As well as being the surprising location for a Rhineland-style church, the upland Peak District village of Wormhill is the unlikely birthplace of England’s pioneering builder of a vast network of canals in the lowlands of the North and Midlands. Mike Smith takes a look around.
The Bagshawe tombs Photo: Mike Smith The Rhenish Helm
Located in a remote part of the White Peak, Wormhill is described in one guidebook as a ‘secret village’. And its parish church, which is topped by a steeple that bears no resemblance to any other church spire in Derbyshire, hides away at the end of a tree-lined avenue, like a secret within the secret village.
When Thomas Henry Rushforth was commissioned to remodel and extend Wormhill’s parish church in 1864, he curiously decided to replace the building’s medieval tower with a new structure topped by a ‘Rhenish helm’.
However, rather than taking direct inspiration from the ‘helms’ that crown many of the churches in the Rhineland, he almost certainly based his helm on a tower that had been added in the 14th century to the famous Saxon church at Sompting, in Sussex.
Like the tower at Sompting, Wormhill’s version of the helm features a pyramidal roof that rises between the steep gables of the church’s square tower, with each of the four sides of the roof being diamond-shaped, or to be more precise, rhombus-shaped (a quadrilateral with equal sides).
Given its location in a remote corner of Peakland, Wormhill’s Rhineland-style church is one of Derbyshire’s most remarkable curiosities, but it is also peculiarly beautiful – with those distinctive diamond shapes helping to make the tower an architectural jewel!
One of the most notable features inside the church is a series of bench-ends carved by Advent Hunstone of Tideswell, with subjects curiously ranging from tender depictions of people at prayer to intimidating representations of ferocious-looking creatures.
Immediately outside the entrance to the church, there is a collection of tombs and memorials dedicated to various members of the Bagshawe family, whose current members still reside at their ancestral home in Wormhill.
The inscription on one tomb reads: “WLG Bagshawe, died 20th July 1854, aged 25 – In the midst of life, we are in death”. The story behind this poignant inscription is a bizarre tale of murder and a subsequent trial that produced a verdict that was seen by many people as a gross miscarriage of justice.
One evening in 1854, young Squire Bagshawe, his gamekeeper and his estate manager were fishing in the river Wye, when they spotted the lanterns of a group of people that they suspected to be poachers. After returning to the village to raise a posse, they went back into the estate to confront the intruders. In the scuffles that ensued, Squire Bagshawe was so badly wounded that he died from his injuries on the following day.
When the case came to trial, the squire’s attackers were acquitted of murder by a judge who reasoned that they had acted in self-defence, because the posse had set out with the clear intention of ‘giving them a good hiding’.
As well as making the unexpected discovery of a Rhineland-style church in the heart of Peakland, most visitors to Wormhill are equally surprised to find that one of the tiny hamlets in this upland parish is the birthplace of James Brindley, the great pioneering civil engineer who was responsible for the building of a vast network of canals in the lowlands of the North and Midlands.
Their surprise is compounded by the revelation that Brindley received very little education and, on those occasions when he did attend school, he proved to be a poor scholar. It is said that, even as an adult, he was barely able to read and write.
Despite his curious failure to show any evidence of intellectual ability when he was at school, his intuitive skills as an engineer became apparent when he started work.
In his late teens, he was employed by Abraham Bennett, a millwright based at Sutton, near Macclesfield. While Brindley was still an apprentice, he used his own initiative to design and construct an automatic waterwheel at Crag Mill, in Wildboarclough.
By the age of 26, he had set up his own business and would soon be building a silk mill, designing steam engines and solving flooding problems in a colliery.
Brindley met this request in inspired fashion by building an aqueduct across the river Irwell to carry Britain’s first arterial canal. He would go on to build more than 300 miles of canals, creating a transport network that played a crucial role in the Industrial Revolution.
Not surprisingly, Wormhill is very proud of Brindley. A well in the centre of the village is backed by a neat gabled building constructed in his memory. And a memorial plaque, attached to a stone plinth, marks the site of his birthplace in the nearby hamlet of Tunsted.
The inscription on the plaque describes Brindley as ‘a man of humble birth, who became famous as the pioneer builder of the great canals of England’.
Hargate Hall, a large and imposing country house, is situated one mile north-west of Wormhill. It was built in 1899 for Robert Whitehead, a landowner and businessman, and subsequently extended by him and later occupiers.
Still retaining many original features, especially the large wooden staircase that runs throughout the property, the hall has been carefully renovated to become a much-favoured wedding venue and a provider of self-catering accommodation for ‘those seeking peace and tranquillity away from city life’.
Blueberry Café, situated two miles south-east of Wormhill, is housed in the waiting rooms of the former Millers Dale railway station.
Located at the halfway point of the eight and a half mile-long Monsal Trail, it is a perfect place to pause for the thousands of people who use the trail for walking, running, horse-riding or cycling. The café has both inside and outside seating areas.
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