Belper

Coordinates: 53°01′44″N 1°28′30″W / 53.029°N 1.475°W / 53.029; -1.475

Belper
Belper  Belper shown within Derbyshire
Population	20,548
OS grid reference	SK351476
Parish	Belper
District	Amber Valley
Shire county	Derbyshire
Region	East Midlands
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BELPER
Postcode district	DE56
Dialling code	01773
Police	Derbyshire
Fire	Derbyshire
Ambulance	East Midlands
EU Parliament	East Midlands
UK Parliament	Amber Valley, Mid Derbyshire
List of places: UK • England • Derbyshire

Belper is a town and civil parish in the local government district of Amber Valley in Derbyshire, England.

It is eight miles north of Derby, on the A6, by the River Derwent, and has a population of 20,548 in 8,790 households (2001 census^[1]). It has regular bus services to Derby and to the north, to Ripley and many surrounding villages. Belper railway station is situated on the Midland Main Line, and is mainly served by local trains on the Derwent Valley Line Derby–Matlock service.

As a relatively small town, it has four supermarkets, and a shopping area in the town centre including a large department store. There are several primary schools in the town, and a secondary school.

Origins

At the time of the Norman occupation, Belper was part of the land centred on Duffield held by the family of Henry de Ferrers. The Domesday Survey records a manor of "Bradley" which is thought to have been somewhere in the vicinity of the Coppice. At that time it was probably within the Forest of East Derbyshire which covered the whole of the county east of the Derwent. It was possibly appropriated by William de Ferrers, 4th Earl of Derby at some time after it was disafforested in 1225 and became part of Duffield Frith.^[2]

The town's name is thought to be a corruption of the name Beaurepaire (beautiful retreat), the name given to a hunting lodge, the first record being a charter of 1231. This would have been the property of Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster who died in 1296, the record of his estate mentioning "a capital mansion". The chapel built at that time still exists. Originally consecrated in 1250 as the Chapel of St. Thomas, it was rededicated to St. John during the reign of King Henry VIII.

St John's Chapel (originally St. Thomas)

History

A nailer's workshop in Joseph Street

Strutt's North Mill built in 1803, to replace the original one destroyed by fire

Belpers East mill built 1912.

The coal deposits of Derbyshire are frequently associated with ironstone within the clay substrate. Initially obtained from surface workings it would later have been mined in shallow bell pits. It is thought that this was important for the de Ferrers family, who were also ironmasters in Normandy. ^[3] By the reign of Henry VIII it must have become a substantial village. It is recorded that in 1609 fifty-one persons died of the plague. ^[4]

From at least the 13th century there were forges in the Belper and Duffield areas and it became a major source of income, particularly for nail making. By the end of the eighteenth century there were around 500 'naylor's' workshops in the town. It was hot exhausting work for very little remuneration and by the end of the century they had been superseded by machinery.

Much of their output was used in the expansion of the town from 1776, for Belper was one of the first 'mill towns', as a result of events at nearby Cromford. The industrialist Jedediah Strutt was a partner of Richard Arkwright and built a water-powered cotton mill of his own, the second in the world, at Belper. In 1784 he built the North Mill, and across the road joined by a bridge, the West Mill. In 1803 the North Mill was burnt down to be replaced by an innovative new structure designed to be fireproof. Other extensions followed, culminating in the East Mill in 1913, a present day Belper landmark. To this day the mill derives power from the river, using turbine-driven electrical generators.

Strutt had previously patented his "Derby Rib" for stockings, and the plentiful supply of cotton encouraged the trade of framework knitting which had been carried on in the town and surrounding villages since the middle of the previous century. Mechanisation arrived about 1850, but, in any case, the fashion for stockings for men was disappearing. However elaborately patterned stockings, for ladies especially, were coming into vogue, and the output of the Belper "cheveners" was much in demand.

The coming of the North Midland Railway in 1840 brought further prosperity and, in 1820 Belper was the first place in the UK to get gas lighting, at a works erected by the Strutts at Milford. Demand was such that in 1850, the Belper Gas and Coke Company was formed, with a works in the present Goods Road. Electricity followed in 1922 from the Derby and Nottingham Electrical Power Company's works at Spondon. The first telephones came in 1895 from the National Telephone Company. The end of the century also brought the motor car, CH218, owned by Mr. James Bakewell of The Elms being possibly the first.

Belper remained a textile and hosiery centre well into the Twentieth century. Meanwhile other companies were developing in various ways. Iron founding led to the Park Foundry becoming a leader in the solid fuel central heating market. Adshead and Ratcliffe had developed Arbolite putty for iron-framed windows, while Dalton and Company which had been producing lubricating oils, developed ways of recovering used engine oil which proved especially useful during the Second World War. In 1938, A.B.Williamson had developed a substance for conditioning silk stockings. The introduction of nylons after the war seemed set to make it redundant, however mechanics and fitters had discovered its usefulness in cleaning hands and it is marketed to this day by Deb Proprietaries as Swarfega.

Recent times

King Street, Belper

Bridge Street looking north. The East Mill can be seen in the background

Before 1983 the town gave its name to the Belper constituency, which from 1945 to 1970 was the seat of George Brown, the often controversial deputy leader of the Labour Party.

After the Second World War, J. W. Thornton, the chocolate maker, moved into the town from Sheffield, which helped to alleviate the employment problems arising from the contraction of the earlier industries. Subsequently, the company moved a few miles away to Swanwick.

Cotton spinning and textile production has virtually ended and all that nowadays remains of Strutt's Mills is the large East Mill and the smaller North Mill, preserved as part of the Derwent Valley Mills heritage sites. In 2001 the valley between Derby's silk mill, through Belper, to Arkwright's Cromford Mills was given World Heritage status. The weir at Belper used to power four mill complexes. Even now it provides all the electricity for the North and East Mills.

