Holymoorside and Walton is a civil parish within the North East Derbyshire district, which is in the county of Derbyshire, England. Named for its main settlements, with a mix of a number of villages and hamlets amongst a large rural area, it had a population of 2,138 residents in 2021. The parish is north west of London, north of the county city of Derby, and south west of the nearest market town of Chesterfield. It is adjacent with the Peak District national park to the west, and shares a border with the district of Chesterfield, along with the parishes of Ashover, Beeley, Brampton as well as Wingerworth. The parish paradoxically does not include the majority of the nearby built-up suburb of Walton, Chesterfield which is now within an adjacent unparished area of the borough.
Geography
Location
Holymoorside and Walton is surrounded by the following local locations:
Chesterfield, Old Brampton and Wadshelf to the north Alicehead, Harper Hill, Spitewinter and Uppertown to the south Chesterfield and Wingerworth to the east Beeley Moor, Brampton East Moor and Chatsworth to the west.
It is in area, in height and in width, spanning across all the western edge of the North East Derbyshire district, fitting between Chesterfield and the Derbyshire Dales districts. The parish lies in the west of the district and central portion of Derbyshire county. The parish is roughly bounded by land features such as an unnamed tributary of the River Hipper to the north, Hipper Sick brook and Syda Lane to the west, Birdholme Brook to the east, and the A632, B5057 roads and River Hipper to the south.
Settlements and routes There are two main villages within the parish:
Holymoorside is the largest, and central to the area Walton is along the A632 road, east of Holymoorside. Walton extends as a suburb into the neighbouring Chesterfield borough and town, only a small portion centred around the Acorn Ridge road and the church is within the parish.
There are also a number of hamlets throughout, some of which are little more than a cluster of houses or farms:
Chanderhill is to the north of the parish Nether Loads is to the west Slatepit Dale in the south Upper Loads to the far west
Outside of these settlements, the parish is predominantly an agricultural and rural area.
The key route through the parish is the A619 road from Chesterfield through to Baslow, for access to the Peak District, running through the northern portion of the area. The A632, also from Chesterfield, runs through the south to Matlock.
Environment
Landscape Primarily farming and pasture land throughout the parish outside the populated areas, there is some substantial forestry throughout, mainly the collective of coppices and woods south and east of Holymooorside village, and Walton Wood south of Walton. Hagg Wood is to the north of the parish, above Nether and Upper Loads. The south western corner of the parish is cultivated moorland, and is part of the wider Northeast Derbyshire Moors, this section comprises the Holy Moor and the Longside Moor, the perimeter of both forms the outer boundary of the Peak District. The parish, because of these features is at times referred to as the 'Gateway to the Peak', and contains some of the highest quality landscapes outside of the Peak District. It was seriously considered for inclusion within the National Park boundary while it was being conceived in the 1950s.
Geology
Being adjacent to the Peak District National Park, the composition of the parish is broadly similar, with clay, coal, ironstone, lead, limestone, and gritstone featuring in the geology of the wider area. It rises through mudstones, sandstones and siltstone, making up the Pennine Lower Coal Measures Group formed between 319 and 318 million years ago during the Carboniferous period.
Water features Traversing the centre of the parish is the River Hipper, flowing close to Holymoorside, with parts and tributaries forming some of the parish boundary. At the village, the Loads Brook feeds the Hipper from its source near Upper Loads. The Hallcliffe brook in turn drains into the Loads, with a small pond and reservoir upstream near its source. The valley of the Hipper south of Holymoorside is known as Cat Hole. The Birdholme Brook delineates the south-eastern and south parish border near Walton.
Land elevation The parish rises from the east towards the west, the lowest section being the point the Birdholme Brook flows out the parish by Langer Lane, at ~, while Walton village also to the east is in the range of . The area around Holymoorside varies from , with the parish peak by the Peak District edge in the west at .
History
Toponymy The only settlement reported at the time of the Domesday Book survey in 1086 was Walton, which was derived from the ''farm of the Welshmen or serfs', and was then known as Waletune.
Holymoorside was first recorded in 1756, and is certainly derived from the nearby Holy Moor with it situated alongside, although how the moor itself was named is less clear. One suggestion is the land at nearby Harewood Grange within Ashover being farmed until 1537 during the Dissolution of the Monasteries by canons from Beauchief Abbey with the moor becoming 'Howley More' in the late 1500s, and eventually ‘Holy Moor’; another is it was named from Howley Corn Mill which was first recorded in late 16th century public records as ‘Holley Milne’ and later in the 17th as 'Holley More'; or through early Scandinavian settlers and the ‘Holy’ from Hangr or hoh leah (hill clearing) to which mor was added, of which there is a local hill spur.
