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Images Index> Matlock Bath, 20th and 21stC Images> This page |
| Matlock Bath, South Parade & the Pitchings |
| Matlock Bath : Twentieth Century Photographs, Postcards, Engravings & Etchings |
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The Pitchings rises steeply from South Parade; the narrow roadway was known locally as the Pitchings after the pitch stones - hard stone cobbles - that were used to surface it. It is now part of Waterloo Road. Hodgkinson's Hotel is the building behind the tree. A much bigger hotel, the Great Hotel, originally ran the length of the Parade but it did not succeed and was split up into smaller units; the section beside the Pitchings is the only part that remained as an hotel. It became Varley's Hotel[1], where the writer Ebenezer Rhodes stayed when he visited Matlock Bath about 1818 (quoted below)[2]. It was next known as the Matlock Bath Hotel or Robinson's Hotel[3], as the proprietor was Thomas Robinson. It was subsequently run by Job Hodgkinson and his wife Sarah[4]. Mr. Hodgkinson's nephew William Brooker took over the business in 1857[5]. Despite members of the Hodgkinson family not running the hotel for well over a century, the hotel's name has remained. This was where coaches travelling through the village used to change their horses. There was stabling on the opposite side of the road but the original stabling was part of the way up the Pitchings, on the right hand side (between the backs of the buildings on North Parade and the properties on what used to be Waterloo Square). This was where Mawe's, later Adam's, Royal Museum had their workshops.
Readers may be interested to know that the render on the exterior of the hotel was limewashed for Warren Boden in 1938, the windows were painted white and stonework (window cills, etc) was washed down[7]. Limewashing was and still is a traditional finish for buildings, and in keeping with the date of the South Parade buildings. Croston, writing in both 1862 and 1868 noted that "the museum parade, with its long row of shops and hotels, their delicate white and cream-coloured fronts agreeably harmonising with the varied greenery behind"[8]. Croston was not, of course, talking of the brilliant white of modern paints but would have been a light cream colour or off-white.
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Print, from a drawing by and part of the Frank Clay estate, and © Ann Andrews collection. Re scanned Oct, 2015. This was one of the first images on the web site. Information written, researched, provided by and © Ann Andrews. Intended for personal use only. |
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References (coloured links go to on site transcripts): [1] Mr. Varley's advertisement is given in Matlock & Matlock Bath Public Notices & Announcements, 1819. [2] Rhodes, Ebenezer (1824) "Peak Scenery" pub. London, Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Paternoster Row. [3] Thomas Robinson can be found on Matlock & Matlock
Bath Public Notices & Announcements, 1822. [4] Job Hodgkinson is listed in Pigot's Directory, 1831 | Pigot's
Directory, 1842 | ... White's Directory 1852 (last directory entry). And in the census: the
1841 census | the 1851 census. [5] William Brooker placed an announcement in the Derby Mercury in 1857. See Matlock & Matlock Bath Public Notices & Announcements, 1857. He was living with his aunt and uncle in 1851 (as Brookes) and went into business with his aunt at the Spirit Vaults. [6] Recollections of the late Frank Clay, in private papers owned by the web mistress. [7] Ledger of estimates invoices and receipts for Mr. Clay's painting and decorating business, 1938. Ann Andrews collection. [8] See Croston, James (2nd edn. 1868) "On Foot Through
the Peak". He also described Museum Parade in the first edition. |
Hall's "Days
in Derbyshire"