Derby

I wasn’t intending to go anywhere this weekend so I was all ready for my first archive post. As it happened, I ended up in Derby, so I thought I’d blog about that instead. Sorry, that means you’ll have to wait for my thrilling defence of Coventry. I know what a bitter blow this must be.

Date of trip: Saturday 24th February 2018
Journey time: Approx 2hrs (direct)
Fare: £36.50 (Off-Peak, with Railcard, split at Banbury)

And that last line right there is exactly why I’m not recommending you follow me on this day trip, unless you have other reasons to be going that far north—meeting family members, say, or a desperate desire for a Greggs or a Home Bargains (I feel you, and don’t worry, Derby has both). But yeah, the journey time is mildly off-putting, and the fare definitely so.

You might notice I wrote “split at Banbury”, incidentally. Because of the way fares are set by the different franchisees, day trip tickets to the north are almost always cheaper split at Banbury; the Oxford-to-X fares are usually way more expensive than the Banbury-to-X ones, I assume because tourism, whereas the Banbury-to-Oxford ones are really cheap. This doesn’t work so well if you’re going for an overnight trip or longer because you can’t then get a return to Banbury, but the same trick usually works at Leamington.

Ironwork screen, partly gilt and partly painted black, with two side pillars and a central section containing a painting of a stag on a field of grass. Behind are windows and pews. — Screen of the Mayor of Derby’s pew at the Cathedral. The buck is a symbol of the city.

An atom-like metal structure, with coloured balls around the outside and a golden nucleus, on a square stone plinth. Behind it are a church tower and various other buildings, all in soft focus. — Memorial to the painter Joseph Wright. There is a gallery exclusively of his works in the Museum.

The interior of a cathedral. White pillars on either side of a central aisle lead to and behind an ironwork screen. The simply vaulted ceiling is white with gold decoration. Wooden pews lead up to the screen. There are two stained-glass windows in the background, with windows of plain glass on the side walls. — The interior of the Cathedral is simple but elegant, to write like an estate agent. The bit at the back was actually built in the sixties, but you wouldn’t know it.

Going back to Derby: if you should find yourself there, there are two things I’d recommend visiting. Firstly, the Georgian Cathedral, which was a remarkably grand parish church until 1927. It’s obviously not the most touristy cathedral in the world, but they’ve gone to a lot of effort to explain what’s there for visitors—for instance, there is the tomb of Bess of Hardwick, along with an information board about her life—so it’s interesting to walk around. (I imagine this is what Leicester Cathedral felt like before they buried a king there, but that’s a blog post for another day.) Opposite the Cathedral is the Cathedral Centre, which includes an excellent café (light meals and cakes; really filling and relatively cheap).

The other is the Museum and Art Gallery, which is the sort of civic museum you could find in most cities, but this is a really good example of one. The permanent exhibitions are on the first floor (except the china collection, which they’ve put in the café downstairs—another excellent one, by the way), and they’re pretty labyrinthine. I walked through a half-finished gallery onto a staircase landing which contained a small collection of Egyptian mummies and a locked doorway onto a balcony over the library which appeared to contain an exhibition of some kind; meanwhile bagpipes and the voice of Bonnie Prince Charlie were coming from one direction, and simulated gunfire from the other, and I started to wonder if I’d taken a wrong turning somewhere.

But the eclectic mixture definitely added to its charm, and again the curators have obviously put a lot of effort into making it a good experience, with prompts for ways to interact with the exhibits. And I guess I should explain that half-finished gallery… The museum is due to open a new World Cultures section, and the curators are leaving the gallery open during the development phase as a space for the public to engage in said development (they also have a Tumblr blog). This isn’t something I’ve seen before but I really like the idea, especially given the theme of the gallery and the consequent need to be culturally sensitive, so kudos to them.

(There is also a third storey: the second floor of the museum contains temporary exhibitions. These were also good, but there’s not much point blogging about them since if you ever end up there they’ll probably have changed.)

So those are the two big touristy things. Also worth a mention is that in the Cathedral Quarter, between the Cathedral and Museum, there are some cool independent shops (including a record store down an alleyway, and a department store with two separate restaurants on two separate balconies). Beyond that, the rest of the city centre is fairly standard for a medium-sized city, really. There’s a bloody huge shopping centre of the “intu” variety, a city square with a nice-looking theatre on one side and an ugly and disused performance venue on the other, and so on and so forth.

In summary, this is more of a “what I did on my holidays” post than a promotion. Basically, if Oxford were a bit further north, Derby would be a prime candidate for inclusion on this blog as a recommendation. It’s not, so, as I said, it’s maybe not worth the trip. But if you find yourself needing to go somewhere in the East Midlands (and who doesn’t, from time to time), it’s a pretty decent pick.

The head an body of a taxidermied fox. Behind, in soft focus, are other taxidermy exhibits, including a badger. — Fox! This was “ethical taxidermy”, but it wasn’t explained what that meant. You could stroke it; foxes’ fur is surprisingly soft everywhere, not just on their bushy tail.

A gold coin with an intricately embossed image of a ship, on a small glass display cube. — A coin found at Codnor Castle nearby, dating from 1415–20 and found by Time Team nearly 600 years later.

A leaded window, with “X” patterns, as well as some horizontal and vertical thin rectangles stained orange, in a brown frame. Behind it, in soft focus, are a collection of shelves containing vases and other objects, around the edge of a balcony overlooking another space. The room behind the window is lit from above. — The aforementioned balcony. I really wanted to see what the items were inside, but ’twas not to be.

A green wall, with a white crown moulding, against a light wooden floor. On the wall hang seven paintings in gold frames, two cut off on the right, many depicting candlelit scenes. There are white information plates beneath the pictures, and a further one on its own stand. In the foreground are two wooden benches; a person it sitting and reading on the left-hand bench. — Paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, whose memorial we saw earlier. The largest frame holds “A Philosopher Lecturing on the Orrery”, one of his works illustrating his talent for depicting candlelit scenes, and the inspiration for the memorial.

Looking up to the tops of buildings, of stone and brick, of various ages. The building furthest back carries a sign. The sign reads, firstly, “THE GATEWAY TO HEALTH”, in upper-case dark green brush script font, in an arch shape. Beneath that are the words “CO-OP MILK”, in white upper-case sans-serif, between which is an image of a brown cow (with ears, eye and udders detailed). — I’m not sure why this old Co-Op advert is here, but I liked it.

In light stone, the tops of Corinthian columns, above which is an entablature bearing two roses on squares, between which is engraved “MCMXLI”. Above all is a pediment, containing a coat of arms. In front flies a flag with a white background, also bearing a coat of arms. — The date on Derby Council House; unusual because it’s 1941, when most building work had stopped due to the war.

A gull is about to land in lightly-rippled water. Two gulls swim in the water behind it. — Yeah, this doesn’t show you much of what Derby’s like, I just like the picture. Peregrine falcons are cool.

Lit by an gas-style streetlamp in twilight are red-brick cottages on a street corner. At the corner is a former shop. On the edge of the pavement is shrubbery, to the right of which is a parked car, the road being completely clear. — What I think are old railway cottages near Derby Station (or “Midland Station”, as the signs still read). Derby was a major railway centre for the Midland Railway and its successors, and the locomotive works still produces trains to this day (including an order of 192 S Stock trains for London Underground).

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