The mining enterprise in this locality has wholly transformed
the scenery in the valley of the Erewash. Smoking furnaces
and densely populated towns and villages, with a network of
railways, now occupy what once was a quiet rural district,
little affected by the throb of manufacturing and commercial
activity in other parts of the country.
A
visitor to Stapleford after an absence of twenty years would
scarcely recognise in the mass of buildings and places of
business the small hosiery village that he once knew; but
among all that is modern, near to the gates of the churchyard,
standing on a strong pedestal, is the shaft of an ancient
cross that deserves the closest attention.
The
transverse arms are gone, and modern hands have surmounted
it with a cap and ball; but a careful survey shows that it
is a work of great andundoubted antiquity, and that it must
date back to the time when the district first heard the glad
tidings of the Christian faith. The shaft is about ten feet
high, roughly rounded at the lower part, and gradually working
into a square shape towards the top. It is elaborately ornamented
with interlaced and knotted ribbon work, arranged in geometrical
devices; and on one of its faces, near the top, is a curious
and indistinct carving that looks somewhat like the outline
of an enormous bird. The shaft has fortunately been the subject
of special and careful study on the part of a very competent
authority.
The
Rev. G. F. Browne (Disney Professor of Archaeology in the
University of Cambridge), referring to the evidences of early
Christian work in this county, says: ‘At Stapleford
you have a sculptured pillar of quite unique beauty of ornament,
and interest of ecclesiastical tradition. It has cost me three
days in three successive years to make out the intricate interlacements
of its ornamentation, and it stands now revealed as a work
of art as remarkable as any page of the best Hibernian MSS.
of .the eighth century, the Book of Kells, or the Gospel of
Lindisfarne. And it is unique in this respect, that it has
on it the symbol of the Evangelist St. Luke—a great
winged figure treading on a serpent, with the head and ears
and horns of a calf. The church is an early dedication to
St Helen. The pillar is earlier than that, for if you ask
when the village feast is, you find it is fixed by a complicated
rule of thumb, which determines that Old St Luke’s Day
comes always in the wake week. The pillar takes us to a time
before there was a church there at all. It records for us
the first taking possession by the first Christian missionaries
in the name of Christ and His Evangelist, St. Luke.’
 |
| Pevsner
regards the cross as being "by far the most important
pre-Conquest monument in Notts." The shaft is 10ft
high, and the decoration consists mostly of interlacings
but with one doll-like figure at the top. The cross
has been dated to c.1050. (© A. Nicholson, 2002) |
Domesday
Book records that before the Norman invasion there were here
four manors, which Ulcicilt, Godwin, Staplewin, and Gladwin
had, and that thereafter the famous William Peverel held land
in demesne. ‘There were then a priest and a church,
and 58 acres of meadow,’ valued in the Confessor’s
time at 6os., and in the Conqueror’s at 40s. only. Peverel
was a man of great influence, and held large possessions,
which had been granted to him by the Conqueror. It is said
that he was a natural son of that fortunate warrior, but Mr.
Freeman scouts the suggestion as an utterly uncertified and
almost impossible scandal
His
vassal or feudary at Stapleford was Robert de Heriz, and from
his grandson it passed to Avicia, wife of Richard Cazmera.
One of their descendants took the surname of the village,
and the estate was carried with the heiress of the Staplefords
by marriage to the Teverys, a Derbyshire family resident at
Long Eaton. Memorials of the Teverys are still in a good state
of preservation in Stapleford Church. The last member of the
family, Geoffrey, settled his possessions upon Tevery Palmes,
his grandson, from whom it passed to William Palmes, and he
sold it to Arthur Warren of Toton. Admiral Sir John Borlase
Warren rebuilt the hall in 1797, and after the Peace of Amiens
went as Ambassador to Russia. He subsequently took part in
the American War, and was made a K.G.B., returning to Stapleford
to spend his last days. He represented Nottingham in Parliament,
and died in 1822. His only daughter married the Hon. George
Vernon, and by their successor it was sold to Colonel I. C.
Wright, the present owner of the Hall.
The
church is an Early English edifice, to which alterations and
repairs were made in 1878 at a cost of £2000. On the
shoulder of the ridge which separates Bramcote and Stapleford
Valley is a huge giant in the shape of an enormous mass of
red sandstone, known as the Hemlock Stone, forty or fifty
feet high, and fifty feet round the base. There it has stood
for centuries ‘a petrified enigma,’ and there
we doubt not it will continue to stand for ages, one of the
oldest and most curious relics in this part of the county.
 |
| Kimberley
Chapel in the late 18th century (Throsby, 1790). The
chapel was described by Throsby as "bending towards
the earth like decrepit old age" and had completely
disappeared by 1832. |
Very
happily named is another pleasant stretch of country which
forms a picturesque part of the Erewash Valley, and is known
by the familiar appellation given to it not less than six
centuries ago. Beauvale has been partly invaded by houses—it
has given its name to a populous locality containing a large
Board School—but it is a beautiful vale still, and,
looking across the valley to the Derbyshire border, the eyes
rest upon as pretty a panorama as can be seen in any part
of the county.
The
district is well wooded, and there are diversified views of
hill and dale—of busy, thriving towns on the one side,
and of quiet rural hamlets on the other, with the handsome
residences of the gentry nestling amid the trees. Throsby,
in his wanderings, seems to have been struck with the varied
scenes hereabouts, for, speaking of Kimberley, which almost
touches Beauvale, he writes thus quaintly and enthusiastically:
‘The village is one of the most romantic I have seen
in these parts. Its site is extraordinarily diversified; some
of the dwellings perch upon an eminence, others sit snugly
on the side, some on the base. Comparing little things with
great, the travelling of an insect over a succession of ant-hills
is like that of a man over the lanes or passages of this village.’
Could the venerable antiquary revisit the locality to-day,
he would find a large part of it covered with houses, alike
at summit, side, and base. But the vale itself, which runs
at the foot of a thickly wooded slope down to the broad Erewash
Valley, has not been greatly built upon.
By
Cornelius Brown, A History of Nottinghamshire
(1896)
