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NEW MILLS - Description from Pigot's 1835 Directory

NEW MILLS, an extensive hamlet, in the parish of Glossop, and in the High Peak hundred, is 14 miles from Manchester, 6 from Chapel-en-le-Frith, and 8 from Stockport. It is pleasantly situate on the borders of Derbyshire and Cheshire; and, within a comparatively few years, has risen to importance in the manufacturing district; cotton spinning being carried on here to a considerable extent, affording employment to numerous hands.

The factories are in a great measure hid from public view in passing through the village, being built at the foot of the stream, under high towering rocks. Good house coal, as well as other kinds for the purposes of machinery, is obtained near to the village, the top bed strata running from sixteen to twenty inches thick. The village is built chiefly upon a stone quarry, but the soil in many parts is fertile, producing good crops of wheat and potatoes. A new road which has been lately formed to join the Buxton road, will doubtless prove a great accomodation.

The places of worship are, a new church, erected within these few years, and chapels for the use of the methodists' old connexion, primitive methodists, and Calvinists. The church is a handsome building of stone, in the gothic style, and is dedicated to St. George. The cost of its erection amounted to about £3,500, the parliamentary commissioners having granted £2,500 in aid of the work: the ground for its site was given by Lord George Cavendish. The living is a perpetual curacy, in the archdeaconry of Derby, and diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, and in the patronage of the vicar of Glossop. The edifice contains about 500 free sittings. A charity school, for the gratuitous instruction of nine poor children, is in the hamlet of Whittle, and there is an allotment of land for the support of another school.

The name of NEW MILLS does not appear in the parliamentary population returns. It was originally known as Bowden-Middle-Call, comprising several hamlets: about a century ago it was subdivided, three of the hamlets remaining attached to Hayfield, and the other four, BEARD, OLERSET, WHITTLE and THORNSETT, being formed into a township. A new mill was then erected for the use of the inhabitants of these hamlets, upon the river Kinder, and the name of New Mills was, in consequence, conferred on the four before mentioned hamlets - which, by the returns for 1831, contained, together, 3,538 inhabitants.

[Description from Pigot and Co's Commercial Directory for Derbyshire, 1835
Transcribed by Rosemary Lockie ©1999]

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