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Romantic Buxton?
Arnold Bennett’s masterpiece, The Old Wives’ Tale, published in 1908, is set in the mid-nineteenth century, and tells the contrasting stories of two sisters, Sophia and Constance. The latter spends her life running the family drapers’ shop in Stoke on Trent, while her sister has a more adventurous life in Paris. When Constance marries, Buxton…
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Peripatetic post people!
In the age of electronic messaging it is easy to forget the revolution in communication caused by the introduction of the penny post in 1840. This novel system of using stamps to pre-pay letters to anywhere in the country allowed working people, for the first time, to keep in touch with friends and relations, at…
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Millstoned
The stone I found in my local woods recently is typical of the thousand-odd millstones scattered around the Peak District – and are used as a symbol for the National Park. Clearly fashioned from the gritstone of the ‘edge’ behind me, this example raises some intriguing questions: who made it? why was it abandoned? how…
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Come back, Blind Jack
John Metcalf, known as ‘Jack’, was a pioneer road builder in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, despite being blind from the age of six. His remarkable career began in 1717, when he was born to a poor family in Knaresborough. He was given fiddle lessons as a source of future financial support, and at age 15 became…
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Reading the stone
The Wirksworth Stone must be one of the most remarkable examples of sculpture from the Saxon era in England. Discovered in 1820 face down, buried under the church floor, it is thought to have been the lid of a sarcophagus belonging to an early saint, possibly Betti. It dates from about 700 CE, and displays…
