A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



3. LITTLE CHESTER 



Little Chester is to-day a suburb of Derby, situated on the north- 

 east side of the town and on the east bank of the Derwent. Standing as 

 it does on level ground in an open valley close to the river, its position 

 may seem geographically insignificant. But it is here that the Derwent 

 disengages itself from the hills that overhang and hem in its upper 

 course, and Little Chester and Derby hold, as it were, the mouth of the 

 valley. 



The site has long been recognized as Roman. The appellation 

 ' Chester,' which usually in England denotes Roman remains of some sort, 

 has been applied to it continuously since Saxon times. In 1 607 Camden 

 noticed it as yielding Roman coins. 1 About 1650 Philip Kinder or 

 Kynder, writing a Histone of Darbyshire, called it a Roman town. 3 In 

 1695 Gibson, re-editing Camden, added that on a clear daymen could see 

 the foundation of a bridge crossing the Derwent to Darley Hill. But 

 the first detailed information was given by Stukeley. He visited 

 Little Chester in 1721 and 1725, examined the site with care and 

 described and planned what he saw, and his account is our main authority 

 (fig. 233). The remains, as he tells us, were in his time being daily robbed 



to mend the roads, and this 

 may be one reason why some 

 of his successors in the eigh- 

 teenth century, Horsley, Sal- 

 mon, Bray, and others, simply 

 cite him, while others, like 

 Pegge, Pilkington, and Hut- 

 ton, mention only a few 

 fragments of walling as visible 

 in their day. The destruc- 

 tion, certainly, has been car- 

 ried on during the nineteenth 

 century. Almost the whole 

 Roman area has been covered 

 with houses, and the modern 

 builders, while reverencing 

 antiquity by the employment 

 of street names such as Caesar 

 Street, Marcus Street, Ro- 

 man Road, have effectually 



FIG. 2 3 A. SITE OF LITTLE CHESTER. 



1 Britannia (ed. 6, 1607), p. 418 : not in the earlier editions. 



3 Ashmole MS. 788, fo. 201, in the Bodleian : ' Little Chester, as a ... live ( ?) or countercastle 

 to Magna Chester in y" wall neere Hault Wessell [Haltwhistle] by y e Roman monies theire found, seems 

 to be a colonie of y Roman souldjers (for soe y e name may import from Castrum [but see p. 255] : but 

 I would not have every place wherein such coin is found to be a garrison, for then why not Chadston 

 [i.e. Chaddesden], a neighbouring towne where greate plentie have been turned up, in y" custodie of 

 M. R. W. Lord of y e soile ? Neither do I believe y' y e Romans horded up all theire monies to them- 

 selves, but made use of it for exchange and barter, and soe y subject commonly had as greate a share.' 

 Printed, but not quite fully, in the ReRjuary, xxii. 199. 



