Queen Street, Derby

27-28 Queen Street, Derby

I was delighted and proud to receive word that earlier today, November 14, 2024, the building at 27-28 Queen Street in Derby was added to the National Heritage List for England by Historic England, designating it as a building of special architectural or historic interest, and giving it legal protection.

This building has been the subject of multiple campaigns for this inclusion, led by a spirited group of heritage-minded people, with the Facebook group, Friends of 27 Queen Street. The image above was uploaded to that Facebook group by Kevin Spearman on September 4, 2024.

Earlier this year, I was invited by Professor Jonathan Powers of the University of Derby and Quandary Books to submit a letter in support of this application. My endorsement, and some further musings on Franklin and Derby follow.

The building touches on Franklin’s admiration of the

  • Jonathan Flamsteed, citizen scientist and later Astronomer Royal
  • Jonathan Whitehurst, clockmaker and correspondent of Franklin
  • Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin
  • Peter P. Burdett, “one of the shadowy figures who often appear on the periphery of Franklin’s circle”.
  • Franklin’s trips in 1771 and 1774
  • The way interested individuals, corresponding with each other, can have great effects in business and the world.
  • The artist Joseph Wright
  • Franklin’s friend, host and correspondent Anthony Tissington
  • Tissington Hall, his surviving residence

My Endorsement

(11 July 2024 to Historic England)

Please accept this letter as an endorsement of the Listed Building Application for 27-28 Queen Street, Derby (Request 1490852). The application centers on the activities of John Flamsteed, John Whitehurst and Joseph Wright. 

I am a lifetime student of Benjamin Franklin, living in Maryland. I was founding Vice President of the Friends of Franklin organization at its founding in 1989 and a Board member at its formal dissolution in 2013. The organization’s newsletters are available at friendsoffranklin.org, a website I  continue to maintain. 

Roy Goodman retired as Emeritus Curator of Printed Materials, American Philosophical Society, and was longtime President of The Friends of Franklin. He concurs with my comments here, and desires with me that this endorsement be considered as coming from both of us. 

OBSERVATIONS

We support the registration and celebration of 27 Queen Street by Historic England, and are happy to offer some observations for your consideration. 

John Flamsteed’s career, starting with his building a wall in this garden that came to define the Meridiem Derbiensis and his later ascent to Astronomer Royal. This stands with Benjamin Franklin’s early experimenting, offering the timeless lesson that amateur, self-taught efforts can be important. 

From his early days in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin marveled at Derby’s accomplishments. This became most apparent In 1748, when he retired from printing to devote more time to his science. 

In retirement, Franklin continued to write his Almanack, and in very next issue, Franklin repeated the description of the Silk Mill published 17 years earlier in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1732, with the inconceivable number of moving parts (over 26 thousand wheels) and productivity (99 billion yards of silk in a year) in Derby. 

In that same Almanack, Franklin respectfully cited “Mr. Flamstead” in a piece on the speed of sound, 30 years after Flamsteed’s death.  

It is significant to me that both Flamsteed and the Silk Mill appear in the  Almanack exactly as Franklin’s own attention turned from printing to natural philosophy: I fancy that with Philadelphia and London, Derby was a place that fired Franklin’s imagination. 

After John Flamsteed moved to London, John Whitehurst moved into this property. Whitehurst was a friend and correspondent of Franklin for several decades on many topics. They first met in Birmingham with Erasmus Darwin in 1758. Franklin’s first visit to Derby took place the following year.  

Franklin’s exact movements in Derby in 1759 are fascinating, and all research seems to point to Whitehurst. Writing in 1956, J. Bennet Nolan laments a thin paper trail, but supposes that Franklin spent time with Anthony Tissington. In later correspondence, Franklin sent his greetings to Tissington in a letter to Whitehurst. Writing in 1966, regarding a draft letter from 1760 at the American Philosophical Society, the editors of Papers of Benjamin Franklin conclude in a lengthy footnote that it must have been intended either for Tissington or for Whitehurst. More recently, the writings of Professor Jonathan Powers of Derby has expanded our awareness of Franklin’s connection to Derby. 

Franklin visited Derby several more times. After a visit to the Silk Mill in 1771, Franklin’s grand-nephew noted a kind of marvel of automation familiar to us now: that with their machinery, one operator “does the Business of 63 persons.” Obviously, mind-boggling leaps in productivity were not invented with our microchips or today’s Artificial Intelligence.

Franklin and Whitehurst collaborated on Franklin’s three-wheel clock, which is on display at the Derby Museum. As late as 1785, Franklin had the pleasure of seeing several clocks of this design, made by Whitehurst, for sale in Paris.

The founder of the clock making business in this building, John Smith, was once an apprentice to John Whitehurst III, grandson of Franklin’s friend. This provenance is another echo of Franklin, who started printing partnerships throughout North America with his former subordinates, and those partnerships were fundamental to his financial freedom as he established himself on the scientific world stage. 

