Description
Ashborne or Ashbourne, a market and union town, a township and a parish, in Derbyshire. The town stands on the river Henmore, 1 1/4 mile above its influx to the Dove, at the terminus of a branch of the North Stafford railway, 7 1/2 miles NE of the junction with the main line at Rocester station, and 13 1/2 by road NW of Derby. It was formerly called Ashburn, and anciently Esseburn. It belonged to the Crown at the time of the Conquest; passed to the duchy of Lancaster; was taken by the Parliamentarian forces in 1644; retaken by the Royal forces, and visited by Charles I., in 1645 ; and occupied as headquarters by the Scottish army of Prince Charles Edward on their march to Derby in 1745. Its situation is pleasant, and its vicinity rich in romantic scenery, so that it attracts many visitors. Its houses in general are of red brick, roofed with slate, and its streets are tolerably neat; it is governed by a local board of 15 members. It has a head post, money order, and telegraph office, three banks, a town-hall, newsrooms, a small jail, a Queen Elizabeth's grammar-school, three national schools and a Wesleyan school, two churches, Roman Catholic, Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist, and Congregational chapels, a workhouse, a cattle market, several almshouses, and large general charities, and is a seat of petty sessions and county courts. The grammar-school was founded in 1585, has estates yielding about £300 a year, and is a substantial stone building in the Early Tudor style. The house once inhabited by Dr John Taylor, and visited by his intimate friend Dr Johnson, stands opposite the grammar-school. The parish church is a spacious, cruciform, Early English edifice of 1241; is surmounted by a central square tower, with lofty, ornamented, octagonal spire; was restored in the years 1881-83, and the west end of the nave entirely rebuilt, at a cost of about £4000, mostly raised by subscription; and contains brasses and tombs of the Cockaynes, the Bradburnes, and the Boothbys. The finest of the monuments is a statuary one, in white marble, from the chisel of Banks, to the memory of Penelope, the only child of Sir Brooke Boothby, who died, in 1791, in her sixth year, and this is supposed to have suggested to Chantrey his beautiful group of the two children in Lichfield Cathedral. The town is in high repute as a mart for cattle, cheese, and other agricultural produce, and it has a weekly market on Saturday, and a market for cattle every alternate Thursday; general fairs on 13 Feb., 21 May, 16 Aug., 20 Oct., 29 Nov., or on the preceding day if the 29th be a Sunday, and 15 Dec. for horses, cattle, and wool, when a statute fair for hiring servants is also held; and fairs for cheese on the second Tuesday in March and the third Tuesday in Sept. Stay-making, lace-making, and cotton manufacture are carried on.
Population of town, 3809. Acreage of parish, 5096; population, 4581. The property is much subdivided. Ashborne Hall was long the seat of the Boothbys; was the quarters of Prince Charles Edward on his march to Derby; and is now owned by the Franks family. Ashborne-Green Hall is a meeting-place of sportsmen. Mayfield Cottage, in the neighbourhood, was for a considerable time the residence of the poet Moore, and the place where he wrote great part of his "Lalla Rookh." The Henmore and the Dove, in their connection with the parish, afford prime angling for trout and grayling, and were noted for it by Warton and Cotton. Thorp-Cloud Hill, 3 miles from the town and 300 feet high, commands a fine view of the craggy flanks of the Dove. The living is a discharged vicarage, united with the rectory of Mappleton, in the diocese of Southwell; value, £340. Patron, the Bishop of Southwell. Sir Aston Cockaine, the Elizabethan poet, and Sir Brooke Boothby, the author of "Tables and Satires" and of other works, were natives.
