The Duke, The Rector & the Industrialist

Derbyshire

1550s: Chatsworth

Chatsworth is one of the most beautiful stately mansions in England in both design and setting. It has gone through many changes since the 1550s when building began on the original house by Bess of Hardwick and her husband William Cavendish. The Elizabethan structure remained largely unaltered for more than a century before the fourth Earl, and first Duke, of Devonshire developed a passion for renovation.

Over the course of twenty years he revamped the entire building, apparently carried away with the endless possibilities. The South Front was removed in 1686, followed by the East Front, the installation of the spectacular Cascade and several new outbuildings, and grand formal gardens. The West Front was tackled between 1699 and 1702, and finally the North Front, completed shortly before the duke died in 1707.

Another century passed before the 6th Duke transformed Chatsworth into what it is today. A decade-long, 21st-century renovation was completed in 2018, restoring the house in its traditional finishes, which include, according to the present 12th Duke, “some of the 18th-century gold-leaf bling”.

1666: Eyam Plague Village

One of the prettiest villages in Derbyshire is Eyam, seven miles from Chatsworth. When the plague arrived in the village from London in 1665, the young rector, William Mompesson, persuaded his parishioners to ‘self-isolate’ themselves to prevent the disease infecting the neighbouring villages and towns. For more than a year, no-one left and no-one entered the village. William and his wife Catherine visited the sick, the dying and the orphans. The Earl of Devonshire and their neighbours left food and medicines at the village boundary.

Over the course of eight days, Elizabeth Hancock dragged the bodies of her husband and their six children for burial, no-one daring to help. Their graves can still be seen today, along with those of some of the 260 residents who died before the end of 1666. Among them were Catherine Mompesson, at the age of 27.

“This is the saddest letter that ever my pen did write,” wrote William. “My dearest dear is gone to her eternal rest …” William survived, as did Elizabeth Hancock. Many cottages in Eyam have plaques outside relating the fate of the families who lived, and died, in them more than 350 years ago. Reading them is a sobering lesson in what we have to be thankful for in our own times. 

1770s: Richard Arkwright, Cromford Mills

“Arkwright didn’t just invent the spinning machine. He invented the modern factory.” – Edward Meig

In 1764 James Hargreaves, a hand loom weaver from Lancashire, invented the ‘spinning jenny’, capable of spinning several threads at once. It produced only weft threads, unable to produce yarn of sufficiently high quality for the warp – that was later supplied by Arkwright's spinning frame.

Arkwright teamed up with a watchmaker, John Kay, who was working on a mechanical spinning machine. The outcome in 1767 was capable of spinning 128 threads at a time – the first powered, automatic, and continuous textile machine.

Arkwright built a huge, multi-storey factory in Cromford, Derbyshire, alongside the River Derwent and moved cotton spinning and weaving from home production to mass manufacturing. For the first few years of this mechanisation, the weavers benefited from the higher wages but with improvements in productivity over the next decades, the handloom weavers and other craftspeople lost their traditional livelihoods. Resentment began to build and by 1810 the Luddite movement had led to widescale machine-breaking.

There was no turning back, however – the machines were more efficient and more profitable. Factories sprang up in towns – which soon became cities – and workers flocked to them from the countryside. By 1900, industrialisation was established and the world had changed.

Ironically, a plague of our own, and the sophisticated technology at our fingertips, have sent us back to working at home in our 21st century cottages.