Our town through time: a brief history of Chesterfield's New Square Merchants' Houses

A heritage guide to Chesterfield with historian Philip Riden

Transcript

00:00Hello, I'm Philip Ryden, I'm the editor of the Victoria County History in Derbyshire

00:05and I have a long-standing interest in the history of Chesterfield, my hometown.

00:09I've been asked to say something about some of the more interesting buildings in the town centre.

00:1387 New Square is the oldest of a series of big merchants' houses built in this part of Chesterfield

00:20between then and the end of the 18th century.

00:23It's during this period that this end of the marketplace loses its traditional name of Swine Green

00:28and becomes New Square.

00:31This is a large brick-built building probably dating from the end of the 17th century.

00:36The building next to it, the stone-built building, which was the National Provincial Bank for many years,

00:42is actually a building of 1857 built to look like a 17th century stone-built house.

00:47And then beyond that there's a row of houses of the 1820s which stand on the site of one very large house

00:53called Salsby House, named from the family that built the house and lived there for several generations.

00:59When that was demolished, about 1810, Salsby Street was laid out on the garden of the house

01:05and the site of the house itself became a row of much smaller properties.

01:10Then beyond that, the other side of Salsby Street, what was for many years the head post office,

01:15is another example of these late 18th century brick-built merchants' houses,

01:19which would have been some of the grandest in Chesterfield in their day.