14 THE STONE HOUSE PREBEND, LITTLE CHESTER, DERBV. 



tiles more or less perfect, but very dirty ; they are blue pattern on 

 a white ground, many of them have Scripture subjects painted on 

 them, such as the shepherds at the manger, St. Paul let down in 

 a basket, Christ washing disciples' feet and healing a leper, Elijah 

 fed by ravens, Joseph and his brethren ; others are rural subjects, 

 as a maid and milk -pails, a man fishing, a landscape, &c. It will 

 have been noticed that the panel in the centre above the fire- 

 place is blank, but we are informed that there used to be on it a 

 carved panel with the borough arms, like that in the gable 

 outside, and we have seen in private hands an iron casting taken, 

 to all appearance, from the central portion of the panel in the 

 gable. This, however, could never have been in the centre panel, 

 the space is too small for it by about two inches, so that if there 

 ever was such a carved panel it cannot now be traced. 



It is pleasant to realize that this ancient place has escaped the 

 various vicissitudes to which it has been at various times subject, 

 and that it still remains in the hands of the Corporation of Derby, 

 to whom it was originally granted when it ceased to be the 

 property of the Church. It now forms a useful adjunct to the 

 Grammar School^itself an ancient foundation — and with its river 

 frontage for boating and bathing, and its pleasant cricket ground, 

 is perhaps in its old age doing as useful work as it ever did. The 

 old house itself might be improved internally, and altogether put 

 into repair, without in any way damaging its quaintness, or 

 destroying its time-honoured remains, carrying us back, as they 

 do, to a time before Domesday Book was compiled. We have 

 not thought it desirable to enter into the history of the College ot 

 All Saints, that can be much better read, so far as it is known, in 

 The Chronicles of All Saints'. Our business is only to gather up 

 some fragments of the existing fabric, and by means of this short 

 paper and its few illustrations, to preserve some memories of the 

 times of old to those who shall come after us. The old house 

 remains above ground, but beneath it are the buried remains of a 

 much older history, associated with more stirring events, and 

 connecting us with that great city of which it used to be said, that 

 to it all roads lead — Rome. 



