`DERBYSHIRE: – SNAPSHOTS IN TIME’
by Tom Bates
Preface
For the best part of sixty years I have enjoyed a love-affair with the county of my birth, and over the past two decades have written extensively about various aspects of Derbyshire; its villages, its characters, both famous and infamous, its landscape and its history, in a variety of published books and magazines.
Residence in the heart of the Derbyshire countryside is an inestimable privelege. Simply being here, part of this living, evolving landscape, provides sufficient inspiration to arouse my passion and desire for the written word.
Working on themes previously researched and published singularly, this book collects together a series of `snapshots in time’ previously unpublished in book form, and arranges them in chronological order, from the foundation stones of Derbyshire three hundred and fifty million years ago, to the present day – and with a final tongue-in-cheek glimpse into the future!
Along the way there are `snapshots’ from the Ice Age, the Iron Age and the Roman Era; the Middle Ages are followed by chapters on the Tudor, Stuart and Georgian eras, and `snapshots’ from the Civil War and the Industrial Revolution, and through the Victorian scene to the modern day.
It was never my intention to attempt to write a potted history of Derbyshire, and this book makes no such claim.
I have no desire to educate, merely to entertain, and I hope the reader will find this little book of Derbyshire Snapshots in Time both interesting and entertaining.