HUTFALL FIELD

This piece of land, from the earliest times in the hands of the Gratian Family of Belper, is central to our project.

Our house, and what used to be the small piece of land adjoining it was part of Hutfall Field, as was also the land on which Jedediah Strutt built his Unitarian Chapel nearby.

The precise extent of Hutfall Field is not yet known, but guesses can be made. See the plan below:

In the days before the Strutt buildings were erected, and before the Strutt Mills were built, this land was mostly pasture and arable fields. The roads you see above did not, for the most part, exist. It was simply a sloping piece of grassland on the valley-side of the river Derwent and must have been a splendid place to live.

Bridge Street at the bottom, in dark grey, was the only "real" street existing. The other streets, such as Mill Street and Field Lane were just cart tracks at best. Mill Lane was just a "channel" for many years - the Derbyshire term for a narrow walkway between fields or houses - and is still marked as such on maps from the early 19th century. Field Lane developed into a road sooner, but on early maps is marked simple as a Footway. Chesterfield Road is a "new" road from Duffield to Heage added in the early 19th century. Doubtless, Hutfall Field extended beyond Chesterfield Road. In 1815 a section on the far side of Chesterfield Road was sold to the Trustees of the Primitive Methodist Church, to allow them to build a Chapel. Although the Chapel has been lost, its location was definitely on the far side of the road, suggesting that the "New Toll Road" cut right across Gratian's land.

The few buildings that existed in the 17th century would have been cottages and barns, or houses where nailers lived and worked. We know that for many years the Watson family of nailers lived just off what is now called Field Row.

We also know that the Gratians had a cottage at "Field Head" which is at the top of Hutfall. The exact whereabouts of this cottage is not known.

A photo taken from the Chesterfield Road shows glimpses of what is still an outstanding view, although now marred and closed in by numerous houses. At the bottom of the valley the River Derwent could be seen, and then the hillside of the further valley stretched up into the blue haze of the distance. The Strutt Mills (on the right, rectangular brick buildings) and the grand house built for the Strutts, Bridge Hill, could in Gratian's day be seen standing out in the distance. A few remaining parts of Bridge Hill can still be viewed from Chesterfield Road. It must have been an imposing sight in its heyday.

In 1798, the Independents (Congregationalists), who had been meeting in the Old Meeting House in Green Lane, had grown to such an extent that they were able to raise £300 to buy half an acre of freehold land in the Hutfull, and start building a chapel in the place indicated. It must have helped matters that several Independents such as Abraham Harrison and the Walker family already owned land in the area. The original chapel no longer exists, but was on the site of what is now the Congregational Church, just beyond "The Orchard". Jedediah Strutt, of course, also built a Chapel on Gratian's land.

Gratian's field covered some ten acres or more in the 17th century, but it was whittled down progressively over the years, given away in inheritances, divided, sold off or donated to various causes. One small section was donated to the "Sick Club", an early type of social welfare organisation, run by the Lane family who were living on the land.

As the evidence is collected, another plan will be added to this page, showing the ownership of each section, and its eventual fate. (One major change took place because of the bankruptcy of Joseph Robinson, a Cotton Spinner, necessitating the sale by auction of all his lands and properties. Some of these were in Hutfall.)