Changing Interpretations of the Derwent Valley – Strategic Objectives

The dramatic beauty of the Derwent Valley, particularly along the limestone gorge between Cromford and Matlock Bath, attracted artists even before Sir Richard Arkwright established his cotton mills at Cromford between 1771 and 1790. One of the earliest artists was Thomas Smith (1721–1767), whose representations of the Cascades below Matlock Bath and Hopping Mill Weir are included in this volume.¹ He was followed by workers in many mediums, including watercolourists, engravers and later, photographers. Their work appeared in books, on gallery walls and on the newest and most fashionable consumer goods that were available to Georgian and Victorian society. Pottery in particular was commonly ornamented with scenes of Derbyshire landscapes and buildings, including the images of Masson Mill and the Derby townscape that were applied to the Derby Porcelain Company products illustrated here. The challenge for further researchers lies not in the further study of well-known published sources, but in the detailed examination of the artefacts, original diaries, sketchbooks and other documents which provide the source material upon which past interpretations have been based.

The Heritage Lottery Fund’s Enlightenment! programme of 2008 to 2013 facilitated an initial survey of some of these resources, including both artefacts in public ownership² and the archival and ephemeral holdings in some of the major libraries.³ The funding also enabled the purchase of further collections for Derby Museum, Belper North Mill and Buxton Museum and Art Gallery,⁴ and enhanced, in particular, the internationally important porcelain collections in Derby and Buxton Museums. There is still a need for a deeper study of the representations used on porcelain⁵ and on other objects such as letterheads, watch papers and retailers’ boxes. Such images encompass the contemporary sense of place, but particular questions to consider are whether the images are sufficiently realistic or too influenced by artistic need to help us understand the changing landscape of the Valley. Further questions to be addressed by examination of the archive sources include identification of the artists who were commissioned to undertake this work and the markets for their products.

Ros Westwood

Fig.4.3 Late 18th century coffee jar with two oval painted panels, including one of Masson Mill (above) and a landscape view. These are attributed to the porcelain painter Thomas ‘Jockey’ Hill, who worked at Derby between 1795 and 1800 (© Derby Museums Trust)

References

¹ Brighton, T 2013 Thomas Smith of Derby, 1721–1767: Pioneer of the Picturesque. Bakewell: Bakewell and District Historical Society; Figs 4.16 and 7.1

² Unpublished list of Enlightenment-related artefacts in UK public museums, available at Derby Museums

³ Howe, N 2011 Enlightenment! Derbyshire Setting the Pace in the 18^th Century. Survey of Ephemera. https://enlightenmentderbyshire.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/enlightenment-derbyshire-survey-of-ephemera-report-web1.pdf 

⁴ Westwood, R and Rhodes, A (eds) 2013 Enlightenment! Derbyshire Setting the Pace in the Eighteenth Century. Buxton: DCC

⁵ Ledger, A P 2000 ‘Further watercolour sources of landscape painting on Derby dessert services’. Derby Porcelain International Society Journal 4, 8–26

The stretch of the Derwent Valley that is dominated by the mills of the Industrial Revolution is represented in textual sources as locally distinctive and as an exemplar for processes of industrialisation operating at regional, national and international levels. Its location as a gateway to the Peak District for travellers from the south, together with its industrial and scientific history and heritage, has impacted significantly upon perceptions of the Valley. This has been variously portrayed as a cradle of the Industrial Revolution,¹ a hotbed of radical, scientific and Enlightenment thought,² a location for forging romantic tourist sensibilities (exemplified by artists and critics such as Joseph Wright and John Ruskin)³ and a zone of contest between a wide variety of polite, improving and popular recreations. Such leisure pursuits have included taking the spa waters, hiking, cycling and explorations of the Valley’s rich archaeological and built environment heritage.

