Derby is an industrial city of over 250,000 people located in the very heart of England on the banks of the River Derwent. It was granted City status by HM Queen Elizabeth II during her Silver Jubilee celebrations in 1977.

There has been a settlement here for at least two thousand years. The Romans built a fort and then a small town called Derventio (now Little Chester) in the tribal area of the Corieltauvi. Under the Angles, the town was re-founded around a Minster church as the centre of an area called Northworthy, part of the Kingdom of Mercia. In the 9th century the Danes captured the Minster with its settlement, re-naming it Deoraby which is popularly thought to mean ‘Deer place’ although the more likely derivation is a contraction of the Celtic river name with the Norse ‘-by’ suffix added. When Mercia was later divided into shires, Derby became the County town which it remained until the 1950s when the County Administration was moved to Matlock.

In the 18th century Derby was at the heart of the British Enlightenment with members of the Lunar Society like the polymath Dr Erasmus Darwin, FRS the clockmaker, innovator and mechanician John Whitehurst, FRS  living in the town, whilst their entrepreneurial and creative endeavours aided or recorded by Derby based associates like the painter Joseph Wright, the architect Joseph Pickford, and the landscaper William Emes all living and working in Georgian Derby.

During the Jacobite rebellion of 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie famously held his war council at Exeter House in the town, at which he was persuaded not to push on to London but instead to retreat to Scotland, an event commemorated by a fine bronze equestrian statue on Cathedral Green.

The revolution in manufacturing started in Derby. In 1717, John Lombe and George Sorocold constructed the Old Silk Mill, the first true factory in Britain with all processes under one roof and using a common source of power – the flow of the Derwent. In 1759, Jedediah Strutt patented and built a stocking machine attachment called the Derby Rib that revolutionised the manufacture of hose. One of the earlier cotton mills was established at Darley Abbey (now part of the City) in 1782 by Thomas Evans using a process successfully pioneered by Richard Arkwright a few miles up-stream at Cromford. Sorocold also furnished the town with a pioneering running water supply in 1691.  The manufacture of fine porcelain was also established in the City by William Duesbury building the pioneering work by André Planché from 1750.

It was during this period that some of Derby’s finest buildings were constructed; The Church of All Saints (which became Derby Cathedral in 1927) was constructed to a Baroque design by James Gibbs in 1723-25, although the magnificent Perpendicular tower had been built in the 16th Century. At 212 ft. (65m) tall, it is one of the tallest in England and contains the oldest ring of ten bells in the United Kingdom, originally hung by George Sorocold in 1687 with a musical carillon. The Shire Hall in St. Mary’s Gate was built in 1660 and enlarged by both Joseph Pickford and Matthew Habershon; St Helen’s House in King Street (1767) and his own house in Friargate (1769) were both designed by Joseph Pickford and all are listed grade I. John Whitehurst’s House – originally built in 1670 for the father of Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed FRS (who made his earliest observations there) was later home to Joseph Wright ARA;  has recently been listed.

In 1828 the New Guildhall was built designed by Matthew Habershon, but it had to be rebuilt after a fire in 1841, this time to the designs of Henry Duesbury. William Strutt FRS oversaw the transformation of the town 1788-1830, as chairman of a succession of improvement commissions; his brother Joseph Strutt also acquired land to the south of the City Centre on which he laid out an 11 acre park, the Arboretum, in 1840 donating it to the citizens of Derby, the country’s first purpose built, publicly owned, urban park.

Derby Museum – since 2012 vested in an independent trust – was founded in 1879, adding the Silk Mill (since 2021 the Museum of Making) in 1974 and Pickford’s House in Friar Gate in 1988. Derby’s first public hospital was the Derby General Infirmary of 1810, replaced by the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary in 1891 and more recently on a new site by the Royal Derby Hospital.

The next revolution to be exploited in Derby was the railways. The Midland Railway was formed in 1844 with the merger of the Midland Counties Railway, the North Midland Railway, and the Birmingham and Derby Junction Railway,  all opened between 1839 and 1840. These met at the Tri-Junct Station at Derby, where the Company also established its locomotive and later its Carriage and Wagon Works, the Midland Hotel, and a model village of three streets for its employees, with a pub, The Brunswick. The modern successor to the Midland Railway is East Midlands Trains, still based in the City. The railway manufacturing complex is now part of Alstom PLC. One of the most important railway buildings is the listed grade II* 1840 locomotive Round House, now part of Derby College. Built in 1839 it is the oldest surviving locomotive depot of this type in the world, constructed for the servicing of railway locomotives.

In 1908 Rolls Royce Ltd opened their first factory in Derby, initially producing high quality motor-cars. During the First World War the company also started producing aero engines. Car production continued until the outbreak of the Second World War when the facility was moved to Crewe, the Derby factory concentrating on aircraft engine production. Its Merlin engines powered such WW2 aircraft as the Hurricane, Spitfire, Mosquito and Lancaster bomber, playing a major part in the RAF’s success in the conflict. In 1971 Rolls Royce faced bankruptcy caused by the huge cost of developing the RB 211 jet engine but was saved by the government and nationalised. The car division became a separate company as it still is, although now owned by BMW. In 1987 Rolls Royce plc was re-privatised and is now one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of aero engines. Yet in 1992 car production returned to Derby with the opening of the Japanese company Toyota, initially producing the Carina E, the Avensis, but more recently the Auris. Derby followed these achievements by the creation of a virtual hero: Lara Croft, created in Derby by Core Design in 1996.

Derby University was created in 1992 from the local Higher Education College which had previously absorbed the Derby Lonsdale teacher training college. In 2001 the declaration by UNESCO of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site included a significant portion of the City from Darley Abbey to Cathedral Green.

The City is still at the forefront of engineering technological excellence. In fact, it has a higher proportion of its work force employed in high technology jobs than anywhere else in the Country, including Cambridge. This lead TV presenter Jeremy Paxman to remark “Why can’t more places be like Derby?”

This resonant history has left a built environment still rich with the associations of the Enlightenment and the engineering achievements of the past. The last century has not been particularly kind to the heritage of what in essence is a fine Georgian town; Derby Civic Society is firmly dedicated to preventing further erosion of this priceless legacy of a distinguished past.