North Street

A simple terrace, but an important piece of history

This is one of Landmark’s quiet gems. North Street is the earliest planned industrial housing in the world and the finest of its type ever built – vastly superior to that of the next century. Named after the then Prime Minister, the terrace was built in 1771 by Richard Arkwright to house the workers from his pioneering  water-powered cotton mill. Today, Cromford is part of the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.

We repaired one house with a particularly well-preserved interior as a Landmark so that people can experience and reflect upon the living quarters of these earliest of factory workers. Their lot was perhaps less harsh than that of later workers, but you may still find yourself touched and inspired.

The three-storey gritstone houses have one room on each floor, with a room for framework-knitting in the attic. Steep stairs run from the sitting room with its open fire, to the upper bedrooms. Each house was provided with a small garden and an allotment at a distance.

‘The house is better than my wildest dreams; one suggestion - how about a fireman’s pole instead of the stairs?’

In 1770, Richard Arkwright signed a lease on land in Cromford to erect a cotton spinning mill. Arkwright came from humble origins and was a barber and wigmaker by trade. There was a fervour of invention at the time, and one of the chief quests was the need for a successful automated spinning machine. Arkwright teamed up with a clockmaker called John Kaye and his partner Thomas Hayes to perfect a model of the spinning machine, based on pairs of rollers rotating at different speeds. Arkwright patented the design of his spinning frame (later also known as the water frame) in 1769 and also took the crucial decision that the new spinning frame was to be licensed for use only in units of a thousand, which meant that it became factory-based technology (unlike the earlier but less efficient Spinning Jenny, which remained cottage-based). Such large machines also required external power to drive them; after a brief experiment with horsepower in Nottingham, Arkwright moved to Cromford.

Arkwright built his first mill in 1771, using waterpower from Bonsall Brook and the Cromford Sough (a drain from the lead mines in the hills above). He found his labour force partly from the miners' families, partly through advertising in the local papers. Those who moved to Cromford had to be housed, and it was for this purpose that North Street was built. Arkwright specifically advertised for large families and the thirty houses on North Street would have housed much of his initial workforce. They represent one of the earliest examples of the terraced industrial housing that was to become so characteristic of industrial towns over the next century. Unlike later versions, North Street was built to a high standard, with attention to details like sash windows and almost classical door frames which would have impressed those used to the poorer quality housing of the day. The upper floors still have their original, long windows, a sign that the occupants were expected to supplement their income by spinning or knitting. Typically, it was the women and children who were employed at the mill, tending the machines and joining broken threads. The men would be employed for building, for machine-making or mending, as mill supervisors or at home on their loom or knitting frame. At No 10 North Street, filled-in blocks in the floor of the attic room suggest that frame knitting was carried out here, the vigour of the operation of the knitting head requiring such a machine to be stabilised by fixing it to the floor (unlike a hand loom).

Arkwright became immensely wealthy and his development of the mills and community at Cromford was a model followed all over the world. Before his death in 1792, he started to build Willersley Castle on the Tor overlooking the mill site and St. Mary's Church. The mills in Cromford declined through the 19th century as steam power took over from water, and the cotton industry gradually migrated to Lancashire. Cromford was left much as Arkwright had built it. In 1979 the Arkwright Society acquired the former mill site from Burrells Paints and have been restoring it ever since in partnership with English Heritage.

In 1965, the Ancient Monuments Society agreed to buy them from the Council for £400. All had existing tenants and the houses were badly in need of repair and modernisation, specifically provision for bathrooms and toilets. The Society lacked the capital to initiate such improvements and the resources to act as landlord. The National Trust was approached initially, but was only interested in managing the whole street. The Society then approached John Smith, founder of the Landmark Trust in 1965 and also an honorary member of the Society of Ancient Monuments. Landmark agreed to acquire the properties.

Coincidentally, Landmark had also been approached about Numbers 10-11 at the other end of the street. Numbers 4, 5, 6 and 8 were acquired in April1974 and numbers 10-11 soon followed. The appearance of North Street was considerably less uniform than it is now. Doors were of different styles and colours and most of the long second floor windows were partially blocked. With the help of grants from the Historic Buildings Council and the District Council greater uniformity began to be established, a process still continuing. Roofs were stripped and re-laid, and electric cables removed from the front of the houses. Wherever possible, the four-light windows on the second floor were reinstated.

When Landmark bought Number 10, it had been encroached upon considerably by Number 11. It had only a tiny kitchen in an additional lean-to against the main extension at the rear, entered through a door where the rear-facing window in the living room is today. This meant most of today's kitchen and bathroom had become part of Number 11. We demolished this little kitchen lean-to and inserted a new window in place of the door. The area within the main lean-to at the back was rearranged with Number 11, to allow for today's kitchen and a ground floor bathroom behind (a small bathroom on the second floor room was removed). A new pantry was built, and the floor level in the lean-to was lowered on the ground floor. This meant losing the earlier (cramped) first floor in the lean-to and filling in the cellar windows, although the window surrounds were retained. The cramped 18th-century staircase design did not comply with today’s building regulations and so the current steep flight was inserted to be as economical with space as possible, while still meeting requirements. The resulting layout is much closer to that which would have been found in Arkwright's day – a one room deep dwelling, although now with provision for today's necessities: an inside loo and bathroom and a sensibly sized, separate kitchen.