Understandings of the industrial history, heritage and culture of this area can be characterised in terms of two distinctive strands. The first of these focuses upon documentary, archaeological and other material evidence for the histories of industrial settlements and their inhabitants.⁴ The second concentrates upon investigation of the explicitly social and cultural dynamics of industrialisation, scientific understanding and the rise of tourism. The origins of this latter approach lie in the 1960s with writers such as Benedict Nicolson,⁵ but this work has gathered further momentum from the 1980s.⁶

Recent studies of social and cultural trends and of the history and theory of technology provide significant opportunities to review current interpretations of industrial development in the Valley. This could be achieved by reworking accounts based upon archaeological, documentary and cultural sources in terms of new academic understandings and theorisations of material cultures, landscape and the development of scientific and practical mechanical knowledge. It would also involve a critical historiographical appraisal of the relationships between interpretations made at local, regional and national scales. Current modes of cultural representation also provide challenges and opportunities. The Derwent Valley has attracted increased media interest from film, television and the press in recent years, and information derived from these sources provides as yet uncharted layers of interpretative history that would merit further study.⁷

George Revill

References

¹ Lindsay, J 1960 ‘An early industrial community: The Evans’ cotton mill at Darley Abbey, Derbyshire, 1783–1810’. Business History Review 34, 277–301; Pollard, S 1964 ‘The Factory Village in the Industrial Revolution’. English Historical Review 79, 513–31; Nixon, F 1969 The Industrial Archaeology of Derbyshire. Newton Abbot: David and Charles; Smith, D M 1965 Industrial Archaeology of the East Midlands. Newton Abbot: David and Charles; Bull, J 2012 The Peak District: A Cultural History. Oxford: Signal Books

² Uglow, J 2002 The Lunar Men. London: Faber; Elliott, P 2012 Enlightenment, Modernity and Science: Geographies of Scientific Culture and Improvement in Georgian England. London: Tauris

³ Nicolson, B 1968 Joseph Wright of Derby. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; Bull 2012, 174–8

⁴ Eg Fitton, R and Wadsworth, A P 1968 The Strutts and the Arkwrights, 1758–1830. Manchester: MUP⁵

⁵ See Note 3

⁶ Eg Daniels, S J 1993 Fields of Vision: Landscape Imagery and National identity in England and the United States. Cambridge: Polity Press, 43–79

⁷ Eg BBC TV Series Peak Practice (1993–2002; http://www.peakpracticeonline.co.uk) and the 2007 film And When Did You Last See Your Father, directed by Anand Tucker (based upon the memoir of the same name by Blake Morrison)

Fig.4.5 Joseph Wright’s dramatic image of Cromford Mills at night, painted in the 1790s, is one of many representations of the Derwent Valley that moulded

Fig.4.5 Joseph Wright’s dramatic image of Cromford Mills at night, painted in the 1790s, is one of many representations of the Derwent Valley that moulded public perceptions of the area during the height of the Industrial Revolution (private collection; reproduced by permission of the Bridgeman Art Library)

The industrial development of the Derwent Valley depended in large part on a global trade in raw and processed cotton, facilitated by colonial developments and movements of people and goods as part of the Atlantic slave trade and economy. This makes it a place of both polyvocal and polyspatial heritage, yet this dimension has typically been neglected in interpretations of former mill sites.¹ Recognising these connections clearly means engaging with challenging and sensitive histories and legacies, as well as acknowledging the complex links between heritage and identity.² In relation to this, there is an emerging consensus that present social relations and values influence what from the past is deemed worthy of remembering, that multiple, often competing, readings of the past exist, and that the pasts presented help form current identities and senses of belonging.³

It is all too easy for global heritage sites to replicate the power relations of the colonial past and valorise the colonisers’ past at the expense of other parties.⁴ There remains a strong legacy of this in the Derwent Valley, both through the conventional focus on powerful, male factory owners and in more recent interpretations which highlight the experiences of white female and child labourers while neglecting the contributions of cotton and textile workers from across the world.⁵ Understanding the perspectives of raw cotton and international textile producers on the British cotton industry’s past is undermined by prevalent non-inclusive cultural norms and by limited diversity amongst staff working in many heritage and research institutions.⁶

Recent initiatives, including the AHRC-funded Global Cotton Connections project⁷ and the Heritage Lottery Fund project British Raj in the Peak District, have begun to explore how local citizens belonging to Hindu and African diaspora cultural groups view the Derwent Valley and its cotton heritage provision. The activities and legacies of these projects, including an Indian Heritage Walks leaflet and a poetry collection⁸ and film⁹ reflecting upon the experiences of participants, point the way towards future research informed by the views of British diaspora groups. These legacies also highlight not only the pain involved in remembrance but also the pain of absence and alienation when ancestors’ stories are not told and their contributions to the Valley’s textile industry remain unrecognised.

