The Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site Educational Trust is a registered Charity established in 2003 in answer to a recommendation from UNESCO to provide carefully researched publications about the history of the Derwent Valley.
Initial funding was supplied by the Derbyshire Building Society and the University of Derby and, from the outset, the Trust has run a revolving fund whereby new publications are funded by existing titles.
Recently the Trust has received grants from Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Dales District Council and the Lottery Heritage Fund, which it very gratefully acknowledges.
Recently the Trust has received grants from Derbyshire County Council, Derbyshire Dales District Council and funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England from the Great Place Scheme in the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.
The Trust is run by a group of volunteers who all share a commitment to making Derbyshire's history and built heritage more widely appreciated, better understood and accessible to all.
We work closely with the DVMWHS Coordination Team. The Trust is very appreciative of the support from both Derbyshire Dales District Council and Derbyshire County Council.
The Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site Educational Trust, Charity number 1099279.
We publish books and guides about the World Heritage Site and its surroundings.
We aim to achieve the highest standards of accuracy and all the Trust's new publications are considered by a panel of well-informed readers before they are accepted for publication. We also reprint well regarded classic texts.
Our books and guides are informative, attractive and a pleasure to read.
The Trust's other concern is the World Heritage Site's present and future condition and it has, in the recent past, submitted views on the proposals for the redevelopment of the East Mill in Belper, and the adjoining sites, and on the next World Heritage Site Management Plan.
Please direct all enquiries to [email protected].
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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