Chesterfield; Friday, 19 July, 2024

I’d been at a work conference in Sheffield in the days beforehand and a colleague very kindly gave me a lift from the conference hotel all the way over to Chesterfield, so I didn’t need to lug my bags down the hill in Sheffield to the station and get on an evening rush hour train.

After checking into my hotel for the weekend and dropping off my stuff I headed out into town to have a look around, heading first to the Church of St Mary’s and All Saints at one of the highest points in the centre of town making it a landmark in the local area.

Making it even more of the landmark is its spire, which twists sharply on the way up, almost a like a corkscrew. The myths surrounding the reason for the wonky spire are many and varied, but the most likely cause is the Black Death which had killed many of the skilled craftsmen in the years before the church’s construction and likely led to less skilled builders using unseasoned timbers that twisted as they aged. Adding to the spires problems were several hundred tons of lead added to it a couple of hundred years later.

Having taken in the site of the church’s spire I continued my wander through the centre of this pretty little market town, stopping off at the market hall and main market area (though currently partly fenced off due to renovation works), and then continuing on to the small park that climbs up to the town hall.

From the steps up to the town hall I was able to take in the view of the clocktower of the market hall and the twisted spire of St Mary’s along with the hills of the Peak District in the distance.

I wandered back through town, stopping off at the Tesco in the main shopping area to pick up dinner, before heading back to the hotel.

I had wanted to have a decent nights sleep (as I’d had a very late night the evening beforehand), but that wasn’t to be. The hotel was clearly built on the cheep in the 1990s with air conditioning clearly being considered a luxury. At the end of a period of a few days with the temperatures above 30C, and no ventilation in the rooms over than two small windows that only opened a crack. The hotel had provided a small desk fan, but with no plugs near the bed I had to plug it into the desk outlets and prop it on a chair with it’s short lead pulled taut just to get it vaguely close to the bed.