Local area
Early history Evidence of prehistoric remains have been discovered scattered throughout the parish, with finds skewed to the west. These date local occupation from 4000BC onwards, with artefacts including rock carvings and flint tools. Later monuments include barrows such at Longside Moor which shows human activity in the Bronze Age from 2350BC. Cairnfields are recorded in the vicinity, demonstrating an early field system in use also around this time, along with funerary uses. Coins of later origin during the time of Roman Britain occupation (43AD to 405AD) were also found locally. Both Holymoorside and Walton lay in what was the Scarsdale hundred, which was one of the six ancient divisions of the county, dating back from medieval times until 1894.
Holymoorside and environs The Holymoorside area was a part of Brampton with Wadshelf in 1086 AD at the time of Domesday, which was shared between the Derbyshire tenants-in-chief Ascoit (or Hascoit) Musard and Walter D'Aincourt. Later, the consolidated Musard manor of Brampton was granted by Henry II to Peter de Brampton, who is believed to have been the second son of Matilda de Cauz, or Caus, who became heiress of the Barony of Caus, through Adam de Birkin, her second husband. Descendants of Peter then took on the name of De Caus, however the male line became extinct around 1460. The manor of Brampton, then known as Caus-hall, became by eventual purchase, the property of the Earls of Shrewsbury, and later on to the Earl of Newcastle. Having passed with other estates to the Duke of Portland, it was included in an exchange with the Duke of Devonshire. Starting in around 1955, some local landholdings of the Chatsworth estate were sold after the death of the 10th Duke in lieu of death duties, but other nearby assets kept. The D'Aincourt manor was passed with Sutton to the Leakes, and then purchased in the late 16th century by the Clarkes of Somersall Hall. Much of the focus during medieval times was not in Holymoorside as it had not been established, with the scattered population in the south of Brampton then based around Doghole (Holymoor Road), Pocknedge and the Loads settlements, which were all recorded as settled areas by the 15th century.
Early industry included possible lead or iron smelting at Bole Hill and charcoal burning pits both in the Hallcliffe brook valley north of the Loads villages, but the area was particularly notable for a number of mills from the early 16th century, the first recorded for refining corn and eventually in the 17th owned by the Clarke family of Somersall Hall. In the 1580s a lead-smelting mill was begun near this site, and this possibly grew to as many as four in 1659. By 1671 there were at then 'Howley Moore', as well as a water corn mill, two 'smilting mills for the meltinge of leade oare and makeinge of leade', implying there was less lead being supplied. It seems this activity ceased by 1745, the mills reverting to grinding corn or shutting down after local lead supplies had run out, such as Cornmill Mills to the very south of the village, converting to corn milling in the early 1800s. The Cundy family for many years ran the main local milling operation as tenants, finally buying it when the Clarke estate was sold in 1824. Other industry in the area included colour dye works at Cathole to the south of the village, brick works mills at Loads and cotton mills established in 1780, and by 1790 Richard Arkwright held an interest. The cotton mills were owned by Simeon Manlove in the early 1800s next to the River Hipper, which employed over 200 workers at its height. Manlove was a generous local benefactor, who built homes for workers, a church, school and gave land for a recreation ground. The milling operation was sold in 1897 to the English Sewing Cotton Co and the offices later converted into a private residence after the mills closed in 1905.
Hipper Hall was built in the late 16th century, thought to have an association to the Foljambes when they held Walton as their main seat, with some members of the family possibly residing here as Walton Hall appeared to be rundown by this time, later reports in the middle 17th century stating it was 'utterly ruyned, plucked downe, and sould, no materiall, as reported left', although the link to the Foljames and the hall is yet to be fully proven. This possible relocation of the seat, together with the business activities appeared to help in establishing Holymoorside as a settlement by the middle 1700s. Belmont was an 18th-century home on Holymoor Road, also known as Gladwin's Folly because it had a notable tower, local folklore was that General Henry Gladwin fired a cannon from it towards Gladwin's Mark in Ashover. His son Charles Dakeyne Gladwin later let out his parental home Stubbing Court in Ashover, and moved into Belmont. The industrialist Manlove family at one point owned the house, it was used as a children's home in the 1950s before being pulled down in the 21st century and apartments built in its place. Holymoorside School was established in 1874 for 200 children. As the population grew in the 1800s, non-conformist churches sprang up to cater to the area, with a Primitive Methodist Chapel built in 1831, and a Wesleyan Chapel in 1832. 1862 saw the build of a Congregational Church mainly sponsored by the cotton mill owner Simeon Manlove. A new Church of England parish encompassing New Brampton, the southern portion of Brampton parish and Walton was created with the centre at St Thomas's at New Brampton in 1832. A church of ease, St Peter's was built in Holymoorside village in 1841.
Walton