The City fathers of Derby had provided themselves with a dedicated headquarters, from which the affairs of the Borough could be conducted, as early as the 13th century, following the grant of the town’s second (or possibly third) charter in 1204. This was, according to the Borough’s later historians, a stone structure with an open hall on the first floor reached by external steps, with an undercroft used for the detention of transgressors.
This stood in the middle of the Market Place and remained there until 1730, although its municipal functions had ended in 1610, leaving only a handful of drunks and felons, languishing in the undercroft and whose waywardness was insufficient to merit their incarceration in Derby’s grim and flood-prone Tudor goal at the south end of Corn Market.
In 1610, a much larger building had been provided for the city fathers – called the Common Hall – on the east side of Iron Gate, set back and separated from the street by a modest courtyard. This was the Moot Hall, an impressive brick structure of three storeys and gables, lit by stone mullion and transom cross windows.
Yet by the third decade of the 18th century, this too was felt to be either too cramped or insufficiently grand and a replacement was canvassed as early as Queen Anne’s reign. In 1711, the Mayor, Alderman Francis Cokayne (uncle of ironsmith Robert Bakewell’s wife), approached Francis Smith of Warwick – perhaps today better known for his fine provincial Baroque country houses than for his public buildings – for plans for a new Guildhall to be built on the south side of the Market Place, roughly where Derby’s present Guildhall stands, and a design was duly produced.
For some reason, this scheme was not pursued, probably because the owners of the properties on the south side of the Market Place were asking too high a price for their property. However, a new Mayor, Alderman Isaac Borrow of Castlefields House determined to revive the scheme, and it was the discovery of his MS account book for 1730-32 when Derby’s Local History Library was being moved in 1982 that unravelled the saga of its building.
In January 1731 Richard Jackson of Armitage, Staffs., was paid five guineas (£5.25) ‘for several Drafts of the Town-Hall and for comeing to Derby twice.’ A month later, one Humphrey Booth (maternal uncle of the painter Joseph Wright) was paid 10/6d (52.5p) for ‘goeing to Warwick with a letter to Mr, Smith’ whilst a month later again Jackson was paid £1 – 11s – 6d (£1.57.5p) ‘for his comeing to Derby with advice on the workmen’s Estimates’.
From this it is possible to attribute the design to Richard Jackson (1703-1751) who was a competent builder and architect with connections to Francis Smith, who was probably employed to ‘measure’ Jackson’s work (essentially guarantee quality and costs) – hence the letter to him in the February. Jackson himself had but recently complete the Hall at Walton-on-Trent, and The Friary, in Derby (still, mercifully, extant) is also attributed to him. Indeed, it may be that Borrow’s house at Castlefields of 1713 (see Country Images, January 2016) was the work of Jackson’s father, Richard, also a notable builder.
The building which Jackson designed and which was completed within a year – note that infrastructure projects got done in short order in those bureaucracy-free days – was more compact that the design Smith had produced, but still very much in Smith’s Baroque idiom. Indeed, plonked down in the countryside on a grassy knoll, it could easily have been mistaken for a gentlemen’s seat!
Needless to say, the owners of the properties on the south side of the market place were still asking too much for their properties, so the Corporation stuck two fingers up at them and plonked their new building on the footprint of the original medieval Guildhall, meaning, in practice, that it completely blocked the light from those property which now faced onto a dismal chasm into which the sun had little chance to reach.
Bearing in mind that it was demolished after slightly less than a century of use, there are three illustrations of it, of which the earliest is that drawn for Hutton’s History of Derby in 1791 by George Monedypenny, Joseph Pickford’s former carver. He shows it from the north, seven bays of windows wide, of two tall storeys, the central three bays being enclosed by Doric pilasters and supporting a pediment flanked by a balustrade topped by stone urns.
The clock was added in 1736, having been made by the young John Whitehurst FRS (1713-1788) freshly arrived from his native Congleton and presented to the Corporation by its maker. As a reward for which act of selfless generosity, the Corporation granted him the freedom of the Borough, enabling him to settle and trade in Derby without the crippling restrictions imposed on other in-comers.
Robert Bakwell made a splendid weather vane which was placed at the apex of the pediment. This is not shown in Moneypenny’s drawing, although the record of its payment survives in the account book. This emphasizes that, for all his prowess as a carver, Moneypenny was not particularly good at drawing buildings; none of his depictions of Derby buildings in Hutton’s history are completely accurate!
This slight lack of precision in Moneypenny’s drawing is made up for by the lithographic plate in Simpson’s hist or of Derby of 1826, and by George Pickering’s excellent drawing of the Market Place (showing the Guildhall’s setting) made just prior to the building’s demolition. The Simpson drawing gets the proportions wrong, but Pickering’s two depictions – from the east and the north- appear to be absolutely spot on.
These show that the windows, contrary to Moneypenny, had cambered tops and were blind on the narrower east and west sides. Also, it is easy too see from all three depictions that the upper storey was the taller, for here was the council chamber, a large room occupying almost all the space save for a grand staircase on the west end, and elaborately and decoratively plastered by local stuccadore Abraham Denstone the elder, whose like-named son worked extensively for Joseph Pickford, including at his house and the interior of the Derby Assembly Rooms in 1771.
The cost of the Guildhall was £1,989 – 5s – 0d (£1989.25) raised by subscription amongst the local grandees of the County (most of whom had already subscribed to the rebuilding of the Cathedral (then still All Saints’ church) in 1723. Levering a sub in the order of £500 from the likes of Charles Stanhope of Elvaston Castle more than once in a decade was something of an achievement, and stands to the persuasiveness of Alderman Borrow and his colleagues!
The appeal was pump-primed by the Duke of Devonshire, then (as until 1974) hereditary High Steward of the Borough to the tune of £200. Meanwhile Derby builder William Trimmer was paid for demolishing the old Guildhall in March 1731 and mason Nathiel Peal was paid £7 – 10s – 8d (£7.53) ‘for takeing down ye old Cross etc.’ which stood in front of the entrance of the new building which area they were going to re-pave. Where it ended up is a mystery. Peal and William Hall were the masons who built the Guildhall to Jackson’s plans. The whole building was up and running by autumn 1732.
Yet this splendid building, which would today have been much valued and cherished (even in Derby!) failed to make its centenary. The owners of the houses on the south side of the Market Place were suddenly minded to sell art a viable price to the Corporation in the 1820s, and in 1828 Mathew Barshon’s new, Greek revival Guildhall had been built in their place, just where Richard Jackson’s masterpiece had originally intended to be set.
Thus, once the new Guildhall was finished, the old one rapidly came down. Whitehurst’s turret clock was transferred to the new building, and the parapet urns were acquired by Alderman Francis Jessopp to decorate the one acre garden behind his house in The Wardwick – now called The Jacobean House – where the Odd Brook meandered through and was crossed by delicate chinoiserie footbridges.
Unfortunately, the new Guildhall was largely destroyed by fire on Trafalgar night 1841 with the total loss of the clock. Meanwhile, in 1855 the Jacobean House had to be reduced to allow the building of Becket Street and the urns were transferred to the new boundary wall. When that was demolished, they largely vanished, although one turned up in the grounds of Park Field, Duffield Road when demolition commenced there in the 1993 – only mysteriously to vanish again, this time, seemingly for good!
