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.
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.
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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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