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Local History Some investigations into 1) a long-gone water corn mill at Durham City, England, and 2 ) the CrossTown area of Knutsford, Cheshire, England. |
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CrossTown, Knutsford, Cheshire
I have researched and written a booklet about six grand houses built from 1850 to about 1900 in the Cross Town district of Knutsford, Cheshire. This series was requested by the Knutsford Heritage Centre and the booklet is on sale at their shop. Abridged versions of these articles are given below:
| St Cross
Church and Cross Town history:
To support a heritage day at Knutsford, I put together a video slide show with narrator describing how the CrossTown area of the town had developed over 300 years. A striking aspect of this local history was how closely the community in CrossTown was involved with the local church, St Cross Church of England parish church. The video is too long a file to place on this web site, but here is the text of the commentary. I acknowledge that it is of limited interest without the old photographs. |
| Grand houses of Cross Town: Introductory article : view here |
| Woodlands-Woodside : vew here |
| Thorneyholme : in preparation |
| Rockford Lodge: view here |
| Sharston House: in preparation |
| Hallside House : in preparation |
| Aylesby and Concluding remarks : in preparation |
The coloured drawings below are imaginewd viewed of Knutsford in Victorian times, drawn to illustrate publications of the Knutsford Heritage Centre, Cheshire.
Water Mill at Kepier, Durham City
Almost nothing remains of the water-powered corn mill at Kepier Hospital, about one mile (1.5 km) downstream on the River Wear from Durham City (post code DH1 1LB). The building burned down on Saturday 24th September 1870 to leave a collapsed, hollow shell. Two photographs taken in the 1880s shows the scene from the river bank to the south. Using these photographs I have painted a picture (below) to show how the place might have looked. In the course of this I became interested in the mill and conjectured what it may have looked like and how it may have operated before it was destroyed.
Here is my article about the history of Kepier Mill. It explains how I went about the reconstruction to produce a computer 'Lego-type' model. On the Paintings pages I show a series of images which show how this painting was built up in stages.
This article has been revised in March 2017 from the version published here in December 2016. As a result of the first article a new search broght further information to light. Also a new Appendix tells something of the peolpe living there in the 19th century.