When we moved to Holestone Moor Farm in 1998, we were keen to find out the history of the house and area. We visited the Matlock Records Office where we were able to access maps and other documents, and Vicki did a huge amount of research on the Internet. Steve put all of this together, and wrote ..
A SHORT HISTORY OF HOLESTONE MOOR FARM AND BARNS
Holestone Moor Farm was part of the Overton Hall Estate, which extended to 1000 acres in the Parish of Ashover and was bought by the Hodgkinson family of Northedge Hall from the Hunts in 1599.
Example of millstone
There is a local story that Holestone Moor was so named because the grit millstones quarried at Ashover were brought onto the Moor to have their central drive holes cut. Another theory suggests that the Moor may have been a good place to find ‘Holystones’, pieces of rock with a naturally weathered hole, which were in great demand as good luck talismans when kept at the entrance of a house. (The farm is named ‘Holystone Moor’ on a map of 1849).
The Ashover Enclosure Award Listings and map of 1779 show the area to be open moorland and rough pasture belonging to Robert Banks Hodgkinson of Overton Hall. The enclosure of the land within dry stone walls and building of the farmsteads commenced sometime after
Sir Joseph Banks, Botanist
the publication of the Enclosure Award Listings. A notable owner of the Overton Estate around this time was Sir Joseph Banks the famous naturalist and President of the Royal Society, who accompanied Captain Cook on his voyages of exploration around the world between 1768-1771, as botanist to the expedition. The Banks family had acquired the estate through marriage in the 18th century but following the death of Sir Joseph (1820) and Lady Banks; the property was inherited by their nephew Sir Edward Knatchbull (Baronet) who sold the estate in 1829 to Dr Bright of London.
The first documented evidence of the existence of Holestone Moor Farm is the 1841 census, when the tenants were Samuel Calladine, a farmer aged 30, his wife Sarah, four children and two servants. The Calladines were still occupying the farm (then 92 acres) when Joseph Gratton’s tithe plan and rental listings were published (1849-1852) and appear on the 1851 census with a further 3 children and a single ‘agricultural’ servant. The 1851 census also records a family called Rhodes (or Roades) living at ‘Old Holestone’ and farming 6 acres of land. It is likely that ‘Old Holestone’ was the cottage that formerly stood opposite the farm courtyard and that George Rhodes and his wife Hannah moved into Holestone Moor Farm when the Calladines gave up the tenancy sometime after 1851. George Rhodes’ unmarried daughters, Mary and Sarah, were farming Holestone Moor at the time of his death in 1885.
The Overton Hall estate, which comprised 15 farms, over 1000 acres of land and various cottages, was sold by Dr Bright’s trