Our Blog

The Ashbourne Show continues to go from strength to strength . This year the August Saturday heralded mild yet sunny weather for the annual gathering on the old Polo Ground at Osmaston. With over 500 classes scattered across the field with cattle, sheep, goats and of course the marvellous Shire Horses there was something for everyone in addition to the WI produce show and the many further attractions. I was fortunate to be invited to the President’s tent for a sumptuous lunch alongside Cubley landowner David Legh and his assembled guests. I was President in the year 2000 and I do not recall that day as busy as this year’s and we all must support the show so that it goes on for a further 134 years. My only purchases this year were two beanie hats for Christmas and a 99 ice-cream! Next year it may be a tractor!

We have recruited not one but two kittens to take over from our lately departed mouser Mrs Hudson. A visit to the Cats Protection League premises in Longford resulted in Emily and Fiona choosing two previously abandoned felines to patrol the mouseholes and premises of Tissington Hall. The two were found in a plastic bag having been thrown over a wall at a Derby school but thankfully recuperated at Longford as they waited for a home. So far we have restricted them to the confines of the staff area of the Hall but, in time, we will introduce them to the greater house and gardens. Already they are showing a stunning prowess in retrieving cotton mouses….the real pests await! Their names??? Lunar and Raffie.

For many years my Guides and I have told visitors that Tissington was built in 1609. We have no written evidence to prove such but we do have recollections of hearsay and snippets passed down through the generations.   Our events strap line is ‘Entertaining since 1609’ but a recent discovery shows the house may be earlier. A friend of ours James Peill now works at the Royal College of Arms in London and spied a page about Tissington from the notebook of Sir Bernard Burke ,former Ulster King of Arms and of Burke’s Peerage fame. In the book he is searching for information about ‘A visitation about the Arms and Seats of the Noblemen and Gentlemen of Great Britain’. One of the questions asks when was the Hall built and the correspondent replies ‘About 1580’ nearly a full thirty years earlier than we are expounding. Of course, this needs further investigation before we amend our commentary but it shows you never stop learning about our fascinating building.

There are many good things about Facebook- for instance we were reunited with one of our cats when a photograph of the errant moggie, Mr Norris, was posted on the site and we managed to retrieve him from a farm at Alstonefield about three miles away. However, there are some very unhelpful aspects of the site as we have discovered. We created a ‘Tissington Hall’ page  some years ago with the strapline ‘Landmark’. This is our real site yet Artificial Intelligence (AI) has also created another page  Tissington Hall with the strapline ‘Landmark & Historical Place’.  Now our page has photographs of the Hall and all the events that take place here. The AI site has very odd images on its front page of random things such as the marquee lining, ladies sitting on a bench (which could be from anywhere) and other unusual shots. I have taken this up with Facebook to no avail as I wanted to combine the two pages but I have been completely ignored. A long letter to the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘You and Yours’ also produced no joy and we are stuck with this erroneous page…can any reader shed any light on how we are to resolve this issue?

In August we said goodbye to another longstanding  stalwart of the village, Ann Etches. Born in Derby to Prussian emigres from the 1870s Ann grew up in Hatton helping at the family Butcher’s shop before meeting her husband Charles at a Conservative Club Dance in the 1950s. By marrying a farmer, she became embroiled into the world of Ayrshire cows and  showing them at agricultural shows around the Midlands. Living at Brookwood Farm on the Estate – a loving home for her two children- Ann became a central figure of our community with her involvement in Dovedale Sheepdog Trials ,the Ashbourne Show, St Mary’s Church and as Tissington  WI President. She was a keen baker (as well as a keen shoe-shopper) and will be greatly missed. Her funeral was held in the village in August and I know she will be looking down on her eldest grand-daughter Katharine as she marries Philip at St Mary’s in the Autumn. We will not forget her.