St Oswald’s Church.
The building now used by the Nottingham Building Society was built around
1690 and is believed to be the oldest brick building in the Market Place.
(The oldest building in the Market Place is probably the Fish and Chip shop, recently dated to 1420).
Next to the 1690 building was the Elite Cinema, built in the 1930s but, surprisingly, it does not look out of place next to a building some 240 years older.
Across the road at the bottom of the Market Place, in the Vision Express building, there is a Venetian window on the second floor with a Diocletian one above.
These windows are similar to those used in the Mansion and the Grey House in
Church Street but the setting is not as good.
It may have been built by a less competent architect attempting to copy the work of Joseph Pickford, possibly using stock auctioned off after his death.
And there we end our tour down the Market Place.
The oldest building in the Market Place is probably the Fish and Chip shop, recently dated to 1420.