Tag: Lea bridge

Unwillingly to school …

On By SteveIn People, Places1 Comment
The young Alison

Today few young children walk to primary school alone, for a variety of reasons including parental perceptions of danger. In fact, the image of mum in a large Range Rover driving her offspring to the school gates has become a cliche. Yet 150 years ago children who were lucky enough to go to school often had to walk for miles, especially in rural areas. To some extent this walking may have formed part of their education, as was the case with Alison Uttley, who later became famous for her Little Grey Rabbit books. Alison grew up in a struggling farming family at Castletop Farm between Cromford and Lea Bridge. She didn’t go to school until she was seven, due to the remoteness of their farm on Hearthstone Lane.

Lea Primary today

Lea Primary School on Church Street, Holloway was chosen by her parents due to its good reputation. But the journey home, although only a mile and a half long, meant walking from school down to Lea Road, past John Smedley’s mill at Lea Bridge and then climbing up through Bow Wood on what is now a rough track (but which was the old road before the turnpike was built by the Derwent), and emerging from the wood just below the farm. Alison had to do this walk twice a day, in all weathers, and in winter the homeward stretch would be in the dark, for which she was given a lantern.

The path through Bow Wood

Clearly the fears she felt on her walk had a major impact, for she describes the journey in several books:

“I set off home, running for the first mile, for it was downhill and easy. Then I passed a mill and walked up a steep field where cows grazed. I came to the wood, and stopped at the big gate to light the candle in my lantern. I shut the gate softly so that ‘they’ would not hear. The treees were alive and awake, they were waiting for me…”

She obviously had a powerful imagination, and perhaps this walk could be credited with launching her career as a storyteller, since she sometimes persuaded a school friend to walk with her, with the incentive of listening to the stories that Alison made up as they walked.

Alison’s walk to school can easily be followed today, either starting from Cromford Station and walking uphill to Castletop, and then through Bow Wood to Holloway, or the reverse route starting from Lea Primary School.

Sources

Judd, D (2010) Alison Uttley, Spinner of Tales, Manchester University Press

Uttley, A (1951) Ambush of Young Days, Faber & Faber

Lea Road: A sorry, soggy story

On By SteveIn Places1 Comment
Gateposts in Bow Wood show that this was more than a path

The tendency of Derbyshire roads, over time, has been a shift from high-level routes to more convenient ways in the valleys, with gentler gradients. A good example is the road from Cromford Bridge to Lea Bridge, which in medieval times ran past the site of Cromford Station and then turned uphill at Wood End, away from the Derwent, and ran past Castletop farm and through Bow Wood and down to the Lea Brook. This route can still be followed on foot, taking the path just past the railway bridge, up through the wood, and then joining the old track beyond the house.

However, when the Cromford Bridge and Langley Mill Turnpike Trust was established, an easier route was selected, following the river up to what is now High Peak Junction, and then turning north east to Lea Bridge, at that time quite an industrial complex. This new road went on to Holloway, Crich, Bull Bridge and Codnor Gate (where until recently the turnpike was commemorated by the Gate pub).

The road had a tendency to flood in very wet weather, especially near the Cromford railway bridge, but remained a useful route for over two hundred years. But following heavy rain in November 2019, the river had undercut the bank and part of the road collapsed in January 2020, causing the council to close the road the next day.

The road today

In the nearly two years since the road closure the residents of Lea Bridge and Holloway have had no direct access to Cromford or Matlock, and so have had to make lengthy detours on narrow lanes, such as the route over Riber hill. What they find most annoying is the lack of any sense of urgency in re-opening this critical route. Derbyshire County Council and their contractors, Eurovia, have produced a variety of excuses for the prolonged closure, claiming that there have been further landslips. Yet on a a warm dry autumnal day like today no-one is working on the site, while the road, for some reason, is even closed to walkers and cyclists.

They shall not pass

Given that the old turnpike road was engineered by men with wheelbarrows and picks, it seems incredible that today, with modern equipment, we are incapable of repairing a few hundred yards of road in less than two years.

The way through the woods

On By SteveIn Places, Road usersLeave a comment
In Bow Wood near Lea Bridge

Over time, many routes have been abandoned, due to changes in settlement patterns, agriculture or the construction of better, easier roads. The medieval route through Bow Wood from Castletop farm to Lea Bridge, shown above, is now a rough track, but its previous status is revealed by the stone gateposts, indicating a width suitable for carts or carriages.

The image of the lost road has always had romantic appeal, an appeal explored by Kipling in his poem ‘The way through the woods’:

They shut the road through the woods

Seventy years ago.

Weather and rain have undone it again,

And now you would never know

There was once a road through the woods

Before they planted the trees.

It is underneath the coppice and heath

And the thin anenomes.

Only the keeper sees

That, where the ring-dove broods,

And the badgers roll at ease,

There was once a road through the woods.

Yet, if you enter the woods,

On a summer evening late,

When the night-air pools on the trout-ringed pools

Where the otter whistles his mate,

(They fear not men in the woods,

Because they see so few)

You will hear the beat of a horse’s feet,

And the swish of a skirt in the dew,

Steadily cantering through

The misty solitudes,

As though they perfectly knew

The old lost road through the woods …

But there is no road through the woods.

The pre-turnpike road from Rowsley to Bakewell

Today some of the ‘lost roads’ survive as footpaths with public rights of way, kept open by dog walkers and hikers. However, especially in high summer when the vegetation reaches shoulder height, and encroaches on the path from both sides, it is easy to see how fast an unsurfaced route can disappear. Perhaps the surprising thing is the number of roads that have survived over hundreds or thousands of years, rather than those that have disappeared.