Some places don’t change over much across the centuries.
Alsop en le dene in Derbyshire, is one of them.
It is a hamlet of just eight homes, and while it can boast a Norman church, it has no pub and has lost its post office.
And you might well drive through it without giving it a second glance, and that would be a shame because there has been a settlement here from before the Doomsday Book.
And as you do, I have been drawn to digging into its past, for no particular reason other than I can and of course that on going fascination for those small rural communities on the edge of bigger things at a time when Britain was going through the Industrial Revolution.
As ever the starting point are the eight census returns from 1841to 1921, along with the parish records.
Together they offer up a wealth of information about the families of Alsop en len dene, from their occupations, places of birth to the age distribution of the community and along the way reveal a few secrets of the lives behind the doors.
For me it is one of those interesting comparisons with Chorlton-cum-Hardy which in the middle decades of the nineteenth century was still a small rural community just 4½ miles from Manchester.
Of course, Alsop en len dene was much smaller, consisting of just forty-six people compared to Chorlton’s 750 inhabitants, and there are other differences.
The vast majority of those engaged in farming in Chorlton were market gardeners looking to provide food for the city’s markets, while in our hamlet there were just three farms of varying size which employed all of the fourteen agricultural labourers.
And unlike Chorlton where the population was drawn from across the UK, in Alsop en le dene only three of the forty-six were not born on Derbyshire or the neighbouring county of Staffordshire.
Added to which of the thirty-one from Derbyshire, eight were born in the hamlet with another twelve from nearby villages.
None of which is a surprise.
The fun will be to track the residents over the eighty years from 1841 through to 1921, charting who went and who stayed, and what if anything changed in the occupations of those who lived there.
A glance at later returns show that the coming of the railway in the 1890s offered up one new occupation, and in turn may have allowed others to look for work in Ashbourne and Buxton which were the two towns at either end of the railway line.
I suspect that at the end of the study we will be left with that knowledge that not a lot changed in Alsop en le dene.
But the stories are there like Francis and Millicent Austen who were married in the neigbouring village of Tessington in 1850 and were in one of the cottages in the hamlet the following year.
He was an agricultural labourer aged 34 and she was eight years younger, had been a servant and had a son born out of wedlock. I doubt that Francis was the father given that in 1851 the boy retained his mother’s maiden name and did so throughout his life.
By 1861 the family had moved on leaving others to continue the story of the hamlet.
Location; Alsop le dene
Pictures; Alsop le dene, in 1851 & 2019 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
It is a hamlet of just eight homes, and while it can boast a Norman church, it has no pub and has lost its post office.
And you might well drive through it without giving it a second glance, and that would be a shame because there has been a settlement here from before the Doomsday Book.
And as you do, I have been drawn to digging into its past, for no particular reason other than I can and of course that on going fascination for those small rural communities on the edge of bigger things at a time when Britain was going through the Industrial Revolution.
As ever the starting point are the eight census returns from 1841to 1921, along with the parish records.
Together they offer up a wealth of information about the families of Alsop en len dene, from their occupations, places of birth to the age distribution of the community and along the way reveal a few secrets of the lives behind the doors.
Of course, Alsop en len dene was much smaller, consisting of just forty-six people compared to Chorlton’s 750 inhabitants, and there are other differences.
The vast majority of those engaged in farming in Chorlton were market gardeners looking to provide food for the city’s markets, while in our hamlet there were just three farms of varying size which employed all of the fourteen agricultural labourers.
Added to which of the thirty-one from Derbyshire, eight were born in the hamlet with another twelve from nearby villages.
None of which is a surprise.
The fun will be to track the residents over the eighty years from 1841 through to 1921, charting who went and who stayed, and what if anything changed in the occupations of those who lived there.
A glance at later returns show that the coming of the railway in the 1890s offered up one new occupation, and in turn may have allowed others to look for work in Ashbourne and Buxton which were the two towns at either end of the railway line.
I suspect that at the end of the study we will be left with that knowledge that not a lot changed in Alsop en le dene.
He was an agricultural labourer aged 34 and she was eight years younger, had been a servant and had a son born out of wedlock. I doubt that Francis was the father given that in 1851 the boy retained his mother’s maiden name and did so throughout his life.
By 1861 the family had moved on leaving others to continue the story of the hamlet.
Location; Alsop le dene
Pictures; Alsop le dene, in 1851 & 2019 from the collection of Andrew Simpson
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