Susanne Seymour and Lowri Jones

Fig.4.6 Collection of 26 poems and photographs, edited by Debjani Chatterjee, reflecting on Sheffield Hindu Samaj heritage group activities during British Raj in the Peak District and Global Cotton Connections projects (cover design © Brian D’Arcy and Debjani Chatterjee)

References

¹ Beckert, S 2014 Empire of Cotton. A New History of Global Capitalism. London: Allen Lane; Buciek, K and Juul, K 2008 ‘We are here, yet we are not here: The heritage of excluded groups’ in Graham, B J and Howard, P (eds) The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity. Aldershot: Ashgate, 105–24

² Horton, J O and Horton, L E (eds) 2006 Slavery and Public History. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press; Graham, B J and Howard, P 2008 ‘Introduction’ in Graham and Howard (eds), 1–15

³ Eg Glassberg, D 1996 ‘Public history and the study of memory’. The Public Historian 18 (2) 7–23; Samuel, R 1994 Theatres of Memory. London: Verso; Hall, S 1999 ‘Whose heritage? Un-settling the heritage, re-imagining the post nation’. Third Text 13, 49, 3–13

⁴ Littler, J 2008 ‘Heritage and Race’ in Graham and Howard (eds) 89–103; Hall 1999, 7

⁵ Eg Fitton, R S and Wadsworth A P 1958 The Strutts and the Arkwrights. Manchester: MUP; Fitton, R S 1989 The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune. Manchester: MUP

⁶ Eg BOP Consulting 2012 Responses from the Consultation on Under-represented Heritages. London: Historic England, especially 25-6

⁷ https://globalcottonconnections.wordpress.com/

⁸ Chatterjee, D 2015 (ed) British Raj in the Peak District: Threads of Connection. Sheffield: Hindu Samaj Heritage Project; https://heritagehindusamaj.wordpress.com/cotton/

⁹https://slavetradelegacies.wordpress.com/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2QmVmXqP6g  

The Derwent Valley Mills is a comparatively new World Heritage Site, having been recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) as a place of Outstanding Universal Value only in 2001. The bid to gain international endorsement of the mills’ importance was conceived in the early 1980s, and was prompted by the rescue from demolition and development of the world’s first water-powered cotton spinning mill at Cromford.¹ The mills, warehouses and workshops that comprised this mill complex were built by Sir Richard Arkwright between 1771 and 1790, but were abandoned as cotton mills during the 19th century and from the 1920s to 1970s were used as a colour pigment factory. The complex was seriously damaged as a consequence of this change of use, and was threatened by demolition in the 1970s. However, the Arkwright Society’s bold step of purchasing the mill in 1979 started the rescue process, and culminated in the creation of a linear site extending for some fifteen miles along the densely populated Derwent Valley: from the Derby Silk Mill in the south to the southern outskirts of Matlock Bath, and encompassing the major mill complexes at Milford, Belper, Lea Bridge, Cromford and Masson.

Perceptions of World Heritage Sites are influenced by many factors, including the celebration of heritage, concerns about preservation, ambitions for social and economic advantage and the perceived marketing benefits of World Heritage status.² The Derwent Valley Mills bid was inspired by protection, and there is significant potential to investigate how the Site has matched up to the original intentions. It would be particularly interesting to compare the experiences of the Site with other industrial World Heritage Sites, both in this country and abroad, with particular emphasis upon the impact of different management, funding and marketing strategies. It has been claimed, for example, that ‘World Heritage status is what sites and their Steering Groups make of it’, while it has been doubted whether the level of marketing undertaken by each site has had any major effect on visitor numbers.³ Particular opportunities exist within the Derwent Valley, with its many stakeholders and developing visitor attractions, to examine the impact of inscription upon perceptions of the Site’s significance and understanding of its historic development by local people and visitors, and in particular to examine residents’ views on the merits of preservation relative to issues such as socio-economic gain.

Mark Suggitt

Fig.4.7 World Heritage Site status has inspired a wide variety of educational programmes. Here, students participating in the HLF-funded Technology Then, Technology Now project⁴ visit the partially restored interior of the first Cromford mill (source: Derbyshire County Council)

References

¹ Derwent Valley Mills Partnership 2011 The Derwent Valley Mills and their Communities. Matlock: DVMP, 4–22

² Rebanks Consulting 2010 World Heritage Status: Is there an Opportunity for Economic Gain? Kendal: Lake District World Heritage Project, 21–36; http://rebanksconsultingltd.com/resources/WHSTheEconomicGainFinalReport.pdf

³ Department of Culture, Media and Sport 2008 World Heritage for the Nation: Identifying, Protecting and Promoting our World Heritage: A Consultation Paper. London: The Stationery Office, 24; https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/world-heritage-for-the-nation-identifying-protecting-and-promoting-our-world-heritage

⁴http://www.derwentvalleymills.org/derwent-valley-mills-projects/current-projects/the-technology-then-technology-now/

Developments in digital technology have provided significant new opportunities for engaging with visitors to the Derwent Valley, with potential for challenging perceptions and developing understanding. It is recommended that opportunities be explored for integrating and disseminating visually the digital data that is hosted by archive collections and by the proposed digital platform.¹ This would be aimed at engaging interested visitors with the cultural and environmental resources of the Valley and providing them with an easily accessible digital resource that is available on appropriate technology. It could, in addition, provide a powerful tool for disseminating more widely the results of research, involving individuals and community groups in that research, and prompting new lines of enquiry.

This resource has the potential to comprise many layers that could be accessed via Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology. Staff of the British Geological Survey (BGS), for example, have undertaken significant mapping of the Valley and neighbouring areas, which can be provided as photographic or mapped imagery, but this could be enriched. Ideally, this would provide several layers of content for a range of audiences. A printed tourist guide is already available for the World Heritage Site,² but an online version with the opportunity to raise modest income through advertising, which in itself would become part of the historic resource of the Derwent Valley, could also be welcomed.

There is, however, much more that can be added, including: a tour through the physical landscape, highlighting the solid and drift geology, ancient river channels, topography, vegetation and other landscape features; an archaeological highlights tour pointing out the clearly visible and more obscure remains relating to human activity from prehistoric to recent times, including traces of lead smelting and of medieval agriculture in the form of ridge and furrow earthworks; a railway engineer’s tour, taking the Midland Railway journey through its engineering achievements; an historic photographic tour; an artistic tour including digital images from museums and archives, providing pictures and descriptions that can be observed while experiencing at first hand the landscape; or an historic walk through the business and shopping centres of the many communities along the valley, with photographs of the shops and markets and the written and oral memories of residents and visitors to the region. This could be a generous resource that visitors can dip into. However, it should also inspire people to explore sites, employing innovative digital technologies, rather than encouraging the armchair traveller. It could have a legacy benefit for several other projects, such as Derwent Pulse³ and Technology Then, Technology Now.⁴ At the same time, it could encourage visitor interaction with the uploading of information and visitors’ own responses to their visits and experiences.

Ros Westwood

Fig 4.8 GeoVisionary Software, co-developed by VIRTALIS and BGS, provides the facility to fly through a 3D visualisation of the Valley, with opportunities to view topography, geology, vegetation and other landscape features. This image shows the southern approach to the spectacular Matlock Gorge, cut through Carboniferous limestones from Cromford to Matlock (provided by courtesy of  British Geological Survey)

References

¹ Chapter 5 and Strategic Objective 1A

² Farmer, A and Joyce, B 2007 The Derwent Valley Mills Souvenir Guide. Matlock: DVMP

³http://www.derwentvalleymills.org/derwent-valley-mills-projects/archive-projects/derwent-pulse/

⁴ Strange-Walker, D 2014 ‘Technology then and now’. Archaeology and Conservation in Derbyshire 12, 8-9; http://www.derwentvalleymills.org/derwent-valley-mills-projects/current-projects/the-technology-then-technology-now/