Glossop
Glossop is a market town in the borough of High Peak, Derbyshire, England, east of Manchester, north-west of Sheffield and north of Matlock. Near Derbyshire's borders with Cheshire, Greater Manchester, South Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, between above sea level, it is bounded by the Peak District National Park to the south, east and north. In 2021, it had a population of 17,825.
Historically, the name Glossop refers to the small hamlet that gave its name to an ancient parish recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 and then the manor given by William I of England to William Peverel. A municipal borough was created in 1866, which encompassed less than half of the manor's territory. The area now known as Glossop approximates to the villages that used to be called Glossopdale, on the lands of the Duke of Norfolk. Originally a centre of wool processing, Glossop rapidly expanded in the late 18th century when it specialised in the production and printing of calico, a coarse cotton. It became a mill town with many chapels and churches; its fortunes were tied to the cotton industry.
Architecturally, the area is dominated by buildings constructed with the local sandstone; a number of these, including Glossop Gasworks, are grade II listed. Two significant former cotton mills and the Dinting railway viaduct remain.
History
Toponymy and definition
The name Glossop is thought to be of Anglo-Saxon origin, named during the Angles' settlement in the 7th century, and derived from Glott's Hop—where hop could mean a valley, a small valley in a larger valley system, or a piece of land enclosed by marshes and Glott was probably a chieftain's name. Because of its size and location, Glossop had many definitions. The village of Glossop is now called Old Glossop. Howard Town and Milltown gained importance. They were named New Town and then Glossop. Local government reorganisations had caused the Glossopdale villages to be promoted to a municipal borough and then have that status removed. Land has been added to Glossop and other lands removed. From a small settlement it became an ancient parish, a manor, a borough and a township. Currently, two county divisions in High Peak Borough, Derbyshire, have Glossop as part of their names.Ancient
There is evidence of a Bronze Age burial site on Shire Hill and other possibly prehistoric remains at Torside. The Romans arrived in 78 AD. At that time, the area was within the territory of the Brigantes tribe, whose main base was in Yorkshire. In the late 1st century the Romans built a fort, Ardotalia, on high ground above the river in present-day Gamesley. The site of this fort was rediscovered in 1771 by an amateur historian, John Watson. It subsequently acquired the name Melandra Castle. The extensive site has been excavated, revealing fort walls, a shrine and the fort headquarters. The area has been landscaped to provide parking and picnic areas.Medieval
awarded the manor of Glossop to William Peverel, who began construction of Glossop Castle, but the entire estate was later confiscated. In 1157 King Henry II gave the manor of Glossop to Basingwerk Abbey in Wales. They gained a market charter for Glossop in 1290, and one for Charlesworth in 1328.In 1433, the monks leased all of Glossopdale to the Talbot family, later Earls of Shrewsbury. In 1494, an illegitimate son of the family, Dr John Talbot, was appointed vicar of Glossop. He founded a school, and paved the packhorse route over the moors; this is known as Doctor's Gate.
At the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1537 the manor of Glossop was given to the Talbot family. In 1606 it came into the ownership of the Howard family, the Dukes of Norfolk, who held it for the next 300 years. Glossop was usually given to the second son of the family.
The land was too wet and cold to be used for wheat but was ideal for the hardy Pennine sheep, so agriculture was predominantly pastoral. Most of the land was owned by the Howards and was leasehold and it was only in Whitfield that there was any freehold land. The few houses were solid, built of the local stone, and allowed for the development of home industries such as wool spinning and weaving.
