Some Dove Holes History

A Mass Migration

By Tony Beswick

As you know I used to live in the ugliest village in Britain, Dove Holes. Not too sure how it came by the award but it was sometimes a bit grim especially with the dust carried by the wind from the old ICI quarries and passers-by tales of 30 feet high mole hills and funny coloured ponds. But it is what it is and many years ago it was what it was or we might like to think that way I suppose.

But there was a time when the villagers were dissatisfied with their lot in life and decided to leave and run for the hills. And not just the hills on these shores but pastures completely new in a new world.

All this took place in 1913 onwards and there was such a rush to get out of Dove that 250 out of a total of 1,000 people deserted the village which was fast on the way to becoming a ghost town.

The first official report is of a distressing fatality of a young man blown up in one of the quarries. I justify its relevance because I think one of the young lad’s relatives was amongst the first to leave.

That is in the second press cutting.

I think the current Dove Holers may gasp for breath on reading this lot.

Isn’t it funny how things keep cropping up? And again this relates to Cowlow Lane where all my family came from and it’s not about Arthur Fletcher’s or Fred Green’s allotments. So then what about this?

It is about a gentleman called George Ernest Ward who lived at Cowlow Lane. It is a name that I am not familiar with although I do have records of everyone who lived there from when the houses were first built. As those records aren’t just handy at the moment I will look him up later in the week.

Press cutting Sheffield Independent 27th February 1914.

The first photo of the exodus.

Note as it is 1913 the Dove War Memorial isn’t in place and I don’t think it was positioned there until 1928.

The building on show, as we shall see later, is described as The Post Office not The Wheatsheaf.

The Toll House was just around the corner which did latterly become the village Post Office.

 It's The Final Countdown.

  Dove Holes School

Two  photographs from Tony Beswick show pupils of Dove School. Both feature Tony's late sister Julie. In the first she is seated in the bottom row, left hand corner. In the second, she appears in the

 middle row next to teacher Miss Frogatt. The photograaphs are courtesy of Pauline Berry

Bibbington Tip and Lower Bibbington Cottages.
I think this photo will be of much interest to John French. I doubt if it will have been seen before by readers of this forum although I did put it on another website many years ago.

In Jenny Nicholson’s wonderful book on Dove Holes she shows a photo of the collapse of the tip which very fortunately came to rest against the Lower Bibbington Cottages and caused no injuries.
This photo predates Jenny’s by some years I suspect and shows the kids playing out in the road below the tip. If it had slipped that day those children would have been undoubtedly lost.
It also highlights the true height of the massive tip. Truly a disaster waiting to happen; fortunately it never did.
Although Fred Green told me that it collapsed again in the 1930’s but I doubt if there are any photos of that slip.

Tony.

I think John French may be able to help me on this one:

So good morning to you John.

I recently posted a photo of the bridge going from Black Hole Cottages into the quarries but the track under the A6 bridge was always waterlogged so as kids we used to climb up the embankment to the stile which is still there by the way and cross the road.
Where the wheel wash has been constructed at the entrance to the new building site was a very deep gully but it had a big black sewer pipe crossing it. From memory this pipe must have been an 18 inch diameter cast iron pipe. You could climb on it where the wheel wash is and walk across if brave enough. If you weren’t brave enough and some of the big lads were about they made you walk it anyway.
Where the sewage came from to justify such a large pipe I have no idea. It couldn’t have come uphill and brick row wasn’t connected to a sewage system.
Anyway there you have it.
But on the other side of the gully you could climb back on the pipe easily and continue walking on it.
After a while you were about half way and you came to a platform over the pipe which was about 8 feet off the ground.
Now we talk about health and safety gone mad but this pipe midway had an elaborate wooden staircase built over it so you could get from one side to the other. Bearing in mind that a seven foot man could walk under it without stooping it did seem a bit daft.
If you walked over there from the cricket field that is exactly where you would come out. And this is the photo I hope you have John.
As you came out from the lime tips there was a fox hole/cave to your right and opposite was a large three levelled cutting in the limestone known as ‘the three jumps’ as when it filled up with water you could use the different levels to jump in and swim.
Personally I never saw as much as an eggcup full of water in there.
So following the black pipe down the drop got more and more shallow until you could jump off it with ease. We never went to the end because it ended up crossing Dale Road and into the sewage works there.
We played down there a lot as kids.


Tony Beswick.

As readers will know I used to live a 4 Cross Cottages. The cottages were named after the Old Saxon Cross at the top of the hill just up from the cottages.

One supposed Chapel historian told me the cross was dismantled in the 1960's to make a farmer's gate posts. Absolute nonsense of course.

But Jenny Nicholson has a great photo of the remains which were nothing more than a large stone with a socket in the middle.

We used to play 'King of the Castle' on it as kids. One would stand on it nd the others would try to knock him off and become the new king..

I think it was at the top of the hill but fearful of it being damaged by snowploughs the Parish Council moved it a bit further down the road to where the banking was steeper.

A few years ago the Clerk of the Council told me they had asked RMC to provide a post to denote its exact position. RMC did not reply so I decided to get a piece of stone from behind my house and put it in position in the empty socket. Luckily I was just about fit enough to do the job myself. It would not be possible for me to do it these days unfortunately.

So here it is:

Hello to you once again John French.

This is to you John and all the people who either lived at Higher Bibbington on Longridge Lane or knew someone that did.

There was talk of a prayer house within those cottages. Well I don’t know anything about that to be honest but I do know there used to be a church really close to those houses and so today I nipped up there to have a look; and guess what? It's still there but is now a private house. Not your usual type of house but a house just the same and I am sure the owners are as proud of their home as everyone else is.

So having said that here’s a couple of photos I took this morning 27/03/20.

Why have they not been mentioned by anyone familiar with Higher Bibbington Row?

Enjoy the photos.

Tony.

Here is another view from the top of Bibby's Tip:

 Well no apologies for this but we must return once again to Black Hole.
On another forum I used to contribute to if I ever got stuck with anything I would always turn to a very clever young lady called Gail. I always called her ‘The Detective’.
She has found out stuff about my family that I never would ever have known and which I will always be grateful. She is a star and will be a great asset to this forum I am sure in the weeks to come.

I asked her about Black Hole Cottages and at first she was unable to find anything mainly because I said they were in Dove Holes.
Eventually she came up with the name New Houses and I thought this would be the first houses on the left as you come up to Dove Holes and I sent her a photo of them as compared with the rest of the houses they were relatively new.
Gail dismissed this as she said there were too many.
Then she suddenly returned to Black Hole which she said was the given name of New Houses in the 1911 census and to further check it out she went back further to the 1891 census.
This is what she found:

Black Hole Houses – 6 households.

1 **Thomas Cartledge and wife Annie, *William.
2 **Enoch Ball and wife Hannah,Herbert, Elizabeth, Mary, Howard, Olive.
3 **William Cartledge Wdr. John, Joseph and Sarah.
4 **George Nadin and wife Hannah, John, Mary, Martha, *Elizabeth, ****Joseph, Cherryl.
5 *Edward Cottrill and wife Sarah Ann Martha, David, James, Hannah, ****Thomas, Edward, George, Emma, Alice, William, Nephi.
6 **Joseph Sidebottam and son Charles.

Mr John French attached the following photo of the tunnel under the A6 but before that John there was a tunnel in the very same position.

The old one was square as opposed to round and so not tall enough

to allow enough headroom for the plant to get through.

When the excavation works did eventually start the excavators started to take the top off Bibby’s tip only to find that it quickly turned into a slurry a bit like the consistency of toothpaste and this made the job so much harder.

They never did take away all the spoil that was planned but left it as you see it today.

I went through the old tunnel thousands of times and there was an old road for vehicles. About a hundred yards down on the right hand side was a rock face and a deep pool where some of us learnt to swim. As the pool got shallower further into Victory Quarry there were large limestone boulders in the water and you could use them as stepping stones and the place was absolutely teeming with newts.

It was a magical place for us kids of the day John. There were caves and all sorts of places to explore. Still we all survived to tell the tale.


Tony.

Once again John French has put on a splendid photo courtesy of Jenny Nicolson and it shows a view towards Higher Bibbington. There was a rough roadway from Lower Bibbington up to Higher Bibbington.

I did go into a house at Lower Bibbington but I can’t remember why or who with.

But I remember Higher Bibbington much better. It wasn’t just a row of cottages like Lower Bibbington but more of a place with a courtyard. Mr Bibbington himself lived up there in a splendid house at the back of the courtyard behind a row of cottages. As the excavation works in Victory quarry got closer to the houses Mr Bibbington took his house down stone by stone and rebuilt it on the site of the last house out of Dove towards Buxton. It is known as Bibbington house. He had named his quarry Victory as everyone thought him a fool to have bought it in the first place so he told them “You won’t be laughing when I have my Victory.”

At the time of this postcard most houses in Dove were rough but none more so than Higher Bibbington Cottages John.


Tony.

