Cressbrook is a village in the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire. Prior to the Enclosure Acts of 1762 Cressbrook did not exist but later grew up around a textile mill complex built here on the River Wye, first by Richard Arkwright and then later by his son Richard, JL Philips and Brother Cotton Spinners and McConnel and Company. The Peak District National Park is a national park in the north of England. ... Derbyshire is a county in the East Midlands of England. ... The enclosure acts were a series of agricultural laws passed by Parliament in 19th century England. ... The cotton mill is a type of factory that was created to house spinning and weaving machinery. ... The River Wye is a river in Derbyshire, England. ... Richard Arkwright Sir Richard Arkwright (23 December 1732 – 3 August 1792) was an Englishman credited with the spinning frame — later renamed the water frame following the transition to water power. ...

Prior to the McConnel's period of ownership the village did not really exist at all beyond a collection of buildings in the immediate vicinity of the mill. When McConnel's professional workforce objected to the quality of the housing available he took it upon himself to build the model village that has now become Cressbrook. Building commenced in the late 1830's and was later extended by Henry McConnel's daughter, Mary Worthington in 1902 but the village has changed little since this time. Cressbrook Mill went bust in 1965, after which time it changed from being a private mill estate to the public village that it now is. Model villages were a classification of social/industrial developments created in the UK during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ...

Publications

The history of Cressbrook was recently captured in the publication Behind The View — Life and times in Cressbrook, a Derbyshire Mill village. The book was written by and published by the Cressbrook Community association with the help of a grant from the Local Heritage Initiative, a Countryside Agency project. The Countryside Agency in England is a statutory body with the task of improving the quality of the rural environment and the lives of those living in it. ...