St Peter’s Churchyard: Harmonious historic area needs protection

Maxwell Craven examines why St Peter’s Churchyard and Street should become part of a new Conservation Area in Derby.

THIS small area of St Peter’s Churchyard and St Peter’s Street has a history stretching back to the Domesday Book. In that famous account listing the sources of the King’s revenue, we know six of the churches then existing in Derby.

St Alkmund’s and All Saints’ (now the cathedral) we can account for but the four others are just referred to by the names of their patrons, descendants of the powerful private individuals who had originally founded.

They were called Edric son of Coln, Norman of Lincoln, Geoffrey Alselin and Ralph fitz Hubert.

Of these, only Edric had inherited from his father without being displaced by a Norman, for the other three had followed, respectively, Brun, Toki and Leofric.

In the third quarter of the 12th century, however, we find that a man called Hugh de Derby was patron of St Peter’s.

He was a very powerful man, whose relations occupied positions of power and influence over almost every aspect of Derby’s life.

He was also, rather mysteriously, styled Dean of Derby, a job that is very difficult to pin down.

In recent times, such a title would clearly mark a man out as dean of the cathedral but, in 1170, there was no cathedral.

Prior to this date, and since 921, there had been a dean of the combined college of All Saints’ and St Alkmund, a monastic institution dissolved by King Edward VI in 1549.

However, before Hugh’s time, the post had been merged with that of Dean of Lincoln and been replaced by the position of sub-dean.

The title of dean might well have continued in the Derby college for some time after the merger, but that is rather negated by Hugh’s lack of any known connection with either All Saints’ or St Alkmund’s. Whatever his role, Hugh bestowed St Peter’s on the abbey at Darley, an institution founded 40 years before by the patron of the parish church of St Helen, who was called Towi, again a Nordic name.

It may be that Hugh, despite his Norman name, was really of Norse descent.

His generosity to Darley may indicate a close kinship with Towi and, indeed, his patronage of St Peter’s may be the result of descent from the favoured Edric son of Coln.

Hugh’s church, of course, survives on its original site, unlike St Alkmund, and indeed, only All Saints’ of the original churches at Domesday survives as a church at all.

What’s more, it is still essentially a medieval church, all the others in the historic core of the city having been completely replaced.

Listed grade II*, the medieval fabric has been rebuilt and restored several times, starting in 1849 when the chancel was pulled down and rebuilt using mainly the original building materials.

This began under Derby architect John Price and was re-started after a hiatus in 1850-52 by G Gordon Place, of Nottingham.

Place also built a new vicarage on the south side of Burton Road in 1852 for the vicar, the Rev William Hope.

The drive, subsequently developed with Edwardian housing, is now Vicarage Avenue.

A pinnacle from the old church was erected in the graveyard as a monument.

The remainder of the church was restored sensitively from 1859 by the London architect George Edmund Street. Then a complete rebuild of the nave had to be undertaken in 1897-98 by John Hawley Lloyd, of Birmingham.

In 1881-82, St Peter’s Street was widened and the churchyard truncated on that side, while 20 years before, the old Grammar School had been adapted as a mission hall and parish room.

Unfortunately, in the 1960s, a rather terrible new parish room was added in artificial stone to the west end of the church so that the school could be sold off. The school itself is a delightful building, also listed II*.

It was surveyed a decade ago for the architectural section of the Derby Archaeological Society by Barbara Hutton and her team, who concluded what some of us had long believed, that the present building is hardly earlier than c1610, 55 years after the Grammar School’s foundation by Queen Mary.

Where it had been based previously – assuming Queen Mary’s legislation had been enacted at all prior to 1610 – is unclear, but possibly in the church itself.

It ceased to be a school in 1861 when the institution moved to St Helen’s House.

Some of the original panelling, which had been given to the museum when the building was converted into offices more than 30 years ago, was put back on loan in 1994 when it was converted into the Heritage Centre. The centre closed in 2005.

The widening of St Peter’s Street brought about changes to the south side of the churchyard, too. The former Green Man inn expanded onto the site of its neighbour, the Eagle, which was demolished for the widening.

The inn itself is also 17th century, although the shaped gable is a rebuild. According to a surviving drawing by Derby antiquary and artist George Bailey, the original bore the date 1671 and the windows were of the timber mullion and transom cross type, supporting diamond-paned glass.

Its first mention in a surviving record as an inn was only in 1732, however. It was thoroughly refurbished and partly rebuilt in 1886.

Like the other two buildings, it is grade II* listed.

Disaster struck 50 years later, on May 25, 1936, when the inn was gutted by fire, which destroyed all the original interiors and windows.

Offiler’s brewery, to which it was then tied, restored the interior in what was then contemporary style, replaced the windows and repaired the weakened gable with a brick parapet.

Even then, the tally of listed buildings in the churchyard is not at an end, for it is also embellished with the grade II Gothic revival former county courthouse.

It was probably designed by Devonian architect John Wills, whose offices were just a little further along.

His Babington Buildings at The Spot – now Waterstone’s – are directly comparable, being brick Gothic revival with much use of stone banding.

The St Peter’s Churchyard building was opened in 1897 by the Earl of Halsbury, then Lord Chancellor, and was intended to house both the court and the local Inland Revenue offices, as proclaimed in letters carved on the gabled facade.

From the court building to St Peter’s Street stands a good run of later Victorian buildings, culminating in the terracotta-detailed corner structure with its conical capped tower.

Beyond are three ornate shops built in 1849-50 and then the late Victorian bulk of the former store of Thurman and Malin.

The south gable end still bears clear traces of the firm’s name and the upper levels carry ornamental ironwork, probably by Edwin Halsam, from the days when the firm vied for trade with the larger Midland Drapery opposite.

The final elements of this road crossing, half way up St Peter’s Street, are the Natwest Bank, a later 19th-century structure originally put up to house a notable furrier and the former Boot’s store opposite.

This wonderfully ornate shop, again listed grade II, was built in 1911-1912, to the design of Nottingham architect Albert Nelson Bromley.

Its gables and lavish moulded stucco-work marks the building out as something special in its Derby setting.

It is also a building of real quality and Lord Trent (as Jesse Boot became) was not afraid of spending to produce the right effect in his shops. Boots was later extended during 1936-38.

Statues of Derby worthies – William Hutton, Florence Nightingale, John Lombe and Jedediah Strutt – stand in shell niches at first floor level, sculpted by Percy Richard Morley Horder.

If all this represents a part of Derby you previously took for granted then stop when you’re next in the area and look again at all of these buildings. You will then begin to realise what an harmonious whole they make. Conservation Area status would go a long way to protect them.

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