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Picture source: John Bradley

The Nettle Inn was situated on Hockley Lane. This pub was previously known as The Greyhound Inn and closed in 2015.

Source: Peter Fairoak

John Hampson was born into a formerly wealthy Birmingham family who lost their fortune in a business collapse. The struggle with poverty heightened conflicts in the family and this, combined with his weak physical health, led to Hampson being educated at home leaving him with a life-long sense of inferiority. During the First World War Hampson worked in a munitions factory and for some years after he took a variety of different jobs, some of which would later be reflected in his fiction. At one point desperation led him to steal books for which he was convicted and served a term in Wormwood Scrubs prison. He worked as a kitchen-hand, a waiter, a chef, a billiard-marker and, for a while he helped his sister to run The Nettle Inn in Ashover, which provided him with the background for his first book ’Saturday night at the Greyhound’. "The Greyhound stands at a cross-roads on the high Derbyshire moors, and on a winter Saturday night its tap-room is full of miners, cottage girls and labourers settling down to a long night’s drinking. But behind the scenes hover the sinister Mrs Tapin and her barmaid daughter Clara, hard-working Ivy and the lustful dreaming Fred, each brooding in their own way on past regrets and future hopes" The hypnotically simple and ominous book was published by the Hogarth Press in 1931 and was an immediate success. Other books followed throughout the 1930s although none was as popular as the first. Hampson made many literary friends, including Forrest Reid, Graham Greene and W.H. Auden, and became a leading figure in the Birmingham Group which included Walter Allen, Walter Brierley, Henry Green and Peter Chamberlain. The inn was given the unusual name ’Nettle’ in the early 1700s by its new landlord, a merchant seaman who skippered a ship of the same name. A keen greyhound courser he also called his best dog Nettle. The dog won him the prestigious Waterloo Cup and to commemorate the occasion he renamed the pub the Nettle Inn. The Nettle is a family run 16th century country inn situated on the outskirts of the pretty village of Ashover surrounded by unspoilt breath-taking countryside. This delightful pub featured regularly in the television series ’Peak Practice&rsquo. As you might expect the Inn has many original features including log fires, exposed stone walls and rustic beams throughout the bars, snug, and restaurant.

Terry Townsend (January 2025)

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