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.
It describes the communities they built in Cromford, Lea Bridge, Belper, Milford and Darley Abbey, reproducing the evidence of the Valley's textile heritage which was submitted to UNESCO, leading to the inscription of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site in December 2001.
It includes photographs of a large proportion of the Site's 838 listed buildings and biographical notes of the key players Sir Richard Arkwright, Richard Arkwright junior, Charles Bage, the Evans dynasty, Peter Nightingale and Jedediah and William Strutt.
JOHN TAMS returns to St Peter’s following a sellout Christmas show with a fundraiser for the publication of Belper Voices Volume Two.
Saturday 13th July 2024 at St Peter's Belper. Doors open 7pm. Performance 7:45pm.
Tickets £15 from livetickets.org, belperfringe.org, eventbrite.co.uk.
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.
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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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