Derbyshire

<p>At the end of the sixteenth century Derby had a population of between 2,000-2,500 with clothworking as its staple industry.<fn>E. Lord, ‘Trespassers and Debtors: Derby at the end of the Sixteenth Century’, <em>Derbys</em><em>. Arch. Jnl</em>. cxvii. 97.</fn> It was a royal borough before the Conquest, though its first surviving charter dates only from 1204.<fn> R. Simpson, <em>Coll. of Fragments Illustrative of Hist. and Antiqs.

<p>Derby, ‘a medium town, between a manufacturing and a genteel one’, continued to prosper during this period, notably because of its iron, silk and porcelain production. As well as the Paving Act of 1825, improvements included such recent buildings as the gaol, although Colonel William Dyott in 1826 commented that it had ‘become a filthy, dirty place, particularly the new part’.<fn> R. Phillips, <em>Personal Tour</em> (1828), ii. 110-12, 155-6; <em>Pigot’s Commercial Dir</em>. (1829), 125; <em>PP</em> (1835), xxv. 445-6, 450-1; S.