Among the Strutts' bequests to the town was the Herbert Strutt Grammar School. This became a primary school in 1973 with the opening of Belper High School, and remained in use as such until the Easter break in 2008 when it was replaced by a new building on the edge of the town. Notable among its students were the actors Alan Bates and Timothy Dalton, while the actress Suzy Kendall was born and grew up in the town.

Belper is twinned with Pawtucket, Rhode Island , the connection being Samuel Slater of Milford who was an apprentice of Jedediah Strutt and absconded to America to found that country's cotton spinning industry.

Belper made international news in 2001 after rejecting a gift of a large fibreglass Mr. Potato Head model from Pawtucket, as residents considered it was "ugly".

At the 2006 Commonwealth Games, Belper-born swimmer Ross Davenport won two gold medals and a silver for England.

In 2009, the "Do Us A Flavour" competition for the next Walkers crisp flavour was won by "Builder's Breakfast". The idea came from a woman local to the town.

Local government

This section requires expansion.

Belper is in the Amber Valley district of Derbyshire. It also has a town council.

Churches

The oldest of the current churches is Belper Unitarian Church built in 1788. The present Methodist Church was opened on June 28 1807 and was originally built to hold 1400 worshippers.

A prominent landmark, St Peter's Anglican Church was built in 1824 to replace the smaller 13th century St John's Chapel which is now used as a town council and heritage chamber. A second Anglican Church, Christ Church, was built in 1850. A local saying calls St Peter's the low church in the high place and Christ Church the high church in the low place based on their different liturgical traditions.

The town is also home to a Baptist, a spiritualist, a Catholic and other Methodist Churches at Openwoodgate and Kilburn, as well as Emmanuel Community Church.

Schools

Belper School and Sixth Form Centre (the town's secondary school) has approximately 1400 pupils aged 11–18. It was originally named "Belper High School" when it was built in 1973, and is adjacent to Belper Leisure Centre. Its most famous "old boy" is probably Ross Davenport, winner of two gold medals at the 2006 Commonwealth Games. Another former pupil of note is the late Alison Hargreaves, holder of a number of 'firsts' in the mountaineering world.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Belper was the site of an experimental three-tier education system, comprising a number of primary schools (age 5–9 years), feeding into two main secondary schools (age 9–13 years), pupils from both of which then usually attended a single American-style high school (age 13–18 years). In the mid-1980s, this scheme was abandoned, and the current two-tier system adopted. At the same time, one of the two secondary schools, Parks Secondary School, was closed down and the buildings, which were in a poor state of repair, demolished. In recent years, the site of the former Parks Secondary School has been used for a new school.

Primary Schools

• Holbrook Primary School
• St Elizabeth's Primary School
• St Johns Primary School
• Herbert Strutt Primary School
• Pottery Primary School
• Long Row Primary School
• Ambergate Primary School

Secondary Schools

• Belper School and Sixth Form Centre

Economy

Retail

As a relatively small town, it has Four supermarkets (Morrisons, Somerfield, Co-op and Iceland), supplemented by a small but busy shopping area mainly centred around King Street, including a large department store (De Bradelei Stores) and a Tackle & R.F.D Gun Shop (Belper Tackle). There are proposed plans to build a Tesco supermarket on the site of the the old Thorntons factory on Derwent street. These plans have been largely opposed by the town, as there would be a bypass road for the Tesco store which would be built through the meadows cricket ground and tennis courts. A group dubbed 'BATS' (Belper Against Tesco Superstore) has been formed to protest against these plans.

Sister cities

• Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States.

Famous residents

• George Brown, Baron George-Brown Labour politician, Foreign Secretary 1965-7 – represented Belper from 1945 until 1970, but never actually lived here.He kept a flat in Swadlincote at the opposite end of the constituency
• Timothy Dalton, actor, the 4th James Bond was raised here^[5]
• Ross Davenport Swimmer
• Monica Edwards, children's writer was born here in 1912^[6]
• Penelope Mortimer, novelist and wife of John Mortimer, author of The Pumpkin Eater, was the daughter of the vicar of St Peter's church
• John Lawton, novelist, author of Black Out and Blue Rondo was born here
• Suzy Kendall, first wife of Dudley Moore, actress in British and Italian movies
• Will Hay, comedian and actor lived in Belper while performing locally in the 1920s
• Tracy Shaw who played Maxine Peacock (1995-2003) in Coronation Street
• Alan Bates and Graham Haberfield, actors, both attended Strutts school
• Samuel Slater "father of the American industrial revolution" grew up in Blackbrook and apprenticed at Milford^[7]
• Bombardier Charles Stone who was awarded the VC is buried here^[8].
• Jedediah Strutt, Inventor - opened his first mill in Belper (1777)^[9]
• Frank Swettenham, Colonial ruler of Malaya, author, was born here^[10] in 1850
• Audley Bowdler Williamson, inventor of Swarfega and founder of Deb Ltd., still based in Belper

See also

• Former Parliament constituency of Belper
• Belper Town F.C.
• Belper Rugby Club
• Belper Musical Theatre

References

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2009)

This article includes a list of references or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (August 2009)

• Naylor, P. (Ed) (2000) An Illustrated History of Belper and its Environs Belper: M.G.Morris

External links

• Belper Town Council
• Belper Today - newspaper
• Derwent Valley Mills
• Site specific to the North Mill
• BBC: Historical account of the Belper nailers
• Belper School and Sixth Form Centre
• Belper Historical Research Website
• Belper Hockey Club
• Belper Rugby Club
• Belper Town Football Club
• Belper Sub Aqua Club
• Belper Forum
• Belper Musical Theatre
• Thisisderbyshire.co.uk/belper