Place:New Mills, Derbyshire, England

Watchers
NameNew Mills
Alt namesBowden-Middlecalesource: Family History Library Catalog
Bowder-Middlecalesource: Family History Library Catalog
Newmillssource: Family History Library Catalog
Beard Thornsett Ollersett and Whittlesource: name of parish before 1885
Birch Valesource: hamlet in parish
Brookbottomsource: hamlet in parish
Gowholesource: hamlet in parish
Hague Barsource: hamlet in parish
Rowarthsource: hamlet in parish
Thornsettsource: hamlet in parish
Whitlesource: hamlet in parish
Whittlesource: alternate spelling of above
TypeChapelry, Urban district
Coordinates53.383°N 2°W
Located inDerbyshire, England
See alsoGlossop, Derbyshire, Englandancient parish of which it was part
High Peak Hundred, Derbyshire, Englandhundred in which it was located
Chapel en le Frith Rural, Derbyshire, Englandrural district 1894-1974
High Peak District, Derbyshire, Englanddistrict municipality covering the area since 1974
the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

New Mills is a small town in Derbyshire, England, approximately 8 miles (13 km) southeast of Stockport and 13 miles (21 km) from Manchester. It borders on Disley in Cheshire, and Marple, in the Stockport Metropolitan Borough in Greater Manchester.

New Mills lies at the confluence of the rivers Goyt and Sett, close to the border of Cheshire. The town stands above the Torrs, a 70 feet (21 m) deep gorge, cut through Woodhead Hill sandstone of the carboniferous period. It is on the northwestern edge of the Peak District National Park.

New Mills has a population of approximately 12,000, in a civil parish which includes the villages and hamlets of Whitle, Thornsett, Hague Bar, Rowarth, Brookbottom, Gowhole, and most of Birch Vale. (Some of Birch Vale was transferred to Hayfield but it is all redirected here.) It was an urban district between 1894 and 1974. Before 1885 it carried the name "Beard Thornsett Ollersett and Whittle" after some of the villages in the civil parish.

New Mills was first noted for coal mining, and then for cotton spinning and then bleaching and calico printing. New Mills was served by the Peak Forest Canal, three railway lines and the A6 main road. New Mills was a stronghold of Methodism.

Now almost entirely in Derbyshire, New Mills straddled the historic county boundaries of Derbyshire and Cheshire. The traditional boundary was the River Goyt: Low Leighton, Torr Top and Hide Bank were always in Derbyshire, but Torr Vale Road and all of Newtown were in Cheshire. Indeed, today, all the housing to the west of the traffic lights on the A6 remains in the civil parish of Disley in Cheshire.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article New Mills, Derbyshire.

New Mills was originally a township in the ancient parish of Glossop in the High Peak Hundred of Derbyshire, England.

The name of New Mills derives from the corn mills built beside the river Kinder. It was originally known as Bowden-Middle-Call, comprising several hamlets, when early in the 18th century a 'new mill' was erected on the River Kinder for the use of the inhabitants in grinding corn, and the name of 'New Mills' was born. (Source: GENUKI)

The Wikipedia article has a map marking the location of the parish within Derbyshire.

Research Tips

  • Derbyshire Record Office website
  • British History Online (Victoria County Histories) does not appear to cover Derbyshire geographically. A History of the County of Derby: Volume 2, edited by William Page is a part-volume covering the religious houses of the county. No further volumes have been found.
  • GENUKI main page for Derbyshire which provides information on various topics covering the whole of the county, and also a link to a list of parishes. Under each parish there is a list of the settlements within it and brief description of each. This is a list of pre-1834 ancient or ecclesiastical parishes but there are suggestions as to how to find parishes set up since then. GENUKI provides references to other organizations who hold genealogical information for the local area. There is no guarantee that the website has been kept up to date and therefore the reader should check additional sources if possible.
  • The FamilyTree Wiki has a series of pages similar to those provided by GENUKI which may have been prepared at a later date and from more recent data. The wiki has a link to English Jurisdictions 1851 which gives the registration district and wapentake for each parish, together with statistics from the 1851 census for the area.
  • A Vision of Britain through Time, Derbyshire, section "Units and Statistics" leads to analyses of population and organization of the county from about 1800 through 1974. There are pages available for all civil parishes, municipal boroughs and other administrative divisions. Descriptions provided are usually based on a gazetteer of 1870-72 which often provides brief notes on the economic basis of the settlement and significant occurences through its history.
  • For a more detailed view of a specific area try a map from the following selection. The oldest series are very clear at the third magnification offered. Comparing the map details with the GENUKI details for the same area is well worthwhile. Sections of the 1900 map showing parish boundaries only have been reproduced on some (but not all) parish pages here in WeRelate.
  • Map of Derbyshire illustrating urban and rural districts in 1900 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown.
  • Map of Derbyshire urban and rural districts in 1944 produced by UK Ordnance Survey and provided online by A Vision of Britain through Time. Parish boundaries and settlements within parishes are shown. This is not a repeat of the first map. There were some changes in urban and rural district structure in the 1930s.
  • Ordnance Survey map of Derbyshire for 1967 This is the last in this series and was made while Derbyshire was experimenting with the non-metropolitan district structure adopted in 1974. It is a much cleaner map for reading the names of the civil parishes, but the smaller villages are no longer visible.
These are only three of the series of maps to be found in A Vision of Britain through Time.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at New Mills, Derbyshire. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.