Wonders of the Peak

Buxton Museum & Art Gallery

Photographs Through Time

DWWIPP-13 MIDLAND RAILWAY LOCOMOTIVE WORKS

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The former Midlands Railway Locomotive Works (now part of Derby College “The Roundhouse”). The left-hand part of the building in the photograph has been tentatively identified as that in the photograph below. Image reproduced with permission, Julian Tubbs.

The Alexandra Hotel (DWWIPP-12), The Brunswick Inn, The Queen Victoria and other pubs in the railway station area may well have been patronized by some of the 500 women employed at the Midland Railway Locomotive Works (now part of Derby College) as “Munitions Girls”. These refurbished cartridge cases, demanding and potentially dangerous work that involved long hours.

Cartridge cases being refurbished at the Midland Railway works. Image reproduced with permission, Derby Local Studies and Family History Library.

It is estimated that by the end of the war 700,000 or more women were employed producing shells in various factories in the UK. To put this into perspective, 1.5 million shells were fired in the preliminary bombardment at the Battle of the Somme alone.

Between 1914 and 1918, the national percentage of women in employment jumped from 24% to 37%. In Derby itself, the pre-war figure was 31%. Predominantly young and unmarried, the 1911 census records them as employed mostly in domestic service; marriage would have consigned them to the home looking after children and husband. The end of the war returned many women to these roles.

The declaration of the Armistice on 11th November 1918 brought the crowds out onto the streets of Derby in celebration. The Temperance Society were delighted that the Derby Daily Telegraph was able to report that there was “no greater amount of Bacchanalian revelry in the streets”.

The peace celebrations on Saturday 19th July 1919, a fortnight after the war had formally ended with the Treaty of Versailles, brought them disappointment. Lloyd George had declared this day a public holiday. Most of the troops had returned: there was a “March of Victory Heroes” through the centre of Derby; a carnival had been organized for ex-servicemen plus two guests each on the County Cricket Ground, which was then in the centre of the Derby racecourse, with a beer tent. Each ex-serviceman was given ten shillings worth of tickets to spend as they wished. Elsewhere Derby pubs were given an extended licence to 11pm.

With beer back to near pre-war strength levels, the results were unsurprising. Temperance Bells (see DWWIPP-2) reported “Drink brings disappointment and disgrace”. The Derbyshire Advertiser had a more muted “zeal outran discretion” but added that the “drunkenness on the County Cricket Ground was universally condemned.”

The end of the war brought the vote to 8.4 million women, those over 30 who were better off or better educated. It was not until 1928 that women gained equal voting rights with men. The war had given women the opportunity to prove that they were perfectly capable of “men’s work”, but the party had now ended, return of the armed forces meant that the opportunities for employment were much reduced.

The Grade II* Roundhouse complex is one of the sites of Derby College and cannot normally be accessed by the public. However, parts of it are occasionally open for tours and events such as the Derby CAMRA Winter Beer Festival. For further details of dates and ticket prices, visit https://www.roundhouse-events.co.uk/ ; https://www.derbylive.co.uk/whats-on/roundhouse-tour ; and https://derby.camra.org.uk/winter-beer-festival/index.html .

This Wonder is one of a series of thirteen researched by the Derby World War One Pubs Project (DWWIPP). In describing the wonders, we also develop an underlying narrative on how the war lastingly affected pubs and the brewing industry, and society itself. For this reason, it may be preferable to read them in sequence, DWWIPP-1 to DWWIPP-13. 

