View from the Market Place up Bown's Hill
From Crich Market Place looking up Bown's Hill. The building on the right-hand side used to be part of The White Swan, this was once a Coaching Inn. Out of site in this shot, and facing the road, is an archway under which carriages and stagecoaches would be driven. This may have been that Inn referred to in an advertisement in the Derby Mercury of 1799 which was called the 'Nether Black Swan'. Today the 'Black Swan' public house (you can just see the sign) is the next building up past the archway. Another suggestion made by one local historian is that the White Swan may have been renamed, as "the existence of a black swan was not know until Captain Cook returned from his journey to Australia in the 1770's." The imposing building opposite, another three-story structure, is now called The 'Mansion House'. All these properties can be clearly indentified on the painting of Crich now at Chiddingstone Castle, in Kent.