Middleton by Wirksworth Conservation

the route of the veins underground, with regular canopy on both sides of the road help to preserve shafts along the length of the vein. the separate identity of the two places. A long, linear main street with dense development loosely Lead was mined in this part of Derbyshire for connects two focal points; the main junction and centuries, as long ago as Roman times (43-410 AD). focus of activity at the north end of the settlement It has a much longer recorded history than is centred upon The Green at Middleton and the quarrying. southern nucleus is centred upon the space in front of The Rising Sun at Rise End. The land surrounding the village of Middleton is completely surrounded by lead-mining activity (see The main ribbon of development that rises up the Plate 1, geological map). The lead ore was mined hill in Middleton was the principal medieval street. for a number of uses including roofing, plumbing, The constraints of the steep hillside, on the west pewter, musket balls & lead shot and the side of the street, and the pattern of settlement, manufacture of pigments & paints. with shallow building plots, seem to indicate that the development may have initially been The best preserved lead-mined landscape is along concentrated entirely along the east side of the the Via Gellia, which lies just to the north of the street and that over time buildings were “dug into” village, outside the conservation area. The steep- the hillside on the west side of the street, and sided limestone gorge and access difficulties and encroached upon Main Street. The village is topographical constraints have meant that the area without the distinctive long parcels of land usually has had little in the way of active land-management, associated with the medieval pattern of “crofts and or agricultural development. This has led to the tofts”. These may simply have been lost, as a result survival of a high concentration of structures and of successive waves of redevelopment, but this is underground remains from the lead mining not conclusive. Short crofts existed to the east of industry. It is recognised as a High Priority Lead Main Street, but these have been densely Landscape. Nether Ratchwood and Rantor Mines, developed. If long crofts did exist, they were within the southern part of the conservation area, probably located on the steep slopes to the west of are similarly recognised as High Priority Lead Main Street, lying between Main Street and Landscape and are a Scheduled Monument. Middleton Moor. To the south of the village lies Wirksworth, a town A village green was often located on the very edge of national importance for lead mining, the of the village, as it still is here. The earliest County heartland of lead mining within this part of maps show that there was no road extending to the Derbyshire and the place where the Barmote north of Middleton in the 18th century (New Road Court³ was held, and still is held to this day. The is 19th century), so the “green” was truly on the wealth of Wirksworth was built upon the success of perimeter of the village. lead mining and it was here that many of the wealthy lead merchants lived. The Derbyshire lead industry declined after the late 18th century because of worked-out veins, increased production costs and cheaper foreign imports. The industry was protected from foreign ore by import duty but this was eventually abolished in 1845. Lead mining has now disappeared from this area of Derbyshire. Lead was last being worked in the 1920s. Plan Form The village of Middleton was separate and distinct from Rise End, although over time they became less so. During the 20th century, a considerable amount of demolition along the east side of the road at Rise End has again divided the two settlements. Pockets of open space and a lush tree ³ Barmote Court - a specialist lead mining court established to preside over ore measurement, inspect mines, collect fines & settle disputes arising over lead mining title, etc. 5 4. ORIGINS AND HISTORIC There is little known about the development of DEVELOPMENT OF THE AREA Rise End. The name Middletoncross appears on several maps, including a plan of c1720 by Samuel The conservation area of Middleton-by-Wirksworth Hutchinson, which shows Middleton Cross to be at comprises two old settlements, Middleton and, to Rise End, near the junction of the B5023 and its south, Rise End and a large area of land to the B5035. It may have been a boundary marker, on south and south-east of Rise End which falls within the parish boundary, or a preaching cross, usually Wirksworth parish. Whilst the settlement of found by the side of an important highway. Middleton lies within its own parish, Rise End falls on the boundary between Middleton parish and Although there was clearly a pattern of extensive Wirksworth parish. settlement within Middleton from at least as early as 1086, and there are a wealth of historical Middleton is first mentioned in Domesday (1086) documents, there are few maps of the village until when it was described as Middeltune. The name the 19th century. The earliest large-scale map of the means “Middle Farm”. By 1297 it had received the village is the 1835 Enclosure of the Commons and suffix juxta Wyrkesworth (by Wirksworth). Rise End Waste, which lay upon Middleton Moor and is first identifiable as le Risende in 1309 and the Middleton Wood (Plate 3). The remainder of the derivation of this name is probably the word “hris”, parish appears to have been largely enclosed meaning brushwood. piecemeal by private agreement by this time. Sanderson’s map of 1835 shows the village prior to The parish of Middleton comprises the village as the 1835 enclosure (Plate 2). well as the hamlets of Ible and Ironbrook (Ivonbrook) Grange, to the north. The medieval open fields lay to the north & east of the village. Beyond these lay Middleton Wood, on Middleton was an outlying “berewick” or farm, part the southern slopes of the narrow limestone gorge of the royal manor at Wirksworth. The village was of the Griffe Grange valley. A route led from the served by Wirksworth Parish church and it did not east side of the village along Duke Street (known as have its own church until 1839. Hallicar Lane in 1835), as far as “Lamber Close Beach” above the lead smelting mill just beyond Black Tor. To the south-west of the village lay Middleton Moor, a large expanse of common & waste land. Porter Lane was turnpiked in 1759 with the creation of the Oakerthorpe & Ashbourne Turnpike. A toll-house was built (outside the conservation area) near to the entrance to the National Stone Centre and another toll-house was built at Rise End (Wirksworth Tithe Map), just before the railway bridge (pers. comm. A Partington), although it may be associated with the later 1804 turnpike. New Road was built circa 1804 as a branch of the Cromford & Newhaven Turnpike to link with the Via Gellia in the valley to the north. The Enclosure Award of 1835 relates primarily to the enclosure of Middleton Moor & Middleton Wood and the formalisation of a series of roads across the moor, which provided access to a number of lead mines. It also includes formalisation of the various encroachments and scattered development that had taken place on the hillside to the west of the village, both at the top of Water Lane and in the area that has been replaced Plate 2. Extract from Sanderson’s map of 1835, showing with Middleton Mine, to the west of the street now the distinctive field pattern to the north and the expanse of known as Hillside. Middleton Moor prior to its partial enclosure 6 Plate 3. 1835 Enclosure Map. Middleton Moor is located at the top of the map. The areas in pale blue are marked “old inclosures”. The new enclosures are numbered One of the striking characteristics of the settlement, state…….to provide and lay down in lieu thereof demonstrated by the enclosure award, is the pipes of cast metal, or of such material as he shall presence of springs and sources of water to the think proper for conveying the water from the said west of Main Street, which seem to have shaped the spring to the said Town Basin….” form of the settlement and created an opportunity for expansion on the west side of the village. A Accounts from the 1760s (R Buxton “Extracts large part of the Enclosure Award deals with water, from the accounts of Richard Buxton”) describe in and a section has been reproduced here verbatim; detail how the Great Trough or Basin was worked by stone masons and was brought down Water “the inhabitants of the said township have been Lane with ropes drawn by men and a “reservoir” used to be supplied with water from certain springs was created and finished at the same time. The arising out of parts of the said commons or waste Great Basin was located in the centre of the village lands and grounds called Middleton Moor, and out green and had a piped supply. This structure is not of old inclosures within the said township, one of the same as the later basin seen in photographs. which springs supplies a place called the Town Basin, The “Cross” at the top of the town was also another is called the Roarer, and others rise in or finished in 1769 but precisely where this was near a place called Water-lane, and the waters from located is not known.

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