Asbourne's Royal Shrovetide football is rightly revered far and wide, yet Derby's long-ceased version - itself rich in history - is often forgotten. Ian Collis takes up the story
On Shrove Tuesday this month, excited crowds will gather at Shaw’s Croft in Ashbourne to witness the start of another Shrovetide Football game.
Similar crazy games, all with their own peculiarities, will occur in a few other towns around the country.
It is the Ashbourne game though which is the most famous; rightly regarded as the crème-de -la-crème of modern-day Shrovetide football.
Yet 200 years ago, the biggest event in festival football took place 13 miles down the road from Ashbourne – in Derby.
Here, hundreds of players representing the north end of Derby under the banner of All Saints’ parish, clashed with those from St. Peter’s to the south.
Thousands trekked from miles around to watch the game; the pubs were full and mischief makers threw soot, flour or coloured dyes over unsuspecting victims as the town succumbed to football fever.
The game was more like a mass game of rugby than association football, played according to a code, not formalised rules.
Eyewitness descriptions convey the frenzy, ‘Oh ye Gods what a Riot – what pulling, hauling, tearing, bawling!’
The game began at 2pm in Derby’s Market Place, when a ball was thrown up and the two sides then battled to carry or kick it to their home goals.
Both goals were about a kilometre away: Nun’s Mill for All Saints, and Grove Street for St. Peter’s. Direct routes to goal were rarely taken and often play ended up in the River Derwent or the Markeaton Brook.
Any player who managed, after many hours of struggle, to goal the ball, would be an instant hero, chaired through the streets and feted well into the night.
Playing a game of mass football during a holiday was once a widespread tradition across the country.
Some played at Christmas, others at Easter, but Shrovetide was the most popular. If nothing else, it was a way of keeping warm and forgetting workaday worries.
As towns and villages grew, conflicts arose between those who wanted a boisterous game and those who preferred to keep their glass windows intact and their gardens untrampled.
The game first began to disappear from London and cities like Bristol, Chester and York, then from the larger towns, until by the 1800s Derby was the largest town still staging a mass football game.
One reason the game survived so long in Derby seems to have been the deep affinity that Derbeians had for the game.
The historian, William Hutton, was a well-travelled man when he wrote his History of Derby in 1791, but he said the game in Derby was pursued with an avidity he had not seen elsewhere, claiming ‘the very infant learns to kick and then to walk’.
Another reason was the support of Joseph Strutt, a powerful political figure reputed to play the game himself, dressed in a specially made buckskin suit.
Against all odds, Derby Shrovetide football survived until 1846, when it was finally put down by a huge force of special constables, aided by troops of Dragoon Guards.
Its survival made ‘Derby Foot-ball Play’ famous, with accounts of the game popping up in newspapers and magazines throughout the 19th century.
From these accounts, the forgotten heroes and heroines of the game emerge as reminders of those wild and wonderful times.
Take Benjamin Fearn, one of Derby’s first policemen or ‘peelers’. He had a very colourful career, showing a great aptitude for getting involved in the thick of any action.
Perhaps, it is little wonder that he could not restrain himself from playing for St. Peter’s – whilst dressed in his police uniform – in the annual Shrovetide contest.
His love for the game is clear, but in 1846 he was tasked with trying to stop it. The Mayor of Derby, William Mousley, had permission from the home secretary to ban the infamous game with the aid of, if necessary, two troops of dragoon guards.
But when, in contravention of Mousley’s ban, a ball was thrown up in the Morledge, it was Fearn who was sent in to get it.
Fearn dived into the mass of players, and emerged with the ball, which his superior promptly cut into pieces.
Later in the day, another ball was thrown up and the police and dragoons pursued the footballers out into the countryside near Normanton, then just a village.
Fearn used his knowledge of the game to get close to the play and managed to hold on to the ball for a ten-minute spell before he was overpowered by some All Saints’ players. They disposed of Fearn by throwing him over a hedge.
Mousley was far from the first mayor to try to put the game down. Back in 1731, Issac Borrow tried to ban the game and was very annoyed to find that one who defied him was the Derby jailer, John Greatrex.
As punishment, Greatrex was locked up in his own prison, but – perhaps unsurprisingly – he escaped before the night was out.
In 1797, another attempt to ban the game was thwarted by a local nutseller, Old Mother Hope.
On this occasion, the authorities checked anyone coming into the Market Place. Anyone with a ball was refused entry. But Mother Hope apparently managed to smuggle the ball in under her voluminous skirts and petticoats, then started the game by throwing the ball up with a triumphant cry of ‘All Saints’ Forever!’
The most notorious player was William Williamson, who became leader of the Peterites in the 1830s.
Described as a ‘ranting, roaring, tearing, swearing, leathering swash of a Derby man’, Williamson was better known by his nickname of Tunchy Shelton.
The ferocity of his playing style is best exemplified by the way he would headbutt his way through the opposition.
But Tunchy, who was well known to local magistrates and national prizefighters alike, had a good side. On one occasion, he spotted that a young girl was in danger of being crushed by the mob in Tenant Street.
He picked her up and was lifting her over a wall when he was knocked down and crushed himself, sustaining several broken ribs.
Although a doctor strapped him up, the ribs never knitted back correctly. Tunchy spoke in his later years about his willingness to die for the cause of St. Peter’s and claimed many others shared his feelings.
One of Derby’s first converts to Baptism, John Etches, played the game in his youth and resumed playing again after serving in Nelson’s navy, despite losing an arm in a battle against the French in 1782 - playing with zeal and energy and used his stump to telling effect.
Other renowned players included Clem Keys, an All Saints’ player adept at swimming with the ball, Walstein Roberts a bareknuckle boxer from Willow Row and the Yeoman brothers, who were adept at disappearing with the ball down sewers and re-emerging in the Derwent.
Then there were the band of rebels led by Henry Allen, a whitesmith from Agard Street, who in 1846 defied magistrates, police and mounted dragoons to play a game regarded as a Derby birthright.
These were truly local heroes playing with family, friends and neighbours in a real peoples’ game.
So, as you flip the pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, spare a thought for the men and women who risked life, limb and liberty for the game they loved and who first made Derby famous for football.
The Derby Game: A history of local rivalries by Ian Collis is due to be published shortly by Pitch Publishing.
