The Pentrich Rising was an armed uprising around the village of Pentrich, Derbyshire, England, on the night of 9–10 June 1817. While much of the planning took place in Pentrich, two of the three ringleaders were from South Wingfield and the other was from Sutton in Ashfield; it started from Hunt's Barn in South Wingfield, and the only person killed died in Wingfield Park.
A gathering of some two or three hundred men (stockingers, quarrymen and iron workers), led by Jeremiah Brandreth (The Nottingham Captain, an unemployed stockinger), set out from South Wingfield to march to Nottingham. They were lightly armed with pikes, scythes and a few guns, which had been hidden in a quarry in Wingfield Park, and had a set of rather unfocused revolutionary demands, including the wiping out of the National Debt.[1]
One among them, William J. Oliver, was a government spy, and the uprising was quashed soon after it began. Three men were hanged and beheaded at Derby Gaol for their participation in the uprising: Brandreth, Isaac Ludlam and William Turner.[2] Co-accused conspirator and leader George Weightman was sentenced to the same fate, but later had his sentence reduced to transportation for life, as a prisoner in the Australian penal colony.[3]
- ^ Cooper, B (1983) Transformation of a Valley: The Derbyshire Derwent Heinemann, republished 1991 Cromford: Scarthin Books
- ^ John Cannon (4 July 2009). A Dictionary of British History. Oxford University Press. p. 1106. ISBN 978-0-19-955038-8. Retrieved 17 May 2012.
- ^ "Prisoner of Conscience". library.kiama.nsw.gov.au. Retrieved 22 January 2024.