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Kirk Ireton

Derbyshire DalesTowns and villages of the Peak DistrictVillages in Derbyshire
The Barley Mow and Post Office, Kirk Ireton 250994
The Barley Mow and Post Office, Kirk Ireton 250994

Kirk Ireton is a village and civil parish in Derbyshire, England, 4 miles (6.4 km) southwest of Wirksworth on a hillside near Carsington Water, 700 feet (210 m) above sea level. The population at the 2011 Census was 518. Ireton is a corruption of the Saxon hyre-tun, meaning "Irishman's enclosure"; Kirk was added after the Norman invasion and the building of the church. The village dates back to at least the Bronze Age. Kirk Ireton remains what it has always been, an agricultural village. Following the Second World War the number of working farms dropped from over thirty to half a dozen in the space of 40 years. The last cow was turned down Main Street in the late 1980s, but Fords, Matkins, Rowlands, Walkers and Wards still farm locally as they have done for many generations. Many of the former farm buildings have been adapted into houses. Much of the older part of the village dates back to the 17th century and is mostly built from sandstone, quarried locally. One of the oldest buildings in the village is the Barley Mow pub, which was one of the last premises in the country to accept decimalization, as the 87-year-old landlady, Lillian Ford, did not hold with the new money. The parish previously housed at least four other public houses: The Wheatsheaf, Old Bull's Head, The Windmill and The Gate. Holy Trinity Church is Norman, with the earliest parts being the three-bayed south and north arcades. The tower and the chancel are Perpendicular. It has an interesting custom known as roping for weddings, when the village children put a rope across the road and the bride and groom are not allowed to leave the church until a toll has been paid in silver by the groom. The village still celebrates a Wakes week, which starts on Trinity Sunday, the church's patronal festival. A procession of villagers is led by a local brass band, from the Barley Mow pub to the church for thanksgiving. Various events take place during the week, with a major all-day event on Saturday. The Post Office closed in 2008, before re-opening as a community shop. The premises were originally stables and the restored hay racks are still in place above shelving along one wall.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Kirk Ireton (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Kirk Ireton
Halfmoon Lane, Derbyshire Dales

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Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 53.055 ° E -1.603 °
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Halfmoon Lane

Halfmoon Lane
DE6 3JX Derbyshire Dales
England, United Kingdom
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The Barley Mow and Post Office, Kirk Ireton 250994
The Barley Mow and Post Office, Kirk Ireton 250994
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Callow, Derbyshire
Callow, Derbyshire

Callow is a village and a civil parish in the Derbyshire Dales District, in the English county of Derbyshire. At the 2011 Census the population of the civil parish was less than 100. Details are included in the civil parish of Kirk Ireton. It is near the small town of Wirksworth and the reservoir Carsington Water. Callow is recorded as Caldelawe in 1086 as having two caracutes of land as a berewick (supporting farm) of nearby Wirksworth. Callow Hall (not to be confused with Callow Hall at Ashbourne) is a moated site with a seventeenth century gritstone double-bayed main farmhouse building constructed over a thirteenth century undercroft.Callow was one of the manors of the Duchy of Lancaster in the Middle Ages and was involved in a dispute between the Duchy and the Stathams of Morley, who had a tenancy at Callow. "30 mares, 30 Ox, 30 cows and 20 bullocks worth 100 marks were taken from Duchy of Lancaster lands at Morley, Callow and Wirksworth and (the Stathams) cut down John of Gaunt’s trees to the value of £100, dug in his mine, assaulted his free tenants and serfs, destroyed their tenements and practiced such oppressions at Ralph Statham’s court that many of his (John of Gaunts) tenants had left". Ralph Statham died on 13 June 1380 but his sons carried on their feud with the Duchy. On 20 June 1381 Philip of Okeover, one of John of Gaunt's knights with his retainers, struck back at the Stathams with an attack on their lands at Callow. This feud continued in an on-off kind of way throughout the 1380s, as it is recorded again, in 1387. Callow was also one of the lead ore producing manors close to Wirksworth and in 1822 lead miners sinking a shaft at the Dream Mine, on Stainsborough Hill at Callow, discovered the remains of a prehistoric woolly rhinoceros.

Hopton Hall
Hopton Hall

Hopton Hall is an 18th-century country house at Hopton, near Wirksworth, Derbyshire. It is a Grade II listed building. The Manor of Hopton, anciently the seat of the de Hopton family, was acquired by the Gell family in 1553 by Ralph Gell (1491–1564) who also purchased lands at Darley Abbey and Rocester.John Gell was created a baronet in 1642 (see Gell baronets). The Baronetcy was extinct in 1719 and the estate passed to John Eyre in 1732 via his mother Katherine Gell, daughter of 2nd baronet John Gell, at which point Eyre added the surname of Gell. The house has its origins in the 16th century when it was built by Thomas Gell as a two-storey, three-bay manor house. It was extended and remodelled by Philip Eyre Gell in the late 18th century. The north entrance front has three storeys and seven bays, flanked by tower wings with pyramidal roofs.Notable members of the Gell family include the religious patron Katherine Gell, Philip Gell's younger brother, Admiral John Gell and Philip's son Sir William Gell.Philip Gell's daughter and heir married William Pole Thornhill MP, on whose death the estate passed to his kinsman Henry Pole, later known as Henry Chandos-Pole-Gell (High Sheriff of Derbyshire) in 1886. The estate of some 3,700 acres (15 km2) was broken up in the 20th century, a major part being sold to a water authority for the creation of Carsington Reservoir. The house itself was put up for auction in 1989, passing out of the family. The present owner is Sir Bill Thomas and his family, a former senior vice president of Hewlett-Packard Europe who was drafted in by Ed Miliband to chair Labour's "small business taskforce". Thomas and his wife Julie have opened their formal gardens and lake to the public during February and early March for the woodland Snowdrop Walk and during the summer to the Rose Garden. Both periods allow access to the 30 acres (12 ha) of grounds and 2 km (1.2 mi) of signposted paths.The document collection of the Gell family of Hopton Hall is held by the Derbyshire Record Office.

Haarlem Mill
Haarlem Mill

Haarlem Mill, on the River Ecclesbourne in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, was an early cotton mill. Built by Richard Arkwright, it was the first cotton mill in the world to use a steam engine, though this was used to supplement the supply of water to the mill's water wheel, not to drive the machinery directly.The site of the mill, including an older corn mill, was leased by Arkwright in 1777. Construction of the mill building in brick and stone was completed by June 1780, and the reported death of a young man attempting to climb on the water wheel suggests that it was operational at this date. After initially investigating the purchase of a steam engine from the Birmingham firm of Boulton and Watt, Arkwright installed a reciprocating steam engine, probably manufactured by Francis Thompson of Ashover, to supplement the occasionally inadequate water supply. This was a medium-sized engine with a 26-foot-long (7.9 m) beam, an 18-foot-diameter (5.5 m) flywheel a 30-inch-diameter (760 mm) cylinder and a stroke of 5 feet (1.5 m). Similar to engines commonly used at the time to pump out nearby mines, it operated 24 hours a day, powering two pumps.By 1789 the mill was employing almost 200 people, but it was sold by Arkwright three years later. The base of the original building survives, but the upper three floors have since been rebuilt. The empty grade II* listed building was listed on Historic England's Heritage at Risk Register but in 2018 was noted that a major phase of repair and conversion work had been completed.