Derbyshire « The History Interpreter

I’m finally getting round to finishing the story of our trip to northern climes. There were lovely views as we crossed the county boundary to visit the RSPB reserve at Coombes Valley, near Leek in Staffordshire. We had a pleasant woodland walk but apart from a couple of buzzards, wildlife did its typical disappearing trick yet again. The most birds we saw were those spotted whilst in the car park.

The next day was the Family History conference at Buxton. It felt strange but it was fun to be back at a larger in-person event, maybe I had missed these occasions more than I thought. The conference was held in the Palace Hotel, obviously once very grand but now a faded old lady, somewhat fraying at the edges. I’ve organised enough conferences to know that it is the things that are out of your control that go wrong and I really felt for the organisers. In theory there was parking reserved for speakers and exhibitors. This had been absorbed by other hotel guests long before 8.20am when I arrived. I and my books were unceremoniously deposited on the doorstep whilst my companion circulated the car park many times, hoping to pounce as someone left. Then there was the heating, or rather there wasn’t the heating. Despite several requests, the management left the settings at arctic. This meant that I had several cups of coffee to keep warm. Decaffinated coffee didn’t seem an option so it was full strength or nothing. This was not a good idea. Lunch was a little lukewarm but the tiramisu was to die for. The previous couple of sentences contain the origins of my downfall.

The conference itself was excellent, with talks from Debbie Kennet on surnames, Nick Barratt on house history and Helen Tovey looking at four decades of Family Tree Magazine. My own presentation was about one-place studies. It was lovely to chat to people, including meeting two more of my family history coven in person for the first time. I also realised how many more books you sell when you are speaking in person and left with near empty boxes.

By the end of the day I was feeling very shaky and I began by blaming the caffeinated coffee. By the evening I was very unpleasantly unwell, not great at any time but especially not in a caravan. In retrospect, I think it was possibly the tiramisu and I heard that I wasn’t the only one to be struck down; maybe I shouldn’t have said ‘to die for’.

The next day we’d arranged to meet up with friends. I was still decidedly fragile so we decided not to go for our planned walk and chatted instead. There was more meeting up the following day, family this time and we were able to watch the Queen’s funeral and walk to the nearby Chatsworth Estate.

Our final day saw us return to Cromford Mill, which, fortuitously, was open this time. No plays on offer but a chance to view the industrial heritage of the area. We arrived just in time to join tour guide, David, who showed a small group of us round.

Cromford Mills forms part of the World Heritage Site that stretches for fifteen miles along the Derwent Valley. Today’s trip brought to mind long ago schooldays learning about the industrial revolution. In 1768, Richard Arkwright, a barber and wig-maker, patented his water-powered spinning frame, invented in conjunction with John Kay. Arkwright was described as ‘a man of copious free digestion’; that sounds like a phrase worth dropping into a conversation at an appropriate moment. Working with the Nottinghamshire hosiery Industry, Arkwright looked for a suitable site to set up his mill in order to produce cotton thread. Cromford had the necessary water supply from the Bonsall Brook and Cromford Sough was diverted to increase the flow. The site was on a turnpike route, vital for transporting raw cotton and the spun thread. Raw cotton arrived in Liverpool from the Caribbean and would be taken by pack horse to the mill. Arkwright used builders from the local lead mines to construct his mill. The building was tall and thin to optimise the light and this became the blueprint for other mills in the area. Initially, the water wheel was constructed using wooden peg gears. The idea was to be ready for production as swiftly as possible.

The frame was designed to be simple to operate, so unskilled workers could be used. Cheap labour was obviously an attraction, so Arkwright largely employed the wives and children of local lead miners. At its peak, over 1000 workers were employed in two shifts. The employees were better paid than farm workers and lead miners. Arkwright supplied toilets in the factory for his workers and there was barrack-like accommodation on site for the male apprentices. He also had workers’ cottages constructed in the village. A second mill was built at Cromford, as well as others in the surrounding area.

Concerns about possible attacks by machine wreckers led to keeping pikes and small arms on site, which the workers were expected to use against saboteurs if the occasion arose. In fact, there were few problems. Until 1775, carding was done manually, which proved inadequate to meet the demand. A carding engine was invented in 1775. The invention of Cartwright’s mechanised loom in the 1780s, increased the demand for spun cotton. Arkwright is regarded as the father of the factory system and it was interesting to explore the site. I was still not feeling up to too much standing or walking but we finished off our visit with a walk along the canal.