The thirteen wonders in this series and other stories featuring the effects of WWI on pubs and breweries can be found in a special Armistice Centenary Edition of Derby CAMRA’s magazine, Derby Drinker. It, and the current edition, can be downloaded free of charge at https://derby.camra.org.uk/derby-drinker/DerbyDrinker/DerbyDrinker_WW1special.pdf . You can also download an ‘Ale Trail’ leaflet featuring the thirteen Wonders in this series from https://derby.camra.org.uk/

The DWWIPP team are grateful for the support and encouragement of many organizations and individuals, in particular to the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), and all National Lottery players, for the funding; the Derby Branch CAMRA (The Campaign for Real Ale); the Derby Local Studies and Family History Library; and the Buxton Mu

DWWIPP-10: THE OLD SILK MILL

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The Old Silk Mill, built in 1928 to replace the original, see below. Image reproduced with permission, Julian Tubbs. 

The Silk Mill exemplifies one of the changes brought about, or at least accelerated by, the war. In 1914, although working-class women could be found in pubs with their husbands, many pubs were ‘male drinking dens’ which no ‘respectable’ women would enter, except possibly into the ‘Jug and Bottle’ to fetch beer to drink at home. These would have a separate entrance and be partitioned off from the rest of the pub.

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DWWIPP-4: STRETTONS BREWERY

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Strettons Brewery. Image reproduced with permission, Derby Local Studies and Family History Library.

Strettons Manchester Brewery stood on Ashbourne Road, bounded by Surrey Street and Frederick Street. The firm was founded in 1867 when the Stretton brothers bought John Porter’s Brewery on the Ashbourne Road. In 1929 the brewery was closed and sold to local soft drinks manufacturer Burrows and Sturgess. It was lost to a fire in 1978.

The distinctive maltings buildings still stand, converted into flats. These can be seen on Manchester Street, which leads off the other side of Surrey Street. Manchester Street is thought to be named after the brewery, not the other way round.

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View from the Sand Pits

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The view back up to Minninglow from here provides a layer-cake scene through the historical use of this landscape. On the hill’s summit the prehistoric burial site; below that the natural outcrops of limestone (which provided the slabs for those tombs); then stone walls dating back to the enclosure acts of the late eighteenth century; finally the magnificent railway embankment of 1831.

The view of Minninglow Hill © Simon Corble

But what are these huge earthworks in the foreground all about?  A clue lies in the track surface we have just walked over. You may have noticed that, unlike the rest of the route, it was very sandy back there. By a happy accident, a large pocket of very valuable silica sand was discovered just below the surface of the soil and right next to the railway line.

It is part of series of such deposits, stretching in a line between here and Brassington, to the south east. The silica deposits were laid down in the hollows of the limestone by some long vanished river, during the late Miocene Era – around 10 million years ago.

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Crane at the Quarry

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We are now looking up at the remains of a sizeable quarry, complete with a rusting crane which once loaded the limestone blocks onto trains.

The quarry crane © Simon Corble

This is a typical Peak District scene. If you follow the High Peak Trail all the way to its northern end, just outside Buxton you will run into some truly vast quarries still in operation. They load directly onto a dedicated ‘mineral line’, just as happened here. Such railways are a much greener option than road transport.

Looking at the map, you may notice the route of the old railway seems to snake around all over the place. It’s quite unlike the normal pattern of straight rail lines we are used to. This is because the engineers who designed the line were not railway builders, they were canal men. In order to make the gradients as easy as possible they followed their habitual method of following the contour lines of the hills.

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Making Connections

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wagon of enthusiasts tour High Peak Junction
In 1855 a passenger service ran on the Cromford and High Peak Railway – 25 years after the line opened. 22 years later the service was pulled, although in the 1960s enthusiasts jumped aboard for this special tour. Many walkers up the inclines may have wished the train was still running but passengers still had to disembark and walk up the hills.

The workshops at High Peak Junction are where the pioneers of transport built and repaired the waggons that ran on the Cromford and High Peak Railway. They are the oldest surviving railway workshops.

The Cromford Canal shipped goods in and out of the Valley to the South. The railway was an even more ambitious solution to create a direct line across the Pennines to Manchester. Originally there were no locomotives and the waggons were pulled by horse. Enormous steam engines (similar to the one that powered the Leawood Pump) moved the waggons up the inclines over the moors to over 1000 feet.

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