The Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site Educational Trust is a registered Charity established in 2003 to provide carefully researched publications about the history of the Derwent Valley.
This is the Trust’s second book devoted to life in Belper in the nineteenth century. Thanks to the Trust securing generous financial support it is substantially larger than its predecessor. It retains the format that has become a hallmark of the Trust’s publications with copious illustrations and extensive quotations from contemporary sources. There is much in the book that breaks new ground. It features the extraordinary contribution to the development of the town, its administration and the shaping of its essential services by three generations of the Pym family. Other chapters describe the strategy the young town adopted to look after its poor creating a patchwork of individual philanthropy and self help while for those who sank into absolute poverty there was the workhouse. The building of the Belper Workhouse ( known now as the Babbington Hospital ) is described in detail. This account is accompanied by episodes from its later life as the Guardians who administered the Poor Law struggled with the challenges of unwelcome commands from London and disagreements within their own ranks as to where help was to be given. Should they, as the honourable Frederick Strutt demanded, deny money to the wives and families of men who were in prison? How the Guardians responded to this and many of Strutt’s other propositions is all in the book.
The launch of Belper Voices volume two at No 28 Belper, October 18 2024. Co - authors Bernard Holden and Christopher Charlton with the High Sheriff of Derbyshire, Ian Morgan OBE and Sue Devine, Mayor of Belper.
This is the first of two books describing life in Belper in the nineteenth century. These were the years that saw the town establish itself within the county as an administrative centre and, with its early railway connection, a flourishing horse-nail industry, and the seemingly inexorable growth of the Strutts' empire, what could go wrong? But the railway didn't bring investment; handcrafted nails were overtaken by those made by machine and then by imported products; and the mills contracted and were sold. The growth of the town stalled.
In this volume the focus is on the town's early transport links, skillfully enhanced by the Strutts; the coming of the railway; the rise and fall of the Belper horse-nailers and their union, with a detailed description of its black arts which included the use of dynamite to blow up those who challenged its rule; and an examination of the last unhappy years of the Strutts' business, culminating in the sale of the mills in Belper and Milford.
The book is generously illustrated and both the specialist and the general reader will find much to enjoy in these pages.
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Here is the story of Matlock Bath from its origin in the late seventeenth century to the recent past. At first, a remote rural spa, a century later, though still no more than a small village, its awesome scenery and mineral springs had become so highly regarded by fashionable visitors that it was spoken of alongside Bath, Buxton and Tunbridge Wells.
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This new study of Cromford, the Arkwright family's factory village, uses water-colours, drawings and photographs and previously unexplored archive material, to present an authoritative account of the origins and growth of this iconic settlement.
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This book tells the story of the industrialisation of Derbyshire's Derwent Valley during the last 30 years of the eighteenth century and beyond by successive generations of textile factory masters.
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R.S. Fitton and A.P. Wadsworth's pioneering case study of the birth of the factory system in Derbyshire's Derwent Valley, has long been recognised as a classic in the literature of the industrial revolution.
Out of print for many years, this paperback edition was commissioned by the Trust in 2012.
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This is the definitive biography of Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792) and the first detailed account of the life of his only son Richard Arkwright junior (1755-1843), and the dynasty of land owning gentry he founded and sustained from his immense wealth.
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This is the Trust’s second book devoted to life in Belper in the nineteenth century. Thanks to the Trust securing generous financial support it is substantially larger than its predecessor. It retains the format that has become a hallmark of the Trust’s publications with copious illustrations and extensive quotations from contemporary sources. There is much in the book that breaks new ground. It features the extraordinary contribution to the development of the town, its administration and the shaping of its essential services by three generations of the Pym family. Other chapters describe the strategy the young town adopted to look after its poor creating a patchwork of individual philanthropy and self help while for those who sank into absolute poverty there was the workhouse. The building of the Belper Workhouse ( known now as the Babbington Hospital ) is described in detail. This account is accompanied by episodes from its later life as the Guardians who administered the Poor Law struggled with the challenges of unwelcome commands from London and disagreements within their own ranks as to where help was to be given. Should they, as the honourable Frederick Strutt demanded, deny money to the wives and families of men who were in prison? How the Guardians responded to this and many of Strutt’s other propositions is all in the book.
View details...
This is the first of two books describing life in Belper in the nineteenth century. These were the years that saw the town establish itself within the county as an administrative centre and, with its early railway connection, a flourishing horse-nail industry, and the seemingly inexorable growth of the Strutts' empire, what could go wrong? But the railway didn't bring investment; handcrafted nails were overtaken by those made by machine and then by imported products; and the mills contracted and were sold. The growth of the town stalled.
View details...