Chapter Nine

Ancient history there is aplenty in Derbyshire – and modern history too, which is recorded in many ways, and not only in print! One such memorial to a slice of relatively `modern’ local history lies at the heart of the tiny hamlet of Middleton by Youlgreave and tells the story of..

The Smerrill Wellington

It was whilst metal-detecting with my partner at Smerrill Grange, a medieval Monastic Grange originally built by the Monks of Roche Abbey between Middleton and Gratton in the White Peak, that we made a strange and exciting discovery.

Our detectors were emitting signals like crazy in a relatively small area on the top of a steep bank just below the farm buildings and we began to dig up dozens of small fragments of alluminium. The metal was occasionally accompanied by scraps of perspex, and though slightly mystified, we concluded that we had stumbled upon an old agricultural dump, probably bits of old tractor. But if this was true then it was the biggest tractor that had ever existed because the `bits’ seemed to be scattered across a wide expanse of the hillside!

The scraps of alluminium provided no clues – until we unearthed a small piece of metal with the words, `Pilot’s Light’ clearly visible.

"It’s off an old gas cooker"? suggested my metal-detecting partner Simon, I’ll bet this is an old rubbish dump"?, he added, disappointingly.

"No, I replied, `look, it says Pilot’s Light, – not pilot light"?.

We continued our search and within a couple of hours had accumulated dozens of metal and perspex fragments; including a broken bakelite panel displaying the words, `interior lights’; `pilot’s port light’; and `pilot’s starboard light’; a 3"?x2"? metal plate bearing the legend `Overload Tank Cock’; a smaller metal plate with the words `call light’ imprinted on its surface, and the toggle of a zip fastener with the letters `am’ stamped beneath a crown. We came excitedly to the conclusion that these bits had to be from an aircraft of some sort and as darkness closed in we headed towards Smerrill Grange Farm.

At Smerrill Grange owner and farmer Barry Yates confirmed our suspicions; after we’d shown him our finds he said, "Yes, an aeroplane did come down during the war, and it crashed only about 50 yards from the farmhouse. He added, `Of course, we were’nt here in those days, but they reckon the farmer had a lucky escape because it hit the daleside and the steep bank absorbed the impact, otherwise the blast could have destroyed the farm."?

We were eager for more details but Mr.Yates couldn’t help, "but, he said, `there’s a memorial in Middleton by Youlgreave that will tell you more"?. Sure enough we found the bronze memorial plaque in the village square and it confirmed some facts of our tragic find at Smerrill.

"In Memory of the crew of Wellington Bomber RAF No.BJ 652 which crashed at Smerrill on January 21st, 1944"?. There followed a list of the names of the crewmen who had perished and the words; "Erected by the Parish in August 1995 on the 50th Anniversary of the end of the War"?

We were intrigued. Why had the Wellington crashed – was it shot down? There must be information about it somewhere, newspaper reports, – and although it was 60 years ago perhaps there were eye-witnesses still alive? We began investigating. Of course, we drew a complete blank with the local newspaper archives. There were no reports of the tragedy because we had been at war with Germany and any information had been surpressed by the War Office. But we did find an eye witness!

In 1944 Joe Kenworthy was a 20 year old, and his father Bernard had farmed Lowfields Farm near Middleton for sixty years. On the night of January 21st the family were sitting in the parlour when they heard a strange noise. Joe Kenworthy, now a 77 year-old who farms at neighbouring Gratton takes up the story:

"As I remember it was a quiet, still and frosty night. We were sat having supper in the parlour when suddenly there was a great rushing sound, like a roaring wind passing overhead. My father and I raced outside and looking up the dale we could see all the hillside below Smerrill lit up"?.

Joe’s father told Joe to stay with the family whilst he went up the dale to see if he could help.

"My father said they found six bodies scattered in the paddock next to the farm and he helped to carry them into an outbuilding which was used as an emergency mortuary, explained Joe, adding, `One of them was a giant of a man with ginger hair and a beard who didn’t seem to have a mark anywhere on his body. There was smouldering debris all over the steep daleside, but the bomber had hit near the top of the banking and the airmen had been catapulted over the top and into the paddock"?.

