Chesterfield and District CAMRA

The Chesterfield & District branch (incorporating the Matlock & Dales sub-branch) covers a large area in the North East of Derbyshire in a mainly rural location, which includes parts of Britain's most beautiful and most visited National Park - The Peak District.

View Chesterfield CAMRA Branch area in a larger map

Our area reaches from Chesterfield to Crich, Whitwell to Winster and all points in between. Whether it’s just popping down to the local, joining a social trip or delivering our bi-monthly ‘InnSpire’ magazine (a sort of paper round with ale), the members of Chesterfield & District Branch do their best to be out there, checking out the real ale scene.

There is a wide range of real ales available in the area including a strong presence from national brewers such as Marston’s and Greene King (GK took over Hardy & Hanson’s of Kimberley in 2006, which expanded their pub numbers in the area – the brewery was quickly closed). Derbyshire has also experienced a large expansion in the number of small breweries starting up in the county over recent years (31 listed in the 2011 Good Beer Guide) of which no less than eight (Townes, Peak, Spire, Thornbridge, Ashover, Brampton, Barlow and RAW) are in our branch area.

Our branch logo represents Chesterfield's famous landmark, the Crooked Spire of St. Mary and All Saints church, which stands proudly in the centre of the town. The distortion of this eight-sided structure, which rises 228’ and leans 9’4” from its true centre point, has been subject to superstition over the years. It is most likely due to the fact that when it was being built in 1349 the Black Death hit the town. It is thought that few skilled craftsmen survived that terrible plague that knew how to season the wood. The survivors built the spire out of green timber, which over the years has distorted under the 32 tons of lead roof tiles!

An alternative explanation is the combination of the heavy lead cladding, unseasoned timbers inside and joiners who were probably most certainly over-seasoned in the many hostelries which surround the church!

Superstitions are many and varied some saying it was the devil that, pausing for a rest during one of his flights, clung to the spire for a moment. Incense from the church drifted upwards and the devil sneezed, causing the spire to twist out of shape.

Chesterfield owes much of its prosperity during the industrial age to the great railway engineer George Stephenson. Opposite the crooked spire is the small but appropriate Chesterfield Museum and Art Gallery. Which is home to exhibitions depicting the story of the town, from the arrival of the Romans to the first days of the market town, the industry of the 18th century and the coming of the “father of the Railways” George Stephenson.

You may be surprised to learn that Chesterfield is home to one of the earliest canals in the country the Chesterfield Canal. After the success of the Bridgewater Canal in 1763, the businessmen of Chesterfield looked to link the town with the River Trent via Worksop and Retford in Nottinghamshire. Construction work began in 1771, just a year before its builder James Brindley died whilst surveying the Caldon Canal. The biggest engineering project along the length of the canal was the Norwood Tunnel at some 2,850 yards long; it took 4 years to build. Opened in 1775, the tunnel was subsequently closed in 1908 after some of the roof had collapsed. The towpath of the canal is open to walkers along the Cuckoo Walk, much of which is through quiet secluded countryside. The Chesterfield Canal is currently being renovated and reopened.

Background and brief history of the Chesterfield Canal
The Chesterfield Canal was opened in 1777 and was 46 miles in total from Chesterfield to West Stockwith on the River Trent, via Staveley, Killamarsh, Worksop and Retford. It has 66 locks ( the sixty-sixth only being built in 1999!), and one major engineering feature which is the 2880 yard Norwood Tunnel, whose collapse in 1907 severed the canal into two halves, effectively the Derbyshire section (11 miles) being separated from the section in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire (35 miles). While much of the canal became derelict, the 26 mile section from West Stockwith to Worksop was saved by the campaigning of the Retford and Worksop Boat Club in the 1960s and has since been fully navigable. Most of the canal in Derbyshire was sold off by British Waterways to local landowners in the 1970s, although a significant four mile section from Chesterfield to Staveley was acquired by Derbyshire County Council in 1989.

Three miles out of Chesterfield on the main A61 is Whittington where you will find the Revolution House. During the 17th Century the building was an alehouse called the Cock & Pynot (‘Pynot’ being the local dialect word for magpie). It was here that three local noblemen took shelter from a storm and planned the over throw of James II in favour of William of Orange. The Glorious Revolution took place later in the same year, November 1688 and it was in the year of its 250th anniversary that this modest cottage was turned into a museum. This tiny cottage with thatched roof, flower beds and garden gate is open to the public and features period furniture and changing programme of exhibitions. A new alehouse was built behind the Cock & Pynot and is open today, the Cock & Magpie.

Daniel Defoe, the 18th-century journalist and author of works including Robinson Crusoe, toured the Peak on horseback. He admired Bakewell but was unimpressed by Matlock, writing that he had reached the town by a ‘base, stoney, mountainous road’. In Defoe’s opinion, the Peak was ‘inhospitable’, ‘a howling wilderness’ and ‘the most desolate, wild and abandoned country in all England’. On the other hand: ‘however rugged the hills were, the vales were everywhere fruitful, well inhabited, the markets well supplied, and the provisions extraordinarily good; not forgetting the ale which everywhere exceeded, if possible, what was passed, as if the farther north the better the liquor’. He also thought the peak mining folk the greatest wonder of the Peak.

We hope you enjoy your visit and that you will find something of interest.