Glossop Town Profile

This article Glossop Town Profile was printed in Living Edge Magazine in October 2002 and is reproduced with kind permission from the Editor.

Living Edge visited Glossop following the serious flooding which occurred in July 2002 and found a town with a determined spirit and a cause for celebration.

Peggy Davies, the manager of Glossop Heritage Centre, has worked a six day week for sixteen years without receiving a penny in wages. The Centre receives financial support from the local council towards accommodation costs but has to be self-financing in all other respects and Peggy, a former infant school teacher, gives her time voluntarily because, like all good teachers she has a burning desire to share her enthusiasm, knowledge and inquisitiveness with other people.

The Centre has its origins in an exhibition of local history which Peggy and Malcolm Pilkington organised in 1984 as a contribution to European Heritage Year. The display, which was held in the town's Adult Education Centre, was so well received that local people pleaded for it to be displayed in a permanent exhibition space. Two years of lobbying by Peggy resulted in the County and Borough Councils agreeing to buy the lease on some premises which had become vacant in the town's main square. The Glossop and District Heritage Trust, which administers the Centre, raised their own funds by writing, publishing and selling a book based on old photographs of the town; the local newspaper group donated archive copies of the Glossop Chronicle dating back to 1895 and local people contributed artifacts to add to those featured in the 1984 exhibition.

Space may be limited and finances may be tight, but Peggy and her helpers have put together an eclectic and fascinating collection of artifacts and photographic material. Victorian bodices are displayed alongside a 2002 Commonwealth Games T-shirt; household flat irons are juxtaposed with old farming implements and shoe making equipment; a collection of mildly risque and cute; Victorian seaside postcards occupies the same room as photographs of Glossop's Victorian mills; transport memorabilia sit alongside visual memories of Glossop at war.

Peggy also provides wall space for local exhibitors. One room is used as an art gallery where some of Glossop's highly talented local artists can hang work for sale, and a set of display boards in another room currently carries a photographic record by Keith Bate of 57 Glossop shopkeepers and their premises - a fitting Jubilee Year testimony to the town's commercial activities and its excellent range of specialist shops.

Peggy also responds to requests for information from many. On the day of Living Edge's visit, she was dealing with a query from Granada Television about aircraft wrecks on the nearby heights of Kinder Scout and Bleaklow, notorious graveyards for Second World War aircraft. On the previous day, she had entertained sixty members of the American Beatrice Potter Society, who had been drawn to Glossop because Beatrice's grandfather was the owner of the town's largest cotton print works. With typical entrepreneurial zeal, Peggy had written a pamphlet about the Potter family and sold copies to her American guests.

The surprising link with Beatrice's Potter is not the only unlikely association to be found in the town. In 1606, the manor of Glossop was acquired by the Howard family, whose head is the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal and the premier peer of England, who also carries the title Lord Howard of Glossop. The first two centuries of their ownership saw the Dukes taking more out of Glossop than they put in, but the twelfth Duke began the development of New Glossop, also known as Howard Town, by constructing a new Town Hall in 1838 and the thirteenth Duke not only built a Market Hall and a railway station but also brought piped water to the town in 1852.

The Town Hall , which faces the Heritage Centre across the nicely manicured lawns and flower beds of Norfolk Square, is topped by a distinctive clock tower and its arcaded and colonnaded ground floor is now used as a small shopping precinct. The Market Hall, which is adorned with the coat-of-arms of the Norfolks and has grand Doric columns and pilasters, now houses the municipal offices but is still the venue for indoor and outdoor markets. The railway station, on Norfolk Street, is topped by a sculptured lion, the emblem of the Howards.

Howard Town was developed to cater for the huge population explosion which took place in Glossop in the nineteenth century when the town developed as a textile manufacturing centre, largely producing cheap fabrics for colonial markets. By the middle of the century there were over fifty mills in the town, together with the Partington paper works and the large print works run by the Potter family.

Glossop's excellent tourist information centre, on Victoria Street, is housed in the former gatehouse of the Howard Town Mill, which once stretched for half a mile. Many of the old mill buildings have gone now and those that remain have been put to new uses, but extensive tracts of Victorian workers' houses are still in existence.

The central area, which includes Norfolk Square, the Town Hall and the Market Hall, is vibrant and architecturally interesting, but the terraces of grey stone houses can give much of Glossop a grim and somber appearance, particularly on a dull day. However, another pocket of grand Victorian buildings is well worth seeking out. A left turn along Howard Street, just above the railway station, followed by a right turn into Talbot Street gives access to an impressive set-piece framed by two imposing buildings. Victoria Hall, with its large, rather Rhenish tower, was built as a public library and meeting place and is still used for these purposes. The Unitarian Chapel, which also has a high tower, was built with contributions from Edward Partington and Edmund Potter, Beatrice's grandfather. The building has now been converted into living accommodation, giving its occupants some of the most unusual houses in Glossop.An inscription on a gatepost immediately beyond the chapel and the library indicates the entrance to the Howards' former estate office.

Every year, on the weekend after August Bank Holiday, the people of Glossop remember the days of King Cotton by staging a Victorian Weekend. Shopkeepers and many families in the town put on Victorian Costume, music from jazz bands and barrel organs permeates the streets and there are parades, displays and various performances. This year's attractions, which were organised by Glossop Arts and Leisure Association (GALA), included a daring high wire walk by the Great Blondin.

A trip to Old& Glossop, a small enclave reached by following a signpost half a mile up& Norfolk Street, allows visitors to turn the clock back even further. The little Old Town area is centered around the large Parish church which occupies a sunken site. Only one arch at the east end of the north aisle survives from the medieval church, which was largely rebuilt in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth centuries, but a wonderfully preserved row of mullion-windowed cottages adjacent to the churchyard includes superb gables residence of 1689 which was once occupied by the Manor Bailiff. A stone cross at the foot of the terrace was the scene for weekly markets and annual fairs from 1290 to 1844.

Glossop's old town has long remained a well kept secret, but it hit the national headlines in July when the lower lying parts of the enclave, together with the adjacent Manor Park and some areas in central Glossop, were submerged by a flash flood. The television coverage didn't have quite the same impact on the public as reports of flood damage in the ancient cities of Prague and Dresden, but 150 residential properties and 40 businesses were affected in Glossop. As Peggy Davies makes abundantly clear to the 12,000 visitors who come to the Heritage Centre each year, Glossop is also a town of fascinating heritage.