Derby Audioguides

Derby built Britain's first water-powered silk mill in 1717, a six-story structure on the banks of the Derwent that historians recognize as a precursor to the factory system that would transform the world within a generation. The building still stands on Full Street and is now the Museum of Making, which opened in 2021 to trace the city's manufacturing history from the silk mill through the railway engineering that defined Victorian Derby and on to the Rolls-Royce aero engines still made here. The Derwent Valley, which begins at Derby and runs north through the Peak District, was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001 as the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution.

Derby was one of the five boroughs of the Danelaw, the Viking-controlled territory that covered much of northern England after the 9th century, and the city's street plan still reflects that Norse heritage in names like Irongate and Sadlergate.

The cathedral's tower, built in the early 16th century and rising to 64 meters above the city center, has housed a pair of nesting peregrine falcons every spring since 2006, a detail that delights naturalists and has made the tower one of the more unusual wildlife-watching destinations in the Midlands. The nave and chancel of Derby Cathedral date from 1725 and were designed by William Smith under James Gibbs's influence.