[03.10.2007] WHERE CAN I FIND THIS LITTLE GEM? The Royal Oak can be found in an area of Chesterfield known as The Shambles. This place was once part of Chesterfield Market and was originally called The Flesh Shambles the quarter of the market where the butchers plied their trade. Flesh Shambles is named after the place the butchers laid out their meat for sale outside their shops the old word for this surface was Fleshamols. [more]

[04.06.2007] Chesterfield in Derbyshire is a very historic town on the edge of the Peak District. Part of the reason it built up into a town was its position as a market centre in the middle of a largely rural part of the country. There has been a market held in Chesterfield since the Saxon age and documentary evidence shows that there was an open air market from 1165 onwards, but it is not until King John granted the town a Mark [more]

[03.06.2007] A couple of years ago I worked at Old Whittington Library for a few months. It is a very small library run by one person and it did get quite lonely, especially at lunchtime. Once you closed up there was no-one to talk to and not much to look at in a very small room - lots of books but not much in the way of conversation. Old Whittington is a small place on the outskirts of Chesterfield, so there isn't too much to do [more]

[02.06.2007] Chesterfield is a renowned Market town in Derbyshire. It has a good strategic position for trade, owning to its central location north of Derby and close to the M1. There has been a market held in the town since the settlement of was set up by the Romans around 70 AD. They established a fort on the towns present location (again due to the strategic position) but this soon fell into disuse and it was then the Saxons w [more]

[21.12.2006] I have found when visiting other places that even people who haven't heard of Chesterfield have heard of St Mary & All Saints Parish Church - even if they don't know that they have! They probably know it by its more regularly used name of the Crooked Spire. WHERE IS IT? The Crooked Spire is located in Chesterfield town centre, in north Derbyshire (Chesterfield can be reached from Junction 29 or 30 on the M1, t [more]

[13.12.2006] For a town with as much history as Chesterfield it is weird to think that it never used to have a museum at all. For years we had to rely on transient exhibitions in a room in the upstairs ofthe Tourist Information Centre. Thankfully, in 1994, a Museum and Art Gallery was opened (by Henry Sandon of Antiques Roadshow fame), and now we have a chance to show visitors a little of what has made our little town what it is [more]