Find of the Year: Taking the bull by the horns at Bolsover

High Tor from the New Bath Hotel A Twopeny tour of Derbyshire

ROS WESTWOOD, Derbyshire Museums Manager, describes an acquisition bought during lockdown for Buxton Museum and Art Gallery

The last thing I’d imagined I’d be doing during lockdown was buying a new acquisition. So my thanks go to colleagues at Peak District Mining Museum in Matlock Bath for bringing the sale of this album of drawings “mostly of Matlock”, from Wooperton Hall in Northumberland, to my attention.

The auction house catalogued three separate volumes; the first was inscribed to Mary Twopeny, and the album we acquired was the third of them. Romantically I thought she was the artist, but Prof David Hill, an expert on Victorian paintings, suggests that this is the work of David Twopeny (1804-1875), her husband and also her first cousin.

It records tours of Derbyshire in August 1827 and June 1828, possibly with his brother and his wife and young family. The 34 drawings and watercolours were pasted into a large format volume with half calf bindings made by Colnachi and Sons of Pall Mall. The pictures have been arranged as a tour, and therefore are a little out of date order.

We follow the journey from the Rock Houses at Mansfield and arrival at Ashover in June 1828, with distant views of Ogstone Hall and Ford House in high summer. Roads and lanes are busy with travellers and wagons, field hedges meticulously shown dense with foliage, while people and animals give scale. Working mostly in pencil, the application of wash provides highlight and texture.

On June 7, Twopeny arrived in Matlock staying at the New Bath Hotel. An interesting drawing is of an ancient lime tree with a circumference of 95 feet in the gardens, now only remembered in local street names. He draws High Tor and the ferry on the River Derwent. Significantly there are two drawings of the lead mines at Lady Gate and Side Mine.

On June 10, Twopeny stopped at Haddon Hall, having visited the year before and, probably staying in Bakewell, paints views across the water meadows showing Bakewell Church deprived of its spire in 1812, and a sweeping landscape from below Hulme Hall. There is a diversion to Stoney Middleton and, stepping back in time to 1827, to Peak Cavern and the rope walk at Castleton.

On June 12, 1828, he sees the ruins of the Orphanage House at Litton Mill, derelict after a fire in about 1815. The mill’s waterwheel was still an engineering marvel. He draws the imposing limestone crag at Raven’s Tor before climbing to Monsal Head, recording a family of travellers struggling up the hill in a view of the valley, then without the Headstone Viaduct of course. Two views of Dovedale from 1827 complete the tour, capturing both familiar views and the very unusual.

Albums are always difficult to share with all the visitors, but each page has been photographed and will be included in the industry exhibition. Several people have helped research this album. We are exceedingly grateful to each of these people, and their enthusiasm for this album.