The Great Floods of 1930 and 1931

 June 18th 1930 was a day of tragedy in New Mills when torrential rain accompanied by a thunderstorm brought a great flood to the district resulting in the loss of two lives and much destruction.  

These illustrations are from the pages of The Ashton Reporter.

There were further floods in September 1931 that affected a wider area than New Mills

 

Windsor Castle Lodging House flooded once again 

Mr J. J.Hadfield makes his escape from Garrison Printworks
 

A steam lorry makes its way along flooded Buxton Road near the quarry in Furness Vale.

The notice board advertises bungalows for sale.

 

The newspaper cuttings are courtesy of "Books at the Basin" in Whaley Bridge

Along Industrial Lines.

 Mark Lomas has sent us some locomotive photographs from his collection. These engines were all used in the construction of Fernilee Reservoir during the 1930s and Kinder Reservoir between 1903 and 1911.  Fernilee was built by the Derbyshire Company,  Lehane McKenzie & Shand Ltd.  Kinder was built for Stockport Corporation by  Abram Kellet of Ealing, London.  

Contractor's locomotives frequently changed hands and locations or might be hired for a limited period.

Brownhill was one of the 3ft gauge locomotives that worked on the construction of Fernilee Reservoir. The locomotive was built in 1903 by The Hunslet Engine Company of Leeds.
 

                                                Only the nameplate has survived

 Locomotive "Kinder" at Fernilee. This 0-4-0 engine was built by Orenstein & Koppel of Berlin in 1925

An almost identical engine was "Vyrnwy" built in 1930.  It was built specifically for reservoir constrution and was perhaps delivered new to Fernilee, It is named after another reservoir built 50 years earlier at Lake Vyrnwy in North Wales.

 
No 2 was built by Kerr Stuart & Co. Ltd of Stoke on Trent. This tiny engine was one of the "Wren"  class built in large numbers between 1902 and 1930.

                                        Two further views of No 2 at work.

For construction of Kinder Reservoir near Hayfield, a standard gauge railway was laid from Hayfield Station to the site of the dam, a distance of nearly 2 miles
/ 3 km.  The railway carried both building materials and workmen. The train of four small passenger coaches was known as "The Kinder Mail".

 

No 6 is a standard design of   Hudswell, Clarke & Company of Leeds who specialised in small industrial engines.

This is possibly the same locomotive hauling wagons loaded with stone.

A lot of activity at the dam site in 1910 with three locomotives visible. 

"The Kinder Mail" The workmen's train of five, 4-wheeled coaches.
 

 

Three Spinsters and a Fortune in Coal

Stonehouse Farm, Hayfield

Stonehouse Farm on Edale Road in Hayfield, was in the eighteenth century, the home of the Hall family. There are records of this family in Hayfield from at least the 1600s.  Joseph, born on 14^th December 1777, was their second son. He would not inherit  the property nor did he have any interest in the family sheep farm. On reaching adulthood, he rented a home in Birch Vale and found employment in the small coal pits then being worked on Ollerset Moor. The building of the Peak Forest Canal and the Peak Forest Tramway, saw the establishment at Bugsworth of a number of lime kilns. Here was a ready market for the locally mined coal, despite its poor quality. Much of Ollerset Moor was owned by the Duchy of Lancaster and Joseph was able to obtain his own leases from them and other landowners, to mine coal in his own right. He married Hannah Lowe and they moved into Moor Lodge, high on Ollerset Moor and close to the coalfield.  Joseph Hall died there on 8^th August 1843 after falling ill with hepatitis.

Christie and Watts

 

Agatha Christie at Upper House, Hayfield in 1913. A digitally colourised photograph

James Watts was born in 1804 and baptised at Ardwick.  It is said that he began his working life at a small weaver's cottage in Didsbury. The rags to riches story seems however, to be a little fanciful. His family did indeed come from a small cottage and farm in Burnage and were gingham weavers who employed some of their neighbours in the enterprise. Longevity seemed to be a family trait; his father lived to be 93; his grandmother 92, and his grandfather 103. The young James was sent to a private school in Salford and then to London to learn the drapery business. On his return, he joined his elder brother in the cotton trade before setting up on his own in Ashton. He was to return to Manchester and join his brother John in a business opened on Deansgate in 1796 and known as "The Bazaar". Specialising in ginghams hand-woven by the family, this is now acknowledged as the first department store in the World. The Watts brothers moved to Brown Street in 1836 selling the Deansgate store to three employees, Thomas Kendal, James Milne and Adam Faulkner. Since the death of Faulkner in 1862, the business has been trading as Kendal Milne & Co. There has therefore been a department store on the site for 223 years.

A Postcard From Hayfield

These tinted postcards were published in a set of 6 by Raphael Tuck and Co. in November 1905

A Curious Occurrence at Hayfield

from Vivian Preston Dubé
7 September · Glenbrook, NSW, Australia

Hayfield, besides being the chief portal to Kinder, is not without some singular event to keep its
name in remembrance. Indeed, it seems to have had a resurrection on its own account in 1745.
Dr. James Clegg, a Presbyterian minister, who resided at Chapel-en-le-Frith in the middle of
the last century, gave an account of the extraordinary occurrence in a letter to his friend, the Rev.
Ebenezer Latham, then the principal of Findern Academy.
' I know,' he wrote, ' you are pleased with anything curious and uncommon by nature ; and if what
follows shall appear such, I can assure you from eye-witnesses of the truth of every particular. In a
church about three miles from us, the indecent custom still prevails of burying the dead in the place
set apart for the devotions of the living ; yet the parish not being very populous, we could scarce
imagine that the inhabitants of the grave could be straightened for want of room ; yet it should seem
so ; for on the last of August several hundreds of bodies rose out of the grave in the open day in the
church, to the great astonishment and terror of several spectators. They deserted the coffin, and
arising out of the grave, immediately ascended towards heaven, singing in concert all along, as they
mounted through the air. They had no winding-sheets about them, yet did not appear quite naked ;
their vesture seemed streaked with gold, interlaced with sable, skirted with white, yet thought to be
exceedingly light, by the agility of their motions, and the swiftness of their ascent. They left a most
fragrant and delicious odour behind them, but were quickly out of sight ; and what has become of them,
or in what distant regions of this vast system they have since fixed their residence, no mortal can tell.
The church is in Heafield, three miles from Chappelle-en-le-frith, 1745.' (Taken from The History of Derbyshire by John Pendleton 1886)