Lean Town Part 1

Glossop is a town made up of towns, you may have noticed.

I have a blog post about 30% written that describes each of them, but briefly they are: Milltown, Jerry Town, Charlestown, Rough Town, Howard Town, Freetown, Top o’ th’ Town, and Lean Town, the subject of today’s blogpost.

Lean Town is Glossop’s lesser known ‘town’, but is the most easily defined – it is simply a row of terraced houses in Whitfield, at the end of an unnamed track that comes south off Hague Street.

The name origins are obscure, and even the usually reliable Robert Hamnett states “why it is called Lean Town, I have never been able to find out” (and he normally knows what he is talking about, does that chap). A number of possibilities present themselves. The ‘Town‘ element is easy and obvious “a township, or community“, in this case used loosely to describe the small group of houses. ‘Lean‘, however, is a bit more difficult. I have always thought it refers either to the land hereabouts – lean in the sense of not very good for growing crops – or the people living in the houses i.e. they were poor. Another possibility is that it refers to the houses ‘leaning’, that is perched on the edge of a steep hill, which they are.

Annoyingly, it doesn’t feature in the 3 volume set of The Place-Names of Derbyshire at all, but then that is not surprising, as the book is woeful in its shortcomings, leaving out dozens of local place and brook names that I know of – there must be thousands more. However, looking in the much more comprehensive The Place-Names of Cheshire for similar sounding possibilities gives the following:

Lyng (Old Norse), ling, heather.

Given its location on the edge of the common land that was, and still is, covered in gorse and heather, I am now starting to lean* towards that as an explanation. Over time, Lyng, the name descriptive of the area, becomes Lean, and is then attached to Town – Lyng Town/Lean Town. Perhaps. Maybe.                                                                                                  *Pun fully intended.

Anyway, let’s move on!

According to Hamnett, the houses here were built in 1806 by Elizabeth Hampson, a member of a well known local family, who were responsible for building large numbers of the houses in the Whitfield area. Originally there were four terraced houses of a typical late Georgian/early Victorian design, stone built, with stone mullioned windows, and a stone roof. I’m not sure how many houses are there now, or whether any have been knocked through – there are still four chimneys, though.

The date of construction fits nicely with what we know of the area, which was radically changed at the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries, when the area was enclosed. The process of enclosure saw what was previously ‘common’ land, available to all, was closed off and sold to private individuals. These landowners built walls around the fields, creating the landscape that we know so well; prior to this, the whole area was just open moorland and fields. Indeed, the gate to the moor here was situated at Lane End Farm – as the name suggests, here the lane, or Hague Street as we now know it, ended, and beyond it was just common moorland. With the sale came certain stipulations laid down in law, particularly the creation of roads, and many of the roads in this area were created at this time: Kidd Road (originally called Whitfield Green Road), Derbyshire Level (originally called Hurst Road), Hague Street, and even Gladstone Street. All were declared public carriageway, and were ordered to be 30ft wide (go get a tape measure and have a look!). The unnamed track, at the end of which sits Lean Town, was created in c.1813, it was declared a bridleway, and ordered to be 10ft wide. Presumably it replaced an earlier path down to the houses, unless the dates are slightly off. What is interesting is that the path marks the limit of the ‘ancient enclosure’ (that is, the medieval or early modern enclosures) – if you stand at the top looking down to Lean Town, all that is to the right of you is ancient, and to the left of you all was common land until the early 19th Century.

Like I say, a huge upheaval – people lost their right to graze livestock, and even the right to cut peat for fuel for their stoves . The peat fields were moved much farther away, but I believe that residents of Whitfield still have the right to cut peat – don’t quote me, of course, and I’m not sure a multi-fuel burner could handle peat to be honest. There is an interesting account of the process of enclosure in Whitfield here.

If you look at the map above, you can clearly see marked ‘well’ at the end of a path from Lean Town. Now, having a thing for wells, I obviously set forth to see if anything remained. No, was the short answer. Here is the location, and the area is wet, but there was nothing that might be termed ‘well’. Ho hum.

Right ho, that’s the end of Part 1. Part 2 contains all kinds of goodies in the form of finds, (lots of) pottery, and bench marks… what’s not to love? Oh, and a witch! You can hardly contain your excitement, I know, and I feel the same. It’ll be up soon, honestly – it’s almost done.

Until then, I remain,

Your humble servant.

RH