Belper Voices
Belper Voices – Life in Belper in the Nineteenth Century – Volume One
This is the first of two volumes of studies of life in Belper in the nineteenth Century. It extends the biography of the town begun years ago in The Strutts and the Arkwrights. Volume one describes the town’s first transport links by road and by rail.
The exquisite contemporary drawings by Samuel Russell punctuate an account of how the railway was brought through Belper, joining the town to the local and the national networks. This was the century that saw the Belper horse nail makers enjoy their greatest prosperity and then its loss as it was snatched away by the imported and machine made nails that extinguished their trade.
The book describes the nailers’ union’s fight to stem this loss of work which extended even to paying men to blow up non union workshops; but by 1900 the industry had died. For many, the Workhouse beckoned.
For the Strutts also, the second half of the century found them confronting grim realities. Their mills were no longer competitive, and by 1897 it was with some relief they sold out to the English Sewing Cotton Company.
The book is a worthy new member of the Trust’s portfolio; like its predecessors it is carefully researched, generously illustrated and written in accessible English.
AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE:
Phone 07784 875 333
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ISBN 978-1-9161609-1-0
Paperback
£18 (plus £4 P&P)
