DREAM ORGANS
JULIAN RHODES' IMAGINARY ORGANS

The following account is from 'Derbyshire' by A.R. Hope Moncrieff (1927)

This part of Derbyshire is the fertile valley of Scarsdale, its fields shut in and broken by ridges of moor and woodland once thinly inhabited. But now the green shows smudged and smoked into patches of black; and the heights above coal beds, that were the vegetation of ages long past, are not so boldly rugged as the tors and cliffs to the west.. so here we come to a country thickly set with collieries and ironworks.

 

 

 

Northward, within a loop of railway lines converging on Sheffield, the towns of Dronfield, Staveley and Eckington house sons of Tubal Cain, their furnaces fed from subterranean caves darker than those of the the Peak.

 

Here we look out upon Yorkshire and the chimneys of Sheffield, whose industries have overflowed into Derbyshire. From this smoky blot on fine surroundings let us turn back to the south of Scarsdale for the Derby Black Country's chief town, the second in the county for size, with its dependencies counting over 60,000 inhabitants. Chesterfield stands on the line between Sheffield and Derby, is indeed a knot of railway communications, at the confluence of the Rother and the Hipper, the latter stream coming down from the moorland heights above Chatsworth, and both flowing northwards to the Don.

 

 

This rather grimy place, with its narrow streets about a spacious market place, and its straggling suburbs, is supported by various industries, among which adjacent coal mines make themselves evident.

Photo credits
top: Three Railways, Horns Bridge (Richardson Postcard c.1900)
upper left: Old Mill, Brampton (Julian Rhodes 1994)
middle right: Coalite Plant, Wingerworth (Julian Rhodes 1993)
lower left: Lower Brampton with Zion Chapel (Julian Rhodes 1992)

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The real organs of Chesterfield
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