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Canal competition
For thousands of years goods had to be carried by roads, and a horse and cart could move about a ton of stone or coal. But with industrial growth in the eighteenth century increasing demand for raw materials canals became a feasible mode of transport, a horse-drawn narrowboat could carry 30 tons. From about 1760…
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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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Completing fishermen
Charles Cotton (1630-1687) was the owner of (the now demolished) Beresford Hall in Beresford Dale, on the upper reaches of the River Dove. As a Royalist sympathiser he found it prudent to live quietly in the country after the Parliamentary victory, but he was also a notable writer who wrote poetry in praise of the…
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The Tunnel Road
Butterley and Ripley from Sanderson’s map of 1835 The Butterley Tunnel, shown on the map above, was one of the biggest engineering challenges in the construction of the 14 mile-long Cromford Canal, opened in 1794. Just over 3,000 yards (1.75 miles) long, the tunnel was only eight or nine feet wide, for reasons of economy.…
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The ferryman at Anchor?
Anchor Church today On the steep south bank of the River Trent, a short walk from Ingleby village, this rock-cut structure may have been used since the ninth century. Although the photo suggests that the river comes to the doorstep, in fact this is a pond, probably a remnant of an earlier course of the…
The Old Roads of Derbyshire 