RIPLEY & DISTRICT: HERITAGE TRUST THE PUZZLE OF PADLEY

was bought by Francis Wright, Butterley’s own billionaire, around 1860, but he never lived in it, preferring his 80-bedroom Osmaston Hall. The Wrights sold it to the Butterley Company in 1911.

For much of the time, the Hall was rented out to farmers, notably the Lane family, who farmed there from about 1913 to the mid 1950s. The picture here shows a traction engine, bought from a Ripley showman family, being used in the Padley stackyard in 1939.

Try and find the history of Padley Hall, Ripley’s oldest building, and you’ll probably discover that its origins are “obscure” or “unwritten”.

Why is this? Partly, it seems, because the Zouche family, when they bought the manor of Ripley at the dissolution of Darley Abbey, soon began selling parts of it off. This meant that there was not one Lord of the Manor, but several. So, when the current Padley was built in the early 17th century, the manor that went with it was only small, and not suitable for a noble family.

Indeed, we don’t really know who built Padley, the Zouches, or the first recorded occupant, Isaac Smith? He too appears to have come from a wealthy family who made money buying up ex-monastic lands in Derby.

For the next 400 years or so, the Hall was often a working farm, rarely a country house, and certainly not associated with any noble family. This might help to explain the lack of historical information about it. It

The Butterley Company retained the Hall until 1976, selling it to the Bloore family who were reported as being convinced that the Hall was haunted, both by a figure resembling Robert Fearne, a 17th century quaker inhabitant, and by a woman in white, whose appearance was claimed to presage good news.

Perhaps the ghosts are keeping their history a secret?