Dove Holes Tunnel

Begun in 1860, it took five years to build. The navvies lived where they could, in huts or crevices in the rock. Six pumping stations were needed to keep the workings clear of water, an underground river being encountered at one stage. This was diverted but burst through again. On being diverted a second time, a local curiosity, the Barmour Clough "Ebbing and Flowing Well", partially dried up. 

My Grandad always called this the 'Rise and Fall Well'

In fact a ceremony was held there nightly until very recently called 'Ringing the Curfew'

Apart from damp rails, the tunnel was extremely hot in summer, while, in winter, long icicles would form from the roof. The first engine through in the morning would break them off (the crews staying well inside the cab), but when diesels came into use there were a number of broken windscreens. After one driver suffered serious injury the Buxton snowplough was fitted with ice clearing equipment. The heavy traffic took its toll on the tunnel lining. On one occasion a locomotive emerged with a pile of bricks on top of its firebox.

Once there was a bore hole drilled by the Well and a local Councillor gave me a copy of the bore hole report. At one stage the borehole came across a seam of limestone and when this was extracted it was taken to Chapel and fixed outside The Memorial Club. That has been now converted to flats and whoever did the conversion should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for workmanship that is hard to believe. At one point the stonework was so bad they brushed it over with creosote. They give an even worse name to the term Cowboy Builders.

Tony Beswick

This is an old photo of Black Hole Cottages in Dove Holes going down towards Barmour Clough. Not a very appealing name really.

I don't even know where the name came from. Some folk say they were railway houses but they are quite a distance from Dove Holes Station and why would the station need all those houses and employees? More likely they were houses for quarry workers as the track leading to Beelow Quarry was directly opposite on the other side of the A6.

But where did the name Black Hole come from? There used to be a mine near Eyam called The Black Hole Mine but that's a long way off and makes no sense anyway.

TheThomas Beckett Church down the road in Chapel-en-le-Frith had an incident hundreds of years ago when The Scots marched against the English in 1648 and were defeated and brought back from Preston and locked in the Church for 16 days without food or water. When the Church was unlocked 40 men were dead and the Church earned the dubious nickname 'The Black Hole of Derbyshire'. Well that's my bet anyway but as always stand to be corrected.

I went there with my Mum to visit her friend Margaret Cotterill. The only other person that I know lived there and was born there was Noreen Abbott who in later life became the landlady of the Shepherd's Arms in Whaley Bridge.

John French has kindly allowed us to reproduce his photograph which shows Black Hole Cottages in closer detail.

                                           -------------------

 

This is a very old photo of the Dove Holes Chimney. The tallest in the area by a long way. However the photo is a bit misleading as regards location. In the foreground you can see the gate that used to be the entrance to Frank Marchington's farm and just before the gate you can see the beginning of the track that connected Meadow Lane with Hallsteads.

But in actual fact the chimney was directly opposite Fred Green's Farm and at the back of Hallam's farmhouse also on Meadow Lane but down towards the station. In the track opposite Fred's Farm which is on the side of the road is exactly where the chimney was situated. I believe it was a chimney used in the manufacture of cement because old maps show a cement works further back into the site. The cement works was the long single storey building that later became the Shirt Works. My Mum worked there for a while. It is still there to this day but I have no idea what it is now used for.

The chimney was demolished many years ago and somewhere I have some better photos of it. When I can turn them up I'll add them to this post.

Tony Beswick

Arthur Fletcher's hay cart turned over at the top of Meadow Lane just where the Old Saxon Cross stood.

More about that famous cross later. That is the reason the row of houses just down the road were called Cross Cottages.

But for now a great photo of the chimney.

Tony Beswick.

                                     ---------------------
 

Lots of replies to my topic of Black Hole but all on Face book which I don’t use so I am not able to reply. So I will have to rely on David to add my comments.

Firstly nobody seems to have come up with a reason for the unusual name as far as I can see.

But back to Black Hole Row for a moment.

Margaret Taylor posted that her father Harold Cartledge demolished the cottages. So that is very interesting. I knew Mr Cartledge when I was a young lad but more of him later.

Roy Holland mentions a horse trough just down from the cottages. This was Lodes Well and never ran dry. A few years ago I went to look for it but it was so overgrown I couldn’t see it but even if the trough has gone the water must still run there. I am not 100% certain but I am fairly sure that the cottages were not connected to mains water and I think they got their water from the well.

I understand the last house in the row, the one nearest Barmour Clough had a little shop in the owner’s front room and they sold provisions to the rest of the residents. Basic items such as bread, cheese, corned beef and such like.