According to local folk at the time, the Wellington had flown low over Youlgreave on a night training flight, and south up the valley towards Elton. The valley turned eastward,- the plane didn’t!

Joe remembers that the local police and the Army had cordoned off the whole area and allowed no one near the crash site until the debris had been removed. "It was four days later before we were allowed to investigate"? lamented Joe, "and then I went up there to see what I could find, you know, like you do"?, he added, with a twinkle in his eye.

Did he find anything? "Oh yes, smiled Joe, describing his grisly find, `under a hedge on the hillside I found a flying helmet, – and it still had bits of hair and scalp inside"?. Joe wanted to keep it as a souvenir – "But my father made me hand it in to the authorities, he said, adding somewhat wryly -"Might have been worth a few bob by now, eh?"?

Our `finds’ may not have constituted `buried treasure’ and have little or no monetary value, but they are reminders of the tragedy of war that sometimes we all too readily forget as it recedes further into our island history.

Perhaps it is appropriate that having celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Britain and a famous victory over the Luftwaffe, we should remember the names of those who survived that battle only to perish on a training flight over Derbyshire on the night of January 21st 1944 in the `Smerrill Wellington’.

R.A.A.F. Flying Officer Keith Jobson Perrett aged 27 of Brisbane, Queensland.

R.A.A.F. Flt. Sgt. Frederick Popham Deshon aged 27 of Brisbane, Queensland.

R.A.A.F. Flt. Sgt. William Thomas Barnes aged 27 of Queensland.

R.A.A.F. Flt. Sgt. James Kydd aged 26 of Wynnum, Queensland.

R.A.A.F. Flt.Sgt. Lloyd George Edmonds aged 25 of Unley, South Australia.

R.A.A.F. Sergeant Thomas Dudley Murton aged 19 of Tatura, Victoria.

"Their names liveth for evermore"?

Well, we started 350 million years ago with snapshots of Derbyshire’s foundations and the formation of the bed rock beneath our feet; we skipped to the time between forty thousand and twelve thousand years ago with a snapshot of the last ice-age. Next we had a snapshot of the Romans, followed by snapshots of the Middle Ages, the Tudors and Stuarts, the Industrial Revolution, and the Victorian age, and finally the modern age – but what of the future?

Perhaps with global warming we will all soon be drowned beneath the rising tide of another great ocean – as we were millions of years ago? Well, what goes around, comes around!

Global Warming & The Rise of Derbyshire!

Visitors to the Peak District during the November of 2000 may have been slightly confused, if not amused by a makeshift sign that some local wag had attached to a signpost in Darley Dale which read, "Welcome to the New Lake District!"?

Apart from people who were marooned at home and building an ark, there was precious little movement anywhere, with almost half of Britain under water after the wettest Autumn in our history, – or at least, since records began 225 years ago. All of Derbyshire’s major rivers burst their banks and were included in the unprecedented statistics issued by the Environment Agency with 60 severe flood alerts throughout the land.

It may not quite have been a flood of biblical proportions but the Great Flood of 2000 AD which brought virtually the entire country to a standstill and caused millions of pounds worth of damage also heralded the dawning of a new age – according to leading scientists who prophesy that it will be the first of many.

This, they say, is the direct result of global warming – caused by emissions from the further burning of fossil fuels. Environmentalists lay the blame mainly on the `infernal’ combustion engine, but the diminishing of the natural habitat on a global scale has also played a major role in the current climatic changes that are being experienced the world over.

So what are the facts? Are we in danger of living in a future `Waterworld’? Will the Crooked Spire become a landmark for shipping – and perhaps in a hundred years time, – Chesterfield become the Capital of England? Well, let’s examine the known scientific facts.

A number of years ago the United Nations appointed an Inter-governmental Panel consisting of 2000 of the worlds leading scientists to study climate change and it’s effects. They are unanimous in their verdict, recently presented to the World Summit on Climate Change in Brussels. They recognise that Global warming is no longer mere speculation, it is a scientifically proved fact; and it is happening NOW.

Here are some facts:

a) There is open water at the North Pole for the first time in human history.

b) The Arctic ice sheet has been reduced by almost 50% in the last 40 years.

c) The Greenland ice sheet is melting at the rate of eleven cubic miles a year.

d) When just one sixth of the West Antarctic ice sheet melts, world sea- levels will rise by one metre.

e) This rise in sea-levels will flood many of the world’s major cities and swamp more than 30% of the world’s agricultural land.

f) Large parts of the south of England would be inundated, with London being submerged beneath the North Sea.

