Watch: Our town through time - a brief history of Chesterfield's Low Pavement

In this new short series, we asked the respected local historian Philip Riden to pick out some of the town’s heritage hotspots and share his insights on how the Chesterfield of today was built brick by brick.

Many buildings along Low Pavement have been given protected heritage status, and next time readers walk down the street they may want to keep one eye out for the lampposts at numbers 35 and 63 which are both prized for their early 20th century ironwork.

But two properties in particular offer hints as to how the townspeople lived and socialised in the Tudor period and, in some senses, how they still do today – a pub which became a fish shop then a financier, and the guildhall or distinguished family home became a pub then a grade-II listed coffee shop.

Philip said: “What is now the Chesterfield branch of the Yorkshire Building Society is probably a 16th century building that may have been built as an inn. It certainly later became an inn.

“Many people will remember it as Boden’s fish and chip shop, as it was from the 1930s. The building stands in a prominent position at one corner of Chesterfield’s modern Market Place which, in fact, is the new market laid out in the 1190s to replace a much smaller market which was to the north of the churchyard.

“The complete development included the open market that still survived, including New Square, the Shambles and two rows of generally large houses on the north and south sides of the marketplace – Low Pavement on the south, and High Street on the north.

“There were probably a number of buildings of this sort of size and scale in the 16th century in Chesterfield. This is the one survivor – the building that’s now known as Peacocks.

“It was for many years assumed to be a 19th century pub. It was called the Peacock. In 1974 there was a small fire in the roof space of the building which revealed that it was, in fact, timber framed.

“After the later cladding had been stripped away it became clear that we had two-thirds of a large, probably early 16th century, timber-framed house, which can be shown to have been a townhouse of the Revell family, whose country house was Carnfield Hall in South Normanton.

“The building here was carefully conserved. Some new timber framing was added to make the structure safe and it operated for some years as a local authority tourist centre. It’s now a café and a shop.

“It’s probably the oldest building in Chesterfield after the parish church, although the Yorkshire Building Society branch must also date from the 16th century.”