Speaker: Doreen Buxton

The talk traces the story of Matlock Bath from a private bathing place fed by a rather cold mineral spring at Matlock Wood at the end of the seventeenth century to a rural spa called Matlock Bath, with three bathing establishments able to accommodate about four hundred and fifty visitors, at the turn of the eighteenth. By then it was spoken of alongside Bath, Buxton and Tunbridge Wells but for many visitors it was the attractions of its scenic setting which tipped the balance in its favour. When the railway arrived in the 1840’s, Matlock Bath had to reinvent itself at rather short notice. It became a destination for day trippers whose needs and expectations differed from those of its staying guests. Gradually the Victorian north end of the village was developed and slowly the day visitors’ practical needs were addressed. The Arkwright family added the High Tor Grounds to the Georgian pleasure grounds, Lover’s Walk and the Heights of Abraham; the survival of all three has served to restrict building development in the valley and still contributes hugely to Matlock Bath’s sense of place.

Doreen claims no qualifications to attach local historian to her name, only a very long interest in the Derbyshire area in which she grew up, Matlock Bath and Cromford in particular. Attending local history evening workshops many years ago, led to working as a volunteer jack- of -all trades for the Arkwright Society at Cromford Mills when more focussed research became a passion. In collaboration with Christopher Charlton and on behalf of the charity, the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site Educational Trust, the results have been recorded in two books Cromford Revisited and Matlock Bath, a Perfectly Romantic Place.

Industrial Archaeology Section

Speaker: Edmund Simons

Rock-cut structures are found throughout the UK, but their highest concentrations are in the soft Permian and Triassic sandstones of the English Midlands, with the largest grouping in South Staffordshire, North Worcestershire and southern Shropshire, as well as the most famous group in and around Nottingham. There are important additional sites though, including very significant examples in Derbyshire.  Apart from in Nottingham City itself, many of the sites remain largely unstudied and at most the origin and use is obscure, with, perhaps, only their later history being known.

The Rock-Cut Buildings Project aims, for the first time, to quantify and record these structures, to create typologies and methodologies for understanding them and to develop areas for future research. The project has included collaboration with literary historians, archaeologists, geologists, conservation specialists and others. It is a work in progress, a first attempt to try and understand cave dwelling in the Midlands, its nature, origin, extent, and significance. This talk will detail the results of the project so far, concentrating on one of the most important case studies, Anchor Church near Foremarke, a site which typifies many of the known or suspected medieval sites in the wider study area. We will look at work already carried out and the potential for further archaeological and scientific investigation, as well as exploring similar sites elsewhere in the county and beyond.

Edmund Simons FSA is Associate Professor at the new Cultural Heritage institute (Royal Agricultural University). He is leading the project and has a particular life-long interest in rock-cut structures, he hails from Kinver Edge (Staffs, the largest concentration of rock-houses in the UK) and has worked on similar sites from Greece and Jordan to Ascension Island and South Georgia.

Local History Section