Charlesworth and Chisworth
In scenic rural Charlesworth and Chisworth there are lots of horses, but most enjoy a life of relative leisure. 200 years ago, though, they would have been hard at work on the steep hills pulling carts laden with cotton or coal. This was an industrial area, scarred by coal mines and with no less than 14 cotton mills.
The first, and most visible, was Best Hill, built in 1784, guarding the western gateway to Charlesworth at the bridge across the Etherow Gorge, latterly peering out from beneath the railway viaduct (see photo), and the subject of romanticised depictions of industry in the midst of savage wilderness. It had four attached cottages, which have survived, but many of its 90 workers would have lived in the row of 18 round the corner at “New York”, now the car park of the Catholic church. The name indicates their place of origin – with lots of skilled domestic textile workers, Yorkshire was a major source of immigrant labour for the early mills.
Others were less visible. There was a line of six along the Lee Valley, three of which survive, but you could drive along the A626 and be completely unaware of them, although, of course, the trees have grown. It was the road – the Glossop to Marple Bridge turnpike – which made them possible, as before it was built in 1804-5, travellers going from Glossop in the direction of Stockport had to follow a winding route along muddy farm tracks. Kinder Lee Mill was built in 1804 and four more followed within 15 years. In Chisworth a new village grew up along the turnpike, leaving the old one marooned on the hillside above.
Plentiful coal and water and a good road were attractions, but there were downsides. The Kinder Brook, draining the huge natural bowl of Coombes, could be dangerous; in 1831 it took out the new dam at Lee Valley Mill, killing three people, and there was a further fatality 99 years later when the Great Storm devastated the mills all along the valley. Best Hill relied instead on the Etherow, but having no space for a millpond drew directly from it, meaning that it would have no reserve in dry weather and in a flood would need to shut off the supply to protect the mill. After 100 years the Marsland family, having a newer mill at Lymefield on the other side of the river, abandoned it.
The coal was also of poor quality, and when in 1845 the railway brought better, cheaper supplies, the mills were a long way from the stations. Constricted sites and high transport costs meant that they couldn’t compete directly in spinning with the mega-mills in Glossop, so most developed other specialties. Seven made cotton driving bands or ropes; if there was no room in a narrow valley for weaving sheds, there was for a rope walk. From the 1860s on, most new mills used ropes for the primary drive from the engine to the line shafts, and Rowbottoms at Holehouse were major suppliers to the industry.
Along with the Platts and the Rhodes, the Rowbottoms were one of the last cotton dynasties in the Glossop area, but in Charlesworth and Chisworth the most prominent family in the early period was the Booths, various members of which were involved at different times with seven mills. One of them had a foundry and machine shop making looms for John Wood, who pioneered powered weaving in the area, the building later being converted to a mill, Leevale. By 1921 it was the Old Foundry Mill, making rope, and the site is now Tomwood Rise.
We do, however, know very little about many of these mills. Robert Hamnett, on whose researches we are extremely reliant as he had access to the Howard estate papers which were later destroyed, doesn’t seem to have got out that way very much. We don’t even know the location of one mill, Bank in Charlesworth, which he said was owned by Miss Mary Shepley and empty in the 1840s.
We will look next at three mills, Chew Wood, Mouse, and Charlesworth, about which we do know something, although not by any means everything. The sites of all three can also be seen from the A626; to find some of the others, you need your walking boots.
NEXT – Part 8b: Charlesworth and Chisworth – Chew wood
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