The ongoing life of the building as a clock business extends Whitehurst’s clockmaking into the Industrial Revolution, very harmonious to the Silk Mill (now the Museum of Making) considering itself the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. 

By living and working here in the time between Whitehurst and Smith’s clock business, Joseph Wright and his art add a visual and artistic spirit to this property. This property houses the original foundations of the Joseph Wright Centre, The Joseph Wright Gallery, and other cultural treasures in the region. 

With his paintings, Joseph Wright recognized, honored and memorialized the combination of curiosity, experimentation, craftsmanship and enterprise that we find in Flamsteed, Franklin and Whitehurst. Wright’s connection to Whitehurst and Franklin is captured in his portrait of Anthony Tissington, their mutual friend. This formal portrait shows Tissington standing in a mine, holding a rock: the exploration evident in this region reached everyone and everywhere. 

THE SPIRIT OF THE PLACE

This building, by incorporating Flamsteed’s self-taught astronomy leading to a Royal post and Whitehurst’s workbench leading to a business flourishing across centuries, beautifully embodies the values of primitive individual efforts having great effects, with the beloved American mythology of corporations that started in someone’s garage. This is an inspiring part of our shared heritage, a set of stories worth telling.  

PRESERVATION CHALLENGE 

This is not a one-trick pony of a property, or a preservation project with only one theme. The multi-faceted and successful confluence of science, industry, craft and art are well suited to the preservationist efforts already evident in this area. The multi-faceted successes of the Derby Museum and Art Gallery, as well as the multi-purpose Erasmus Darwin house, have given me a deep belief that versatile spirits are still at work here. With appropriate recognition by Historic England, this uniquely valuable property could become a vibrant landmark and resource for us all. 

Thank you for your efforts, and your consideration of this application. 

With best regards, 
Martin Mangold 

Franklin and Derby

In my endorsement, I mentioned the special quality of the 1749 Almanack. What follows is an expansion of that mention.

Science in the 1749 Almanack

In 1748, Benjamin Franklin retired from printing, but not from writing Poor Richard’s Almanack. When the Almanack for 1749 came out, in differed from the earlier 17 versions. Franklin didn’t retire from printing to simply relax: he had discovered science, or Natural Philosophy, as it was called, and wanted more time for it. The Almanack of 1749 reflects this, with multiple articles around Natural Philosophy.

The Preface was an essay by John Bartram on raising timber more efficiently. January remembered the death of Robert Boyle in 1692. And February repeated an article from the 1708 issue of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

Mr. Flamstead, Dr. Halley and Mr. Derham, agree that sound moves 1142 feet in a second, which is one English mile in 4 seconds and 5 8ths; that it moves in the same time in every different state of the atmosphere; that winds hardly make any difference in its velocity; that a languid or loud sound moves with the same velocity; and that different kinds of sounds, as of bells, guns, &c. have the same velocity, and are equally swift in the beginning as end of their motion.

“Poor Richard Improved, 1749,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0143, February.

The month of March related theories put forth by William Whiston in 1722, measuring the circumference of the Earth.

Moving forward to September, we find two entries:

It is the opinion of all the modern philosophers and mathematicians, that the planets are habitable worlds. If so, what sort of constitutions must those people have who live in the planet Mercury? where, says Sir Isaac Newton, the heat of the sun is seven times as great as it is with us; and would make our Water boil away. For the same person found by experiments, that an heat seven times as great as the heat of the sun in summer, is sufficient to set water a boiling.

“Poor Richard Improved, 1749,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0143. 

We can set this entry aside. When Franklin, who prided himself on speaking moderately, starts a paragraph speaking of one idea as “the opinion of all the modern philosophers and mathematicians”, as if every member of any group anywhere ever agreed on anything, we can disregard the rest of the statement.

The next paragraph in September, however, comes from an actual source:

In the machine at Derby in England for winding Italian silk, there are 26,586 wheels, 97,746 movements; 73,728 yards of silk wound every time the water-wheel goes round, which is three times every minute; 318,504,960 yards of silk in one day and night; and consequently 99,373,547,550 yards of silk in a year. One water-wheel communicates motion to all the rest of the wheels and movements, of which any one may be stopped separately, and independent of the rest. One fire-engine conveys air to every individual part of the machine, and one regulator governs the whole work.

“Poor Richard Improved, 1749,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0143, September.

Franklin had never visited Derby or the machine for winding silk in 1749: this description was copied almost verbatim from Gentleman’s Magazine of 1732 (the Papers cites Gent. Mag., ii (1732), 719), a full sixteen years earlier.

Welcome Friends

I’ve enjoyed my correspondence with Professor Powers, Christopher Stone, and the experts at Historic England and the spirited folks in the Facebook group. This has been a Franklinian experience, corresponding from America to interesting and engaging people in this part of England, and I look forward to further correspondence and in-person visits.

See Also