Sir Francis Chantrey, the great sculptor, also visited Ashbourne Church.
His patron, Mrs. Robinson, when she gave him the order to execute that
exquisite work, the Sleeping Children, in Lichfield Cathedral, expressly
stipulated that he must see the figure of Penelope Boothby in Ashbourne
Church before he began her work. Accordingly Chantrey came down to the
church and completed his sketch afterwards at the "Green Man Inn,"
working at it until one o'clock the next morning, when he departed by
the London coach.
Ashbourne is one of the few places which kept up the football match on
Shrove Tuesday, a relic probably of the past, when the ball was a
creature or a human being, and life or death the object of the game. But
now the game was to play a stuffed case or the biggest part of it up and
down the stream, the Ecclesbourne, until the mill at either limit of the
town was reached.
The River Dove, of which it has been written the "Dove's flood is worth
a king's good," formed the boundary between Derbyshire and
Staffordshire, which we crossed by a bridge about two miles after
leaving Ashbourne. This bridge, we were told, was known as the Hanging
Bridge, because at one time people were hanged on the tree which stood
on the border between the two counties, and we might have fared badly if
our journey had been made in the good old times, when "tramps" were
severely treated.
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