A sense of place - Derbyshire in fiction

Some writers use real historic events in their stories. A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley is set in Dethick and Wingfield Manor. A young woman goes back in time to find love and heartbreak with the Babington family during their doomed plot to free Mary Queen of Scots. Looking in a mirror, she reflects “I saw Penelope Taberner in the glass..so that I longed to slip through the hidden door to that unseen world where hearts were aching for a captive queen and a broken cause.”  

Linda Kempton’s The Naming of William Rutherford retells the story of the Eyam plague. “A fire burned in a huge old fireplace made of stone. It was night. Candles flickered on the old-fashioned dresser. Candles that gave off thick, foul-smelling smoke and made monstrous shadows loom and dance on the grey stone walls. The bodies came towards him. Huge faces peered into his and he could feel hot breath and smell woollen dresses, damp with sweat."

Another fictitious place based on reality is in Booker Prize winning author Hilary Mantel’s novel Fludd. Hadfield becomes Featherhoughton which “lay in moorland, which ringed it on three sides. The surrounding hills, from the village streets, looked like the hunched and bristling back of a sleeping dog. Let sleeping dogs lie, was the attitude of the people....They were not townspeople; they had none of their curiosity. They were not country people...Cotton was their business..."

The town of Chesterfield is captured by F. C Boden who created quite a literary stir in the early 1930’s. In his 1932 novel Miner “The red and yellow tram-car came clanging back from Brampton, muddier and wetter than ever, and, above all, tram and everything, with dark fingers on white face, the market hall clock chimed...and at that instant, hooters and hummers and whistles on all sides joined in a shrill discordance...and from the gates of factories, potteries, ironworks and breweries men..."

A fine teller of coalfield tales is Albert Rhodes, author of Butter on Sundays, A Summer of Yesterday, and Calico Bloomers: "The whirr of the steel rope and the metallic clash of folding gates announced the arrival of the cage. Tubs rumbled past them as they strode over the rails...The banksman standing by the cage checked their lamps and said brusquely, ‘Tally?’... They entered the cage and the gates closed....then the bottom of the cage fell away as they plunged into darkness."

The often surprisingly rural, countryside among the collieries around Bolsover has produced delightful country stories by Fred Kitchen such as Goslington, Portrait of a Village, The Commoners and Nettleworth Parva. The villages may be imaginary but the life of the local farming folk is real enough “Ah weel this frost we’ve had has dried up the slurry.” remarked Nat, the hedger, ”for it’s been a clarty mass i’ the fallow of late.” “Thou’rt reet theer, Nat.” agreed Amos. 

A very different world is reflected in M. John Harrison’s 1989 novel, Climbers. The action moves all over the country but his climbers, whose sordid lives are transformed through their passion for their sport, are rooted in this area. Here they are climbing at Stanage Edge: “Suddenly it was no effort. I could smell the damp bracken; and the curious spicy odour of the gritstone in front of my face. I could feel the new boots, edging on a tiny quartz pebble..."

Finally to the limestone uplands of the White Peak, inspiring Berlie Doherty in her story White Peak Farm. “My home is on a farm in the soft folding hills of Derbyshire. Not far from us the dark peaks of the Pennines rise up into the ridge that is called the spine of England. We’ve always lived there; my father’s family has owned the farm for generations. Nothing ever seemed to change there. The seasons printed their patterns on the fields...but our lives, I thought, would never change...”