Derby, Pentrich and South Wingfield Revolution walk
The walk visits sites in Derby associated with the planning of the rebellion, and the trial and execution of the Pentrich rebels. This is Walk 15 of the Pentrich and South Wingfield Revolution group.
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Derby walk
posted on 15/06/22 by Pentrich Revolution Group. Last update : 15/06/22
Description
Start: Outside the Guildhall, Market Place, Derby
(S/E) Start the walk outside the Guildhall on the Market Place and close to Derby Tourist Information Office and the Assembly Rooms. Face towards the cathedral. Walk a few yards to your left (South) and you will find Lock-up Yard (A) on your left.
(1) Retrace your steps and then walk ahead up Iron Gate, towards the Cathedral. On your way, you will pass ‘Jorrocks’ public house (B). Walk on up Iron Gate (C). Continue up Iron Gate and then turn left (West) down St Mary’s Gate (D).
(2) Continue to the end of St Mary’s Gate and turn right, going up Bold Lane. Cross the road as it turns to the right and continues walking up Willow Row until you reach the main road, the A601.
Cross the A601 at the pedestrian crossing, and turn left on the other side walk until you see a path between two car parks which takes you to Markeaton Brook. Walk up the footpath on the right of Markeaton Brook. You will soon reach a footbridge over the brook.
(3) Cross here and walk over to the row of houses facing you (E). Go to the front of the building by walking to your right, up to Bridge Street. Turn left, walking up to Friar Gate, and then turn left again into Friar Gate. 50-51 Friar Gate (F) is the front of the former Derby Goal.
Continue walking down Friar Gate, re-crossing the A601 at the corner of Ford Street, and continue to St. Werburgh’s Church (G). To return to the start, crossing Bold Lane and then up Sadler Gate until meeting Iron Gate. Turn right here to return to the Guildhall on the Market Place. (S/E)
Waypoints
- S/E : km 0 - alt. 55 m - Guildhall - Market Place
- 1 : km 0.29 - alt. 56 m - Lock-up Yard
- 2 : km 0.63 - alt. 52 m - St Mary’s Gate
- 3 : km 1.12 - alt. 52 m - Footbridge over the brook
- S/E : km 2.34 - alt. 55 m - Guildhall - Market Place
Useful Information
Easy, city walk. Take care when crossing all roads.
Car park: Assembly Rooms car park
Start: Outside the Guildhall, Market Place, Derby.
More information at Pentrich and South Wingfield Revolution
Always stay careful and alert while following a route. Visorando and the author of this walk cannot be held responsible in the event of an accident during this route.
During the walk or to do/see around
The walk visits sites in Derby associated with the planning of the rebellion, and the trial and execution of the Pentrich rebels.
(A) When the prisoners were brought to Derby for the trial in October 1817 there was not enough room in the Derby Gaol and many were kept in lock-ups around the town.
(B) On your left you will pass ‘Jorrocks’ public house, formally ‘The George Inn’ where Oliver stayed before the trial in October 1817. With growing concern that his high-profile presence at the trial would cause political embarrassment after his role as a spy and agent provocateur had been exposed at a trial in Huddersfield where the jury refused to convict, he quickly left the town. Then come to the Wetherspoons pub, formerly ‘The Talbot’ public house where Oliver had come in April 1817 to meet the landlord, Robert Shaw. Well known as ‘the advocate of patriots’, and local leader of the Hampden Club calling for electoral reform. Oliver claimed that he was the ‘London delegate’, ‘a good friend of reform’, in contact with national political leaders ready to lead an uprising. Oliver reported that Shaw had told him ‘they are waiting for the signal’. He also met James Birkin, a 26-year-old Derby stocking frame knitter, who Oliver encouraged to join the rebellion.
(C) On your left, is a plaque, showing where the Derby Lunar Society, an important forum for radical ideas, political as well as scientific, across the Midlands and North, that had met here twenty years previously.
(D) On your right is the former County Hall, where the rebels were tried and sentenced in October 1817. The jury was carefully chosen from farmers in the county. The trial was delayed so that the harvest could be brought in and they would be in ‘good humour’. The Derby solicitor, William Lockett, acting for the prosecution,wrote: ‘I have intelligence on which I can depend as to every Juror - the list throughout is most respectable – There will be but few challenges on the part of the Crown.’ Some said the influence of local powerful dignitaries like the Duke of Devonshire and Richard Arkwright also played a part 300 jurymen were held ready in the town, as well as 268 witnesses. Of those convicted three were to be executed, 14 transported and others imprisoned.
(E) You are now at the back of Friar Gate, and face the yard of the former Derby Goal. (This is open at set times and can be contacted on Tel: 01335 360882.) Here the Pentrich men were imprisoned before the trial and three awaited their execution. Lockett's decision to put the Pentrich rebels on bread and water and to refuse them access to their solicitors was successfully challenged by Thomas Wragg, a solicitor from Crich. Behind the wall facing you, is the former exercise yard of the goal, to your left in a building where the former prison chapel was housed. Here the condemned men took their final communion. Four men from South Wingfield, known to them, had already been executed outside the gaol on 15th August for burning Colonel Halton’s hay ricks. The families visited the men. Ann Brandreth, Jeremiah's wife, walked the 20 miles from Sutton in Ashfield to visit her husband after sentencing, despite being 6 months pregnant.
(F) The sentences passed on Brandreth, Turner and Ludlam to be hung, drawn and quartered were commuted to hanging and beheading by The Prince Regent. (The wooden block on which they were beheaded remains today in Derby Museum.) The scaffold was erected at front of the building on Nun's Green. The prisoners were brought by the passage to the left hand side of the building. A large crowd had come to witness the executions, with several hundred soldiers present for fear of unrest in the crowd. When William Turner, the stonemason from South Wingfield, was on the scaffold he turned to the crowd and said ‘This is the work of the Government and Oliver’.
(G) The bodies and heads of the three men were thrown in coffins with their names chalked on the side and taken here, to the church graveyard, where the three were buried in one deep pit.