Then it was time to head for home. We left early on a beautiful misty morning. I think this may not be our last visit to the area.

Preparing to leave our caravan site in the Lakes, the robin called to bid us farewell, bringing some of his friends, including a nuthatch. We had an uneventful drive south-eastward to Buxton. The landscape is notably different on the Peak District, with hills, open fields and mellow stone.

The Derbyshire site was adjacent to a country park so, once settled, we walked up to Solomon’s Temple, so named for local landowner Solomon Mycock and built in 1894 to replace a former building that was thought to have been commissioned by the Duke of Devonshire, to provide employment for unemployed lime workers in the 1820s. Archaeological finds suggest that this was the site of a Bronze Age burial mound, as artefacts dating from c. 3500 BCE have been found.

We had an early evening meal and left for Cromford where we had booked to see an open-air play. In fact we’d altered our holiday to arrive earlier in Buxton so we could do this. On arrival everything seemed shut and we could see no sign of an imminent performance. Having wandered around for half an hour and asked several people, I manage to find some mobile signal, rare since leaving home and checked the website to discover that the performance had been cancelled. As the play was about the gunpowder plot, I could understand that, in the aftermath of the Queen’s death, it might not be the most tactful time for a performance about trying to blow up a monarch but apparently the decision to cancel was only taken six days later. I was decidedly annoyed that no one seemed to think that it was a good idea to email those who had booked, to save them a round trip of forty miles, or indeed to put a notice of the cancellation on the firmly locked doors but hey ho. After five emails our not inconsequential entrance money was refunded.

The next day we drove to Hope Valley and along Winnats Pass, with its impressive views across to Mam Tor, the site of a Hill Fort. The Hope Valley is the boundary between the millstone grit of the ‘Dark Peak’ and the differing geology of the ‘White Peak’, an area of carboniferous limestone, with its elaborate cave system. Our destination was Castleton and Peveril Castle, one of many castles established after the conquest in the Forest of the Peak to establish Norman control. Originally called the Castle of the High Peak, the castle was later named for William Peveril, an early keeper of the royal forest. The castle’s purpose was more administrative than defensive, being a base for the Keepers of the Forest of the Peak from the eleventh to sixteenth centuries. Their role was to ensure that the punitive Forest Laws were adhered to; fines were paid and rents were collected. The value of the area to the crown lay in its use as a royal hunting ground and also the local lead and silver mines. Castleton grew up in the late twelfth century, its houses and mills providing an income for the castle’s estate. It was a stop on the packhorse route.

Although the castle was owned by the monarch or a member of the royal family, they rarely visited. Henry III, who was almost certainly responsible for constructing the New Hall at Peveril, only stayed once. Even after the building fell into disrepair, the castle continued to be used as a courthouse, prison and the local pound until the sixteenth century, after which much of the castle was demolished and the dressed building stone was plundered.

We looked at various gift shops selling the local Blue John or Fluorspar and read about John Tym’s Blue John workshop. We had excellent cakes and drinks in Dolly’s tea room, really good value too and highly recommended. Allegedly this premises, in a former incarnation, was billed the worst café in the country; definitely not the case now. A Buxton shopping trip yielded not only food but the adaptor required to download my photographs.

On Martha’s recommendation, we headed off to Crich Tramway Village without too much trouble despite a road closure. This haven for preserved trams was opened in 1959 after the former limestone quarry closed. This attraction is well presented and a credit to the largely volunteer workforce. The enthusiastic Ken showed us round. A random collection of items of architectural heritage have found their way on site but blend together. These include what remained of the Derby Assembly Rooms, which was built in 1765 and caught fire in 1963. Its brick by brick demolition and re-erection took three years. There are two 1897 gas lamps, from Ashton-under-Lyne, originally cast to commemorate Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. The gates came from Marylebone station, there’s a tramway shelter from Matlock and a Hendon police phone box. The Red Lion pub from Stoke on Trent was particularly notable, as was one of the last twenty ‘Penfold’ hexagonal Victorian post boxes in the country. One of the more bizarre artefacts was the ventilation pipe from an underground Birmingham toilet.

We road on two trams, one a 1928 from Porto, Portugal. There were many more trams to view and a huge exhibition area. We took our second tram on a one way journey so we could walk back through the woods and view the wooden sculpture trail. We could see the Sherwood Foresters’ War Memorial, which marks the highest point in Derbyshire. There is a view of eight counties from here but access is restricted at the moment so we couldn’t walk up to it. The road closure was a little more impactful on our return journey but we made it back without too much of a detour.