- George Inn -

The shrill sound of a post horn announced the arrival of the London to Manchester coach as the tired horses picked up and flew through the streets of Derby. The large wheels clattered on the cobbles of the tiny road leading from Bold Lane to the George Inn in Iron Gate.
Is the coach pulled up in the George Yard, off Sadler Gate ostlers rushed out to hold the horses, and the coachman, wrapped in large overcoats, one on top of the other, put away his whip and climbed down from the box.
assengers going further had a little time for a meal in the coffee room. The George Yard was now as busy as a railway station at rush hour, with ostlers, coachmen and passengers going about the business of changing horses and getting the coach back on the road again within a quarter of an hour.

The George Inn was one of the most famous coaching inns in Derby and was built around 1693. By this time there was a distinction between inns and taverns, as inns were not only coaching houses, but also a place where gentlemen could stay if they did not own a townhouse in Derby. Many gentlemen certainly did stay at the George. The Duke of Devonshire frequented it on many occasions and during the 1745 Jacobite uprising, used it as his headquarters, holding the inaugural meetings which led to the formation of the regiment of soldiers called the Derby Blues.
In December 1745, the Blues held their first drill on the Holmes in Derby. They were dispatched to their billets and the duke and his officers went back to the George. At 7.30 that evening the news came that the Pretender's troops were at Ashbourne. The Duke of Devonshire held a brief council of war in the George. Would the local troops attempt to prevent the Highlanders entering Derby? After all, wasn't that why they had been formed? But no, the duke marched out of the George, took his position in front of his troops on the Market Place and gave the order: "The Derby Blues will retire". Thus they marched away towards Nottingham and left Derby to its fate.

The following morning two Highland officers rode into Derby. They inquired after the mayor but he had also left the town, so they hammered on the doors of the George and demanded billets for thousands of troops.

Many other gentlemen stayed at the George during its long history. In 1763, Prince Viktor Freidrich Von Halt-Benburg stayed there for two nights. The George also played host to the Duke of York and Louis IX of Hesse, Damstadt in 1771.

Inns of the 18th and 19th century fulfilled many roles in the community, providing a place for courts, council meetings, recruiting offices, the buying and selling of animals. Doctors and dentists and vets held surgeries within the inns. In 1776, the George also took over as the post office while the one in Queen Street was being rebuilt. It also acted as a funeral parlour in 1773 when the body of Godfrey Heathcote, the Duke of Devonshire's comptroller, lay at the George en route for burial at Chesterfield.

The George, of course, has many ghosts and mysteries, none more bizarre than the 'George Skull'. This female human skull, with a damaged cranium, was found by workmen 4ft down in a pit beneath the cellar floor. With it were animal skulls and bones, old shoes and strips of leather. Work was stopped and the skull was taken to Nottingham for forensic testing which showed that it was very old

Now one's imagination can run riot. Perhaps this unfortunate female was murdered and thrown into a pit or 'midden' that would have been dug in earlier days. Animals would once have been killed on the premises to feed travellers and the unwanted parts thrown into a pit. Perhaps the woman was also thrown in there to conceal the murder.

Yet no other human remains were found, other than the skull. Perhaps she was not murdered. Perhaps those workmen digging in that cellar in 1992 came across something quite different as the George stands almost on the corner of Iron Gate and Sadler Gate, the heart of Viking Derby. 'Gate' is an old Danish word for 'street'. Iron Gate was where the blacksmiths traded and Sadler Gate was where the leather workers set up business.

Perhaps a Viking leather worker's shop on the site, of the George was uncovered, which would account for the shoes and the discarded leather strips. The animal bones and skulls could have come from the animals killed for the leather makers. The hides would have been stripped and tanned and the off-cuts thrown into the pit.

Maybe the damage to the side of the skull was simply done by a spade because in 1693, when the George was built, it was still customary to bury beneath the foundations of new buildings a human skull, a pair of shoes and a dead cat to ward off evil spirits and witches.

If that was the purpose for which this skull was buried, then it has not done its job very well as the George is decidedly haunted. On two occasions a long-haired man in a blue coat has been spotted walking along the landing in the middle of the night. He has been followed down the stairs into the bar where he disappeared, although there was apparently nowhere for him to go as the George was well secured. Crockery moves itself from the racks in the kitchen, but never breaks.

The cobbled George Yard, to the rear of the George Inn,
once a busy coaching and business route, today little used.

Since the refurbishment and extension of the cellar, bar staff have had strange experiences there: one found that stainless steel buckets were being thrown at him from a table; another who went down to change the beer barrels on a Friday night had to evade the plastic taps used on the beer kegs as they were hurled at him across the cellar floor.

disembodied human groan has been heard in the cellar and on three occasions, in the presence of customers, thick pint pots have shattered, cutting the hands of barmaids and the landlady. There has been no explanation for any of the occurrences.

The George has recently been renamed D Lafferty & Son

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