1584, Overton visited the Lichfield diocese, he inquired, among other points: “Whether your rood-lofts be clean defaced and taken away?” It is unnecessary to pursue this phase of the subject any further; but it is scarcely to be wondered at if, from such persistent and accumulated hostility on the part of the authorities, as I have retailed, no Derbyshire rood-loft has survived to this day in its complete and original state. According to an inventory of the year 1527, there were in All Hallows church, Derby, a “pair” of great organs, and another small “pair” beside. Further entries, occurring both under the dates 1569–70 and 1582–3, mention the existence of the leaden weights “which lay upon the organs” to compress the bellows. Whence it has been inferred that because the almost invariable place for the organ in pre-Reformation times was the rood-loft, therefore the latter structure was still standing in the church down to 1583. But surely the evidence on the point is negative, and far too slight to warrant any such conclusion! For the documents which speak of the organs are altogether silent as to their whereabouts in the building; and even though they may have been situated originally on the top of the rood-loft in All Saints, in the face of the notorious fact that rood-lofts throughout the country had been condemned twelve years previously, the bare mention of an organ outliving the general wrecking of the rood-loft (which, indeed, it was fully entitled to do, from the legal point of view) cannot be taken for proof of the law in force against rood-lofts having been disregarded in this or in any individual instance, unless there be produced some more direct and explicit testimony to the contrary. If Dr. Pegge is to be credited, the rood-loft was still standing in Chesterfield church in 1783. At Staveley, it is recorded to have stood until 1790. At Hayfield, until about 1815, it remained entire, according to the Lysons; and according to the same authority’s manuscript notes at the British Museum, though the fact is not recorded in their published history of the county, the rood-loft still survived at Taddington in or about the year 1812. Possibly, also, at Tideswell the rood-loft, although transferred to the west end of the church, remained until as lately as about 1820. Beside these, there are no authenticated instances of the survival of the ancient rood-loft in Derbyshire after the date of the general destruction.