Tiger Vaults gave us a window on the world

The Tiger Vaults bar has had many interesting neighbours over the years, including infamous criminals, local policemen, news hounds and a former duke, recalls 97-year-old Winifred Ireland, right, of Mickleover, whose family ran and lived above the bar in the early 1900s. There was no TV in those days but there was always plenty to keep Winifred and her siblings entertained....

The Lock-up Yard, leading from the Corn Market to the Tiger Vaults, pictured around the 1920s-30s

Winifred Ireland was only six weeks old when her family moved into the Tiger Vaults, a public house in Derby’s Lock-up Yard, just off the Corn Market. The year was 1910 and yet, even at the grand old age of 97, Winifred’s memory of that period is as still as clear as a bell. And, as she muses with a smile, she is probably one of the few Derbeians still alive who can recall in detail that area of the city in the early part of the last century.

“For some years now I have been trying to discover if anyone else in Derby can remember the second Tiger Vaults bar which fronted onto the Corn Market, “ said Winifred.

“Everyone knows the main bar at the back, which is still there and is still called the Tiger Vaults but no-one seems to recall the one at the front.”

Winifred recalls it because, as manager, her dad was responsible for ordering beer for both bars and the yards, where the ale was stored, both backed onto each other. There was also a period in her childhood when the bar stood empty and Winifred, her two sisters and brother used to peep out of the windows and watch the Salvation Army band march along the Corn Market on a Sunday on their way to the Market Place where they performed.

“The Tiger Vaults also had many bedrooms above the bar which were unused when we lived there but I understand that, in earlier years, the building was quite a prestigious stage coach inn for travellers journeying north,” she said.

“The horses and carriages would pass under the high archway, which fronts onto the Corn Market and the horses would be stabled in the yard – the area where my father, Walter Pollard, later stored the barrels of beer.”

This yard was covered over when the bar was extended in later years, although the trap doors leading down to the cellars and several underground passages can still be accessed from the new building.

Lock-up Yard belonged to the nearby police station and was so-called because prisoners would be handcuffed and held in jail there before being marched underground to the Guildhall courts for trial.

“We always knew when new prisoners were being brought in because they would arrive in a horse-drawn black Maria,” said Winifred. “We would peep out of the windows to see who was arriving.

“The most famous prisoners I can remember being housed there were the Wheeldon family, who were arrested in 1917 for plotting to kill the Prime Minister, Lloyd George.”

It was all very exciting for the young Pollard children who, rather than being overawed by having renowned criminals and the forces of law and order a stone’s throw from their home, actually made good friends out of the policemen stationed there, who would reward the youngsters’ curiosity by teasing them and even joining in their games at times.

They also offered them their protection during the First World War.

“My father was serving in the war and, when a German Zeppelin passed overhead, the police would help my mother out, carrying us all into the cellar of the lock-up warden’s house for safety.”

In fact, for Winifred’s mother there was never any difficulty keeping her young family entertained as they had the world at their windows.

The Corn Market in 1905, looking towards the Market Place. The front bar of the Tiger Vaults is on the right, near the arched entrance to Lock-up Yard

From another part of the Vaults, you could peer down into the old Derby Evening Telegraph building, which also fronted onto the Corn Market and was situated in the premises which later became the Kardomah Coffee House.

“We could see the printing presses churning out the latest edition of the paper and then, later in the day, we watched all the paper boys coming to collect the piles of newspapers, which had been securely stashed under the archway, out of the rain,” said Winifred.

Although the Tiger Vaults was not available to guests at the time that Winifred’s family lived there, she clearly remembers the old music room, which had attracted some well-known names to the premises in the past.

“I have heard that orchestras used that room to practice in and the room was also used as a meeting place for Derby’s intellectuals such Joseph Wright and Richard Bakewell, at one time,” she said.

“In the Victorian era, I was told Johann Strauss stayed at the Tiger Vaults for awhile. He was carrying out a musical tour of Britain at the invitation of Queen Victoria and based himself and his musicians in the central location of Derby, at the Tiger Vaults Inn.”

The Vaults’ music rooms were, however, given over to another purpose during Winifred’s time. It served as a tea blending room, where the various contents of huge chests of tea would be mixed and matched before being delivered to the various tea houses in Derby town centre.

“There was a also a bottle-washing room next door where jets of water squirted up into the bottles,” said Winifred. “We children, would sneak in there on a Sunday and try to make the jets hit the ceiling. It was not a game likely to lead to harmonious family relations however!”

Although Winifred’s family moved away from Derby and the Tiger Vaults in 1920, when she was just 10 years old, she still has great affection for those years and decided some time ago to pay another visit to her old haunts.

“On learning that Richard Felix’s city ghost walks included a tour of the passages underneath the Tiger Vaults and surrounding area, I decided to go along,” she said.

“I told him that I had grown up in the pub and, to my surprise, he asked me to give my fellow ‘ghost hunters’ a little talk on my childhood memories of the Vaults.

“Richard told us that there had been reports of a ghost being spotted at the Tiger – a little boy – but I must say that we never saw anything untoward while we were living there.”

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