Industrial and civic history
The medieval economy was based on sheep pasture and the production of wool by farmers who were tenants of the Abbot of Basingwerk and later the Talbot family. During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century Glossop became a centre for cotton spinning. A good transport network between Liverpool and Glossop brought in imported cotton which was spun by a labour force with wool spinning skills. The climate of Glossopdale provided abundant soft water that was used to power mills and finish the cloth, and also gave the humidity necessary to spin cotton under tension. Initial investment was provided by the Dukes of Norfolk. By 1740, cotton in an unspun form had been introduced to make fustians and lighter cloths.Mills
The first mills in Glossop were woollen mills. In 1774, Richard Arkwright opened a mill at Cromford. He developed the factory system and patented machines for spinning cotton and carding. In 1785, his patents expired and many people copied Arkwright's system and his patents, exemplified by the Derwent Valley Mills. By 1788 there were over 200 Arkwright-type mills in Britain. At the same time there were 17 cotton mills in Derbyshire, principally in Glossop. By 1831 there were at least 30 mills in Glossopdale, none of which had more than 1,000 spindles. The mill owners were local men: the Wagstaffs and Hadfields were freeholders from Whitfield; the Shepleys, Shaws, Lees, Garlicks and Platts had farmed the dale. The Sidebottoms were from Hadfield, the Thornleys were carpenters and John Bennet and John Robinson were clothiers.John Wood of Marsden came from Manchester in 1819 and bought existing woollen mills which he expanded. These were the Howard Town mills. Francis Sumner was a Catholic whose family had connections with Matthew Ellison, Howard's agent. He built Wren Nest Mill. The Sidebottoms built the Waterside Mill at Hadfield. In 1825, John Wood installed the first steam engine and power looms. Sumner and Sidebottom followed suit and the three mills, Wren Nest, Howardtown and Waterside, became very large vertical combines. With the other major families, the Shepleys, Rhodes and Platts, they dominated the dale. In 1884, the six had 82% of the spinning capacity with 892,000 spindles and 13,571 looms. Glossop was a town of very large calico mills. The Glossop Tramway was opened in 1903 to connect workers to the various mills along the main routes between Glossop and Hadfield.
The calico printing factory of Edmund Potter in the 1850s printed 2½ million pieces of printed calico, of which 80% was for export. The paper industry was created by Edward Partington who, as Olive and Partington, bought the Turn Lee Mill in 1874 to produce high-quality paper from wood pulp by the sulphite method. He expanded rapidly with mills in Salford and Barrow-in-Furness. He merged with Kellner of Vienna and was created Lord Doverdale in 1917. He died in 1925; his factories in Charlestown created nearly 1,000 jobs.
Religion and benevolence
, rebuilt the old parish church in 1831, built All Saints Roman Catholic chapel in 1836, improved the Hurst Reservoir in 1837, built a primary school next to the church, and built the Town Hall, whose foundation stone was laid on Coronation Day 1838.The Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway came to Dinting in 1842, but it was the 13th Duke of Norfolk who built the spur line to Howard Town, so that coal could be brought from the collieries at Dukinfield. Glossop railway station bears the lion, the symbol of the Norfolks. Many of the street- and placenames in Glossop derive from the names and titles of the Dukes of Norfolk, such as Norfolk Square, and a cluster of residential streets off Norfolk Street that were named after Henry Howard, 13th Duke of Norfolk, the first Catholic MP since the Reformation.
A two-storey Township Workhouse was built between 1832 and 1834 on Bute Street. Its administration was taken over by Glossop Poor Law Union in December 1837. The workhouse buildings included a 40-bed infirmary, piggeries and casual wards for vagrants. The workhouse later became Glossop Public Assistance Institution and from 1948 the NHS Shire Hill Hospital.
The mill owners, Catholics, Anglican, Methodist and Unitarian, built reading rooms and chapels. They worked together and worshipped together with their workers. The Woods, Sidebottoms and Shepleys were Anglicans and hence Tory, and they dominated every vestry, which was the only form of local government before 1866. They built four churches: St James's, Whitfield, in 1846; St Andrew's, Hadfield, in 1874; Holy Trinity, Dinting, in 1875; and St Luke's, Glossop. Francis Sumner and the Ellisons and Norfolks were Catholic and built St Charles's, Hadfield, and St Mary's, Glossop. The smaller mill owners were Dissenters and congregated at Littlemoor Independent Chapel built in Hadfield in 1811, but they later built a further eleven chapels.
For decades there was rivalry between Edward Partington, his friend Herbert Rhodes, and the Woods and Sidebottoms. The Woods built the public baths and laid out the park. Partington built the library. Partington built the cricket pavilion, so Samuel Hill-Wood sponsored the football club that for one season, 1899–1900, played in League Division One. He and his descendants went on to be chairmen of the London club Arsenal. He was MP for High Peak from 1910 to 1929. Edward's son, Oswald, was MP for High Peak from 1900 to 1910. Ann Kershaw Woods devoted herself to Anglican education and had schools built.