CHAPTER IIEARLIEST ASSOCIATIONSLea Hall first English Home—Neighbourhood of Babington Plot—Dethick Church.... Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which be they what they may,Are yet the fountain light of all our day,Are yet a master light of all our seeing.Wordsworth.
Lea Hall first English Home—Neighbourhood of Babington Plot—Dethick Church.... Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which be they what they may,Are yet the fountain light of all our day,Are yet a master light of all our seeing.Wordsworth.
Lea Hall first English Home—Neighbourhood of Babington Plot—Dethick Church.
... Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which be they what they may,Are yet the fountain light of all our day,Are yet a master light of all our seeing.Wordsworth.
... Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which be they what they may,Are yet the fountain light of all our day,Are yet a master light of all our seeing.Wordsworth.
... Those first affections,Those shadowy recollections,Which be they what they may,Are yet the fountain light of all our day,Are yet a master light of all our seeing.
... Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
Are yet a master light of all our seeing.
Wordsworth.
WhenMr. and Mrs. Nightingale returned from abroad with their two little daughters, they lived for a time at the old family seat of Lea Hall, which therefore has the distinction of being the first English home of Florence Nightingale, an honour generally attributed to her parents’ subsequent residence of Lea Hurst.
Lea Hall is beautifully situated high up amongst the hills above the valley of the Derwent. I visited it in early summer when the meadows around were golden with buttercups and scented with clover, and the long grass stood ready for the scythe. Wild roses decked the hedgerows, and the elder-bushes,which grow to a great size in this part of Derbyshire, made a fine show with their white blossoms. Seen then, the old grey Hall seemed a pleasant country residence; but when the north wind blows and snow covers the hillsides, it must be a bleak and lonely abode. It is plainly and solidly built of grey limestone from the Derbyshire quarries, and is of good proportions. From its elevated position it has an imposing look, and forms a landmark in the open country. Leading from it, the funny old village street of Lea, with its low stone houses, some of them very ancient, curls round the hillside downwards to the valley. The butcher proudly displays a ledger with entries for the Nightingale family since 1835.
The Hall stands on the ancient Manor of Lea, which includes the villages of Lea, Dethick, and Holloway, and which passed through several families before it became the property of the Nightingales. The De Alveleys owned the manor in the reign of John and erected a chapel there. One portion of the manor passed through the families of Ferrar, Dethwick, and Babington, and another portion through the families of De la Lea, Frecheville, Rollestone, Pershall, and Spateman to that of the Nightingales.
The house stands a little back from the Lea road in its own grounds, and is approached by agate from the front garden. Stone steps lead up to the front door, which opens into an old-fashioned flag-paved hall. Facing the door is an oak staircase of exceptional beauty. It gives distinction to the house and proclaims its ancient dignity. The balustrade has finely turned spiral rails, the steps are of solid oak, and the sides of the staircase panelled in oak. One may imagine the little Florence making her first efforts at climbing up this handsome old staircase.
In a room to the left the date 1799 has been scratched upon one of the window-panes, but the erection of the Hall must have been long before that time. For the rest, it is a rambling old house with thick walls and deep window embrasures. The ceilings are moderately high. There is an old-fashioned garden at the back, with fruit and shady trees and a particularly handsome copper beech.
The Hall has long been used as a farmhouse, and scarcely one out of the hundreds of visitors to the Matlock district who go on pilgrimages to Lea Hurst knows of its interesting association. The old lady who occupied it at the time of my visit was not a little proud of the fact that for forty-four years she had lived in the first English home of Florence Nightingale.
The casual visitor might think the district amid which our heroine’s early years were spent was a pleasant Derbyshire wild and nothing more,but it has also much historic interest. Across the meadows from Lea Hall are the remains of the stately mansion of Dethick, where dwelt young Anthony Babington when he conspired to release Mary Queen of Scots from her imprisonment at Wingfield Manor, a few miles away. Over these same meadows and winding lanes Queen Elizabeth’s officers searched for the conspirators and apprehended one at Dethick. The mansion where the plot was hatched has been largely destroyed, and what remains is used for farm purposes. Part of the old wall which enclosed the original handsome building still stands, and beside it is an underground cellar which according to tradition leads into a secret passage to Wingfield Manor. The farm bailiff who stores his potatoes in the cellar has not been able to find the entrance to the secret passage, though at one side of the wall there is a suspicious hollow sound when it is hammered.
The original kitchen of the mansion remains intact in the bailiff’s farmhouse. There is the heavy oak-beamed ceiling, black with age, the ponderous oak doors, the great open fireplace, desecrated by a modern cooking range in the centre, but which still retains in the overhanging beam the ancient roasting jack which possibly cooked venison for Master Anthony and the other gallant young gentlemen who had sworn to liberate thecaptive Queen. In the roof of the ceiling is an innocent-looking little trap-door which, when opened, reveals a secret chamber of some size. This delightful old kitchen, with its mysterious memories, was a place of great fascination to Florence Nightingale and her sister in their childhood, and many stories did they weave about the scenes which transpired long ago in the old mansion, so near their own home. It was a source of peculiar interest to have the scenes of a real Queen Mary romance close at hand, and gave zest to the subject when the sisters read about the Babington plot in their history books.
Dethick Church, where our heroine attended her first public service, and continued to frequently worship so long as she lived in Derbyshire, formed a part of the Babingtons’ domain. It was originally the private chapel of the mansion, but gradually was converted to the uses of a parish church. Its tall tower forms a picturesque object from the windows of Lea Hall. The church must be one of the smallest in the kingdom. Fifty persons would prove an overflowing congregation even now that modern seating has utilised space, but in Florence Nightingale’s girlhood, when the quality sat in their high-backed pews and the rustics on benches at the farther end of the church, the sitting room was still more limited. The interior of thechurch is still plain and rustic, with bare stone walls, and the bell ropes hanging in view of the congregation. The service was quaint in Miss Nightingale’s youth, when the old clerk made the responses to the parson, and the preaching sometimes took an original turn. The story is still repeated in the district that the old parson, preaching one Sunday on the subject of lying, made the consoling remark that “a lie is sometimes a very useful thing in trade.” The saying was often repeated by the farmers of Lea and Dethick in the market square of Derby.
Owing to the fact that Dethick Church was originally a private chapel, there is no graveyard. It stands in a pretty green enclosure on the top of a hill. An old yew-tree shades the door, and near by are two enormous elder-bushes, which have twined their great branches together until they fall down to the ground like a drooping ash, forming an absolutely secluded bower, very popular with lovers and truants from church.
The palmy days of old Dethick Church are past. No longer do the people from the surrounding villages and hamlets climb its steep hillside, Sunday by Sunday, for, farther down in the vale, a new church has recently been built at Holloway, which, if less picturesque, is certainly more convenient for the population. On the first Sunday in each month,however, a service is still held in the old church where, in days long ago, Florence Nightingale sat in the squire’s pew, looking in her Leghorn hat and sandal shoes a very bonny little maiden indeed.