There are numerous instances of old manor-houses turned to commercial account as hostelries: among them the “Peacock” inn at Rowsley, near Chatsworth. As may be seen from the illustration, it is a building of fine architectural character, and was, in fact, built in 1652, at a time when the Renaissance was most vigorous and inspired. The precise date of the building is carved, plain for all men to see, on the semicircular stone tympanum over the entrance-doorway, where it appears, with the old owner’s name, in this curious fashion: IOHNSTE 16 52 VENSON But ordinary type does not suffice to render the quaintness of this inscription; for in the original the diagonal limbs of the N’s are placed the wrong way round. John Stevenson, who built the house, was one of an old Derbyshire family who, in the reign of Elizabeth, were lords of the neighbouring manor of Elton. From them it passed by marriage, and was for many generations occupied as a farmhouse by a succession of gentlemen farmers, finally, in 1828, becoming an inn. The “Peacock” sign, carved in stone over the battlemented front, is in allusion to the well-known peacock crest of the Manners family, Dukes of Rutland, whose ancestral seat of Haddon Hall is less than two miles distant. [Illustration: THE “PEACOCK,” ROWSLEY.] Up to the period of its conversion into an inn the house was fronted by a garden. A roadway, very dusty in summer, now takes its place, but there is still left at the side and rear of the old house one of the most delightful of old-world gardens, leading down to the Derwent: a garden of shady trees, emerald lawns, and lovely flower-beds that loses nothing of its beauty--and perhaps, indeed, gains an additional charm--from the railway and Rowsley station adjoining. The garden of the “Peacock,” and the cool, shady hall and the quiet panelled rooms of the “Peacock,” are in fact welcome sanctuaries of rest for the weariful sightseer at Rowsley and the neighbouring Chatsworth: a desirable refuge in a district always absurdly overrated, and nowadays absolutely destroyed in the touring months of summer by the thronged brakes and wagonettes from Matlock and Bakewell, and infinitely more by the hulking, stinking motor-cars that maintain a continuous haze of dust, a deafening clatter, and an offensive smell in these once sweetly rural roads.