We began our March walk from the Rugby Ground Car Park in Cromford and along the canal which was last used as a working waterway in 1944. William Jessop and Benjamin Outram, partners in the Butterley Company, constructed the canal which was completed in 1794. It is 14 ½ miles long and joined Cromford with the Erewash Canal at Langley Mill. A six-mile section of the canal, between Cromford and Ambergate is listed as a Biological Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a local nature reserve.
There was a steady stream of walkers, with children and dogs, as the weather was pleasantly warm and sunny. We turned left at the signpost “Lea Bridge”.
After a short distance of pavement walking, we entered the village of Lea Mills, the home of the Smedley Knitwear Company, founded in 1784 by John Smedley and Peter Nightingale a great uncle of Florence Nightingale who also had connections to Sir Richard Arkwright. The John Smedley Archive Charitable Trust was established in 2017 when the company donated all of its archive assets to the Trust for safe keeping. The Trust now houses the historic knitwear collection currently totalling over 9000 garments, the oldest dating back to the 1850’s. In 2018, the Grade 11 listed cottages, on the Lea Mills site were renovated. They had originally been built in the19th century to house mill workers and it is intended they become the homes of the Archivist and her team of historians and volunteers.
We turned right onto a rocky path with a babbling brook beside us and eventually into a wood.
We crossed a bridge over a very wide, flowing river Derwent and further stopped to admire four chickens happily clucking in a coop. We soon arrived at Aqueduct Cottage, Grade 11 listed and built in 1802 as a lengthman and lock-keeper’s cottage by …….Peter Nightingale. A lengthman was responsible for the repair and maintenance of a ‘length’ of canal and acting as lockkeeper, managed the water levels by the control of weirs. Abandoned in 1970, the cottage became derelict and owned by the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust who received generous support from Derbyshire Historic Buildings Trust, The Pilgrim Trust, Friends of Cromford Canal and The Heritage Lottery. Hundreds of individuals also contributed through the “Buy a Brick” campaign. Now after extensive rebuilding over the past years it stands with a new roof, window and front door and is weatherproof for the first time since the 1980s. The structure has been left to dry out before pointing of the stonework can begin and the garden will be developed. DWT have completed a series of steps into the woodland above the cottage, a suitable surfacing material is being arranged and a seating area in the wood will be created. It is proposed to use the building for education and as a gateway to Lea Wood Nature Reserve, so a visitor hub showing the history of the cottage is planned, together with a first-floor multi-purpose space for use by schools and the community, in order to generate a small amount of income.
We continued our walk along the canal and immediately saw Crich Stand on the horizon against a background of deep blue sky, but had to retrace our steps to keep the walk within a reasonable distance so, continued along the path we had originally started on.
It was noticed that three trees had fallen into the canal and baby grebes were spotted by one of our party. This turned out to be an easy walk in unexpected warm sunshine, a real tonic.
Evelyn Lowe