Hidden history of town park
As we are in another lockdown, historian and town tour guide GEOF COLE returns to take us on a few armchair history walks around the town. This week he explores the Memoral Gardens and park.
THE Park became part of Ashbourne Hall’s estate sometime after 1150 and would have been used for hunting deer.
The Ashbourne map of 1547 (courtesy of the National Archives) shows a fenced park leading from Ashbourne Hall. This deer park would have covered a considerable area, probably stretching as far as Ashbourne Golf Course.
The Boothbys bought the Ashbourne estate in 1671. There were fishponds and, in 1755, a reward was offered for information leading to the arrest of the persons who were stealing carp from the pond.
In the 1780s, Sir Brooke Boothby – having taken a rich wife – had the hall rebuilt and the park developed as a pleasure garden. For privacy, he diverted the road to Wirksworth that had passed in front of the hall and planted Lime trees.
He also rerouted the river and reshaped the ponds into ornamental lakes. The lake known as the fishpond was the most westerly.
In the late 1800s, the hall and estate changed hands a number of times, and was for a time a hotel. In 1910, the urban district council bought the hall and grounds.
By the First World War, parts of the estate were sold off, the trees chopped down and the much of gardens developed for municipal housing.
In 1920, the road to Wirkworth was reopened and named after the Cokayne family – owners of the estate before the Boothbys.
Clearly, the town’s people had not forgiven the Boothbys for shutting the road 140 years earlier. The remainder became the Memorial Gardens and the Recreational Ground.
The town’s war memorial, the Memorial Gates – looking surprisingly like a miniature version of the Brandenburg Gates in Berlin – were constructed by Lomas & Sons of Derby and unveiled by Lord Cullen of Ashbourne in 1922.
The names of the town’s fallen are on the front of the gate pillars.
The small additional plaque list five Ashbourne soldiers who died in the First World War, but were not included on the original memorial. After the addition of the plaque, the memorial was re-dedicated in 2012.
Next to the gates inside the park is a metal poppy, flanked by floral red poppies, commemorating all who served in conflicts from the town.
During the later stages of the First World War, the local regiment – the Sherwood Foresters - had captured 10 German guns at Bellenglise by the Saint Quentin Canal, and it was arranged for one of them to given to Ashbourne as a memorial to the brave deeds of men of the town.
However, not all ex-servicemen were happy about this, having been shelled by German artillery.
A group of them dragged the gun from the Market Place to the park and pushed it into the fishpond. Colonel Jelf – the head of the Ashbourne ExServiceman’s Association and himself a gunner – explained that artillery units considered their guns to be the regimental standard and treated them with great respect.
After this the gun was recovered from the fishpond, but it is not known what happened to it after that.
There is another monument of interest in the park – a bust of Catherine Booth (nee Mumford) who was the wife of William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army.
Catherine was born in 1829 in humble circumstances at 13 Sturston Road – the small cottage still exists and is marked by a plaque. Her father was a wheelwright and an itinerant preacher.
However, the major influence on Catherine’s life was her mother, Sarah. When the family came to Ashbourne, Sarah started to attend St Oswald’s Church but was unhappy there.
The Methodists were gathering strength locally and Sarah became a convert, imprinting Methodism on her daughter.
Catherine married William Booth in 1855; he organised good works in the East End of London while Catherine preached in the wealthier parts of London to raise funds.
They went on to found the Salvation Army, which offered a path to God along with a wide range of welfare initiatives. It was the fastest growing religious movement of late Victorian Britain.
The Methodist Times called Catherine “the greatest Methodist woman of her generation”. On her death, 50,000 people filed past her coffin in Olympia, west London.
The Salvation Army remains an active Christian charitable organisation to this day. Immediately behind Catherine is a memorial tree dedicated to those born in 2000.
On the other side of Cockayne Avenue is a large white building, which is all that is left of Ashbourne Hall. The town map of 1547 shows a large timber-framed building built around a courtyard and accessed through a brick gatehouse.
The Hearth Tax returns of 1662 list 21 chimneys, making it one of the largest private houses in Derbyshire.
Brooke Boothby replaced it in the 1780s and all that survives now is a fragment of this later house.
And there we end our look at the park.