With the deadline fast approaching, I’ve managed to complete the final batch of scans of the records kept at Derbyshire Bridge Rangers’ hut – some 88 pages in two folders.
Topic tags: Newspaper & magazine cuttings...
Found starved to death
The sad story of how Robert Edge, a worker at Goytsclough Paint Mill, came to lose his life on his way home from Buxton in 1860. The coroner recorded a verdict of ‘Died from the inclemency of the weather’.
Whispers of the gods
A 1937 newspaper article published just before the opening of Fernilee Reservoir tells of a glorious landscape that has been lost forever – wrecked in the interests of the community.
Lost in a snowstorm
“He left Macclesfield on Sunday at about four o’clock in the afternoon, and when found at six o’clock on Monday evening – 26 hours later – he was snow-blind, inarticulate, and frozen…”
Cat & Fiddle rescued (1918)
The Cat & Fiddle has stood empty for nearly two years. But it seems the pub has always had a chequered history. Some 100 years ago the Grimshawe sisters saved the day by accepting an offer from Mr Frood.
‘Gruesome’ memorial
‘…it was not in keeping with the spirit of the times that so public a reminder of such a gruesome event should exist, and that it acted as a deterrent to persons of a timid nature going there.’
Grimshawe vault sealed
Mr Oyarzibel took the opportunity of denying the stories that the bodies of the Grimshaws in the vault are embalmed in glass-topped coffins, and that the corpses still wear gold watch chains…
‘Accidental death’ verdict
I was with the deceased, Thomas Dunn, and when we arrived at my gate I asked if I should go forward with him as it was very dark. He said “Heaven bless thee, George, I shall manage.”
Drunk in charge
He fell back upon some hay, also on to a child. Witness stopped him, and said he could not allow him to drive in a state like that. Defendant said “He had been a sight worse than this many a time.”
Fatal trap accident
At 12 o’clock on Thursday night (18th May 1884) a sad and fatal accident happened at the top of Long Hill, about three miles from Buxton, whereby Mr. Thomas Dunn, of the Nook Farm, Fernilee, lost his life.
Samuel’s pseudo bishop
Samuel Grimshaw converted a top-floor room at Errwood Hall into a Catholic chapel, earning the condemnation of an irate letter-writer who complained it was unsuitable behaviour for a magistrate.
Goytsclough waterwheel (1857)
A newspaper article from 1857 includes some wonderful detail about the paint mill at Goytsclough. But also disproves most of my assumptions about the giant waterwheel which once stood here!
Hearts of oak
“One by one the farmers and their families have strapped their ancient bedsteads on to hay wagons, and tracked off up the lane leading out from Derbyshire’s deceased village of Fernilee…”
A winter walk in 1884
The Goyt Valley in winter can be a truly magical place. A poem written in 1884 celebrates a walk from a ‘lone hostel on the barren moor’ which must have been the Cat & Fiddle Inn.
Fatal accident on the C&HPR
A collision between two trains on the Cromford & High Peak Railway left one man dead and the other seriously injured. It also spelled the end of passengers being taken along the route.
The Cat & Fiddle Inn
The Cat & Fiddle Inn lay on the edge of Samuel Grimshawe’s Errwood Estate, close to the source of the River Goyt. I’ve just published a fascinating collection of old postcards showing the pub.
Down the Valley in 1881
Our 19th century travellers are “soon in the deep cool solitude of the Goyt valley, beautiful with colours that the miserably inadequate art of word-painting is utterly lost to reproduce.”
Closure of Errwood grounds
Mary, the last of the Grimshawes, took such offence at the desecration of St Joseph’s Shrine that she closed public access to the entire grounds of the Errwood Estate.
The lost bridge
Goyt’s Bridge, carrying Goyt’s Lane over the stream and one of the most popular picnic places, will be submerged, unless some society wishes to remove it for reconstruction elsewhere…
Visiting Errwood Hall in 1883
By a reporter May 23rd 1883: “Errwood Hall, for such is its name, is a modernised building of dressed stone, with rooms of considerable size and number. In the centre there is a noble tower…”
Goyt memories (1954)
Taken from a 1954 edition of the ‘Peakland’ magazine, Crichton Porteus recollects how the construction of the twin reservoirs led to the destruction of both Goyt’s Bridge and Errwood Hall.
Over the hills with a tandem
The Goyt Canyon opens suddenly out of the limestone hills, and for some eight miles to Taxal provides an exquisite ‘coast’ through sylvan scenery as rare as it is unexpected.
Cycling the Goyt Valley (1932)
I passed Goyt’s Bridge Farm, which is to be demolished, and entered the lower stretch of the valley, where the second reservoir will be. They have already begun work by the Powder Mill.