DVMWHS Children’s Guide

Our Children’s Guide “The Story of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site” introduces this site and the reasons it was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 2001. The book provides a simple overview of the key themes to what make the site special and important. It looks at what life was like ‘before’ the mills, ‘during’ the mills’ operation and how it still influences our lives today and the heritage that remains in this extraordinary part of Derbyshire.

The book has been funded by National Lottery Heritage Fund and Arts Council England for our Great Place Scheme.

If you would like a ‘hard copy’ of the booklet you will be able to find these at some of the key visitor attractions along the valley soon, or you can request a copy by emailing info@derwentvalleymills.org
Due to the pandemic restrictions, you will need to allow 2 or 3 weeks for delivery.

You can download a pdf of the booklet here:

DVMWHS Children’s Guide pdf 

Or you can watch our narrated version of the booklet here:

Children’s work  inspired by The Story of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site guide book

When the children’s guide was launched local school children were given a copy. We also offered a special ‘virtual workshop’ where the children were able to interview heritage experts and the illustrator Rebecca Morledge. We had a competition to suggest names for the two children in the story and we are delighted to now know them as Mabel and Herbert, thank you to the children at Herbert Strutt Primary School for the suggestion. We also challenged the pupils to use what they learned in their workshop to write and illustrate their own page for the story focusing on their area. The Year 2 children from Milford Primary School shared some amazing work about their special part of this World Heritage Site. Watch this short film for some inspiration. If you’d like to do the same with your children we’d love to see your work. Herbert and Mabel (the rag doll versions) have gone to live at Herbert Strutt School and Milford Primary School respectively to continue their adventures around the Derwent Valley Mills.

Find out more about the themes in the guide

If your children want to study or explore any of themes in more detail, you might find the links below helpful.

World Heritage Sites

• UNESCO have an up to date list of World Heritage Sites with an interactive map here:  UNESCO List

• Patrimonito is the young people’s heritage guardian character. This site has lots of animated adventures around different World Heritage Sites around the world and helps show how young people can be guardians of these special places: UNESCO Patrimonito

Where is the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site and its key sites:

• Click here for general information about World Heritage Sites
• Click here for lots of free, downloadable learning resources and activities from our Schools Learning Resources section 
• Click here for further information about the history and development of the site
• If you want to bring a group on a visit please click here
• Click here to find out more about the key sites within the Derwent Valley Mills
• Click here to find out more about why the Derwent Valley Mills are a world heritage site

Water Power

• Visit here for a waterwheels resource
• Or click here to have a go at any of our creative activities including step by step instructions to build your own waterwheel

The Factory System

• There is a teachers pack to download about the impact of the factory system here
• Or click here to have a look at the BBC Bitesize resources about the Industrial Revolution

Global Connections and Slavery

• The ideas from the Derwent Valley were spread around the world.  Read more about Samuel Slater, hero or traitor, here
• The Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site recognises the links between the textile industry and enslavement of African people.

• Click here to find out about Cotton Spinning and Entanglements with Slavery: Tracing the Slavery Connections of the Strutts

• Anti Slavery have created teaching resources to help children learn about the history of slavery and how people are affected by slavery today. Find out more here.
• Colonial Countryside is a child-led writing and history project about National Trust houses’ Caribbean and East India Company connections. Find out more here. If you’d like to work with the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site on exploring this approach with us please get in touch (info@derwentvalleymills.org)
• Research Project into the global connections of cotton in the Derwent Valley Mills:  Global Cotton Connections by Susanne Seymour
• Information about the Slave Trade Legacies Project : The transatlantic slave trade and the role our slave ancestors played in contributing to the material wealth in Britain

How it changed lives – housing, steel framed buildings and inventions!

• Click here to find out more about the communities within the Derwent Valley
• Click here to find out more about Richard Arkwright and his inventions
• Click here to find out more about fire proof, iron framed buildings

• Click here for more information about Jedediah Strutt and his Derby Rib machine

The Derwent Valley Landscape

• Click here to find out more about the key sites along the valley
• Click here to find out more about the Derwent Valley Living Landscape

Transport:

• Click here to find out about the Railway Workshops at High Peak Junction and the Leawood Pumphouse
• Click here to find out more about Birdswood, the trip boat on the Cromford Canal
• BBC Bitesize: Why did Britain need a better road network – Toll Roads
• Find out more about tramways from Crich Tramway Village here

Key Characters who made the changes:

• Find out more about the key people who transformed the Derwent Valley here