The house at the other end, that is the one nearest to Dove, had a fantastic gooseberry bush at the top of the back garden. It is now obscured by wild bushes that have seeded themselves.

Long after the demolition I used to go and gather the fruit for my Mum. She made it into jam and pies.

I quite liked the jam but hated the pies and have never had a gooseberry pie since

The fruits might still be there to this day I suppose.

Tony Beswick.

                                                       --------------------------------

I may have been wrong about Margaret Taylor’s post about her father Harold Cartledge who she says was from Sparrow Pit.
The Harold Cartledge I knew lived at the farm on the back road to Chapel; actually behind Black Hole Cottages.
The Harold Cartledge I knew was the grandfather of a Chapel Parish Councillor who does live at Sparrow Pit. I will have to ask her.
But for the moment a bit of a mystery.
As we are almost at an end on Black Hole Row where do you want to go next?
Down the road to Barmour Clough and up towards Sparrow Pit or the other way over the Hallsteads towards brick row and beyond.
You tell me.

Tony.

                                     --------------------- 

 Mr. Ron Hadfield has asked a question about Dove Holes Brickyard just down from Black Hole.

All I can say is this Ron:

I don’t know of any photos of the works but that is not to say there aren’t any.
Without going up to look until I am out on Wednesday I can’t remember whether there were 2 or 3 kilns. But they are easier to see from the main road than within the site itself. When I was just a kid the gypsies used to come and camp in there and certainly used the derelict kilns. They never left a mess despite their reputation of today.
There was a small reservoir at the rear of the works which collected water from the small but steep valley. The front of that has now been excavated to stop recreational activities and most unused reservoirs have suffered the same fate. I have got a few photos of the interior of the site as it is today and with David’s help I’ll put them on here on Monday. However, everything is completely overgrown and it is difficult to imagine what it once was.
In 2001 I did an old church conversion in Harpur Hill and when we took out some of the old windows there was wooden panelling below each window and those had to be ripped out as well.
These were built up with brick on edges and also had to be removed; on the flat side of the back of the bricks was the simple but perfect manufacturer’s name: ‘DOVE HOLES’.
There were about 50 and I decided to keep them and perhaps some people would have liked one to build into the facade of their houses.
When I went up the next day the bricks had gone into the skip and the skip had been replaced. Still that’s the way it crumbles some times.

"Photo 2 This shows how the brick kilns have been filled in"

photo 1 this shows where the dam wall has been ripped out.

Tony

Just a bit on Barytes:
It was quite an industry in its day.
One of the most famous is The Paint Mills Cottages in Goytsclough Quarry in the Goyt Valley which had a waterwheel and 20 employees. I do have a photo but do not want to go off the current topic.
Another large Barytes factory was at Tunstead Milton owned by Adam Morten.
Tony.

 Well Ron,

It looks like you are leading us down to Barmour Clough and on towards Sparrow Pit so that’s fine.
You mention a Barytes Mill and Laundry. Is that up towards Bennetstone Hall?
As you go down towards Barmour Clough you reach the roundabout. If you turn to the left there used to be a big boating lake there. It was very elaborate and even though I have seen a photo of it I don’t have a copy.
On the other side of the roundabout if you stood facing half way between looking up to Sparrow Pit and Dove Holes you will see a massive gouge in the hillside. This was Llodes Knowle Quarry and you can see the track from it leading towards Black Hole. The trucks carted the stone over this track and there was a connecting train line which went across the main road to the tram track.
Incidentally there seems to be a lot of activity on top of the railway bridge and thare is a tremendous amount of heavy machinery about the place. I suspect they may be taking the top off the hill over the railway tunnel and the natural place to dump the soil would be in the old boating lake or some of it at least in the old brickworks. Still I might be wrong. Probably am.

Tony.

To follow photos of the pathway around the hill and Barmour Clough Houses including the now demolished Clough Inn. One of 6 pubs in Dove Holes.

 18th March 2020
Good afternoon once again, Ron,

I recently posted a photo of one of the 6 pubs in Dove and that was the Clough Inn, one of the 6 ale houses in Dove. But before it was the Clough Inn its original name was The Bold Hector. But I’m sure you knew that anyway.
So 2 names; but nowhere near the number of names that The Wanted Inn had and that is where our journey will finish on that section. But we will have to call in on Bennetston Hall on the way.
Incidentally the Hall is not one of Dove’s 6 pubs.

Tony.

path around the hill by the tunnel

Barmour Clough houses including the Clough Inn

Here is a drawing which shows what I called the boating lake but on here it is described as a reservoir. Nonetheless I have seen photos of it as a boating lake.