However, scientists predict that the rise in sea levels will actually be much more dramatic!

Imagine the scene: large amphibious reptilies basking on the mud banks around Matlock; shark-like creatures with teeth like a crocodile cruising around the coral reefs of Chelmorton – and a blue expanse of ocean as far as the eye can see stretching all the way to Scotland in the north, and to the island of Charnwood in the south. Impossible? You may think so, – but it has happened before on at least four previous occasions, so what’s to say that it can’t happen again?

Somewhere in the primordial past, around 340 million years ago, this whole area was covered by a shallow sea whose sunlit floor was forested by stone lilies, and whose reefs were made up of myriads of small polyps.

An abundance of microscopic molluscs, lamp shells, worms and goniatites fed on the deep mud banks and together with the decaying stone lilies, added to the calcerous deposits laid down on the sea floor. Underwater volcanoes spewed lava and ash into the waters above and this, mixed with the decaying deposits eventually became the Carboniferous Limestone which today forms the Derbyshire upland.

The northern shores of the Carboniferous Limestone sea lay 200 miles away and stretched across the centre of Scotland, which was then part of the great North Atlantic continent, drained by large rivers flowing southward. Mud and grit were washed as far south as the Peak District and over millions of years this was transformed into the Edale shales.

Owing to undulations in the earth’s crust the land rose and fell alternately. Mud banks formed and quickly became forested by tall lepidodendron trees and numerous ferns. Over long periods of time this vegetation became a thick layer of peat, and later still was compressed into coal.

This sequence of events was repeated a number of times and over 60 million years a massive series of grit layers interspersed with shale and coal attained a depth of over 5000 feet.Pressures in the earth’s crust between Britain and Northern France caused a massive upthrust at the surface, which resulted in the Peak District rocks crumpling into a series of narrow folds.

Later during the first Mesozoic era the whole of this area was buried under the waste washed down from distant mountains, and then during the dry and arid climate of the Triassic period, in it was buried beneath a vast plain swept by hot winds and dust storms.

As the land moved, the plains subsided to below sea level. This event brought the second Mesozoic era, known as the Jurassic Period, when reptiles proliferated and new creatures became abundant upon the earth. At the end of the Jurassic Period this area of Britain subsided and the sea flowed in, covering the whole land except for the highlands of Scotland and Wales.

The Mesozoic Era lasted about 120 million years, during which the Peak District lay beneath an ever increasing cover of limestone, sandstones, clay, chalk – and sea. Then the British land mass began to rise again heralding the Cainozoic Era. The uprising was most marked along a line running northwards through the Peak District and Pennine region and this formed an elongated domed island. The crest of the dome acted as a natural water divide and many streams flowed down its slopes.

As the sea floor continued to rise, the boundaries of land were extended outwards in all directions. The streams broadened out across the lengthening plains as they rose slowly out of the water. Uniting with one another they merged into large rivers flowing to the sea – which by this time was far away.Channels were excavated by moving water and these widened into valleys. The water washed away vast quantities of rock, first the chalk and then in turn the Jurassic and Traissic rocks, until the original carboniferous limestone dome was eventually exposed.

Thus the carving of the modern Peak District had begun and continued throughout the Cainozoic age, – but it still had 100 million years to go, which encompassed the Great Ice Age, before stone age man appeared in this part of the world!

So, what about global warming, the threat of massively raised sea-levels, flooded landscapes – and sharks around the Crooked Spire of Chesterfield?

Well, we’ve heard it all before!

Whatever the future of this wonderful county of ours,- which will depend on how we leave it to our children and our grandchildren, – its glorious and fascinating past has left the wonderful and historic legacy of the landscape that we enjoy today. It is worth our care and gentle nurturing to leave a lasting legacy for future generations to love and enjoy. Take nothing from your wanderings in Derbyshire but pleasant memories of a unique and special place, and leave nothing behind but your footprints, as with this small book, I leave mine.

Tom Bates April 2006

This article has been brought to you by our resident peak district writerTom Bates