It also shows Lodes Knowle Quarry, the Well and Black Hole Cottages. I did carry water a few times from the well to Margaret Cotterill’s house for her.

                                                         --------------------------------

  

 Another photograph of Lodes Well Bridge from the J.W.Sutherland collection. John French points out that just behind the locomotive can be seen arches of the old kilns of the Dove Holes Brick Company who had their own sidings.

Peter Norris added the comment:

"There use to be a tramp who lived next to the brick kilns if I remember correctly, my dad use to give him a cigar on Sunday mornings after he had been shooting".

This location seems to have been popular with photographers as can be seen in these J. W. Sutherland pictures supplied by John French

The Brick Works siding has already been mentioned. The plan below shows its location. Again, thanks to John French for allowing us to publish this.

That same bridge, this time by Jenny Nicholson courtesy of John French. "Platting Bridge going towards Dove Holes showing site of the old tramway and next to it the railway line. At the side of the old car ,you can see Lodes Well. It was very hard water, we had to cart water from here in very dry weather or in the big freeze in the 60s for the animals and for use in the house on our farm nearby. What a job and hardwork."

 There has been a photo added Courtesy of JW Sutherland which shows the train and in the background The Clough Inn and various other buildings. The photo was taken in October 1963 and of course I accept that.

The problem I have is that in 1963 I was always playing out with my mates and we went down to Barmour Clough a lot. There were loads of blackberry bushes down there and we used to pick bags of them to take home; the trouble was that it turned out we had picked about as many maggots as we had blackberries. Still happy days.

The problem I have with the photo is that in 1963 I was still living in Dove until the following year and for the life of me I can not recall any of those buildings even though I must have walked right passed them lots of times.

A very eminent historian once told me he had worked in the pub doing some plumbing work in the 1950’s just before it was pulled down. So I don’t know what the answer is. I might get Gail to have a look for me to see if she can find out the day it was finally demolished.


In the meantime I will add another photo of The Clough Inn.


Tony.

Tony Beswick has provided this photo of the bridge going up from Black Hole under the A6 to the quarries. "It was always soaking wet"

         Well at long last I have solved the mystery of Mr Harold Cartledge and it does appear that there were two of them. Harold Cartledge from Sparrowpit who demolished Black Hole Row and Harold Cartledge who lived on the farm up from Lodes Well Bridge.
I have managed to speak to a relative of both men who has answered the question of this mystery.
However, in order to protect some of the people who are still knocking about to this day, I will have to keep this information private as they might not want it to enter the public domain.
They have my phone number and email address so if they decide there is no problem after all they can always let me know or publish the information on here themselves.

Tony Beswick                                              

                                                -----------------------------

Hello everyone from Dove Holes and anywhere else come to that.

Just to put some flesh on the bones as it were:

My name is Tony Beswick: some of you may remember me and others will not have a clue as to who I am but here goes anyway:

I lived in Dove from 1951 when I was born until I was 13 years old at which point we moved to Whaley Bridge.
Just like all the Dove kids I went to Dove C of E school where I was taught by Mrs Vernon, then Miss Frogatt (everyone's favourite), then Mrs Godber and finally by the headmaster Mr Evans.
I played football and cricket for Dove. At age 11 I passed my 11 plus together with Philip Ratcliffe and we both went to Buxton College, a very scary place for 11 year olds.

I lived at number 4 Cross Cottages with my Mum Norma, My Dad Harry and my younger sister Julie. My Grandad and Nana Tom and Isabelle lived close by on Cowlow Lane.

No 1 Cross Cottages was a house and farm combined and owned by Arthur Fletcher and his wife Queenie; they had 2 children a son called Arthur and a daughter called Marjorie. Marjorie later became a relation as she married my Dad’s cousin Ian.
No 2 Cross Cottages was owned by Mr and Mrs Harrott who had 2 girls Linda and Susan.
No 3 Cross Cottages was owned by Ned Turner and his wife whose name I have now forgotten.
No 4 Cross Cottages was the house we lived in.
No 5 Cross Cottages was owned by Mr and Mrs Riddington. They didn’t have any children. Mr Riddington went to work somewhere but Mrs Riddington rarely stepped out of the door. When she did I was a bit scared of her.
I have always been very interested in local history and Dove Holes is one of my favourite places.
I have loads of old photos and information about the place, as you already might have seen.
Should you need any information about the place and bear in mind I don’t know everything then you can contact me through this website or phone me on 07914 693733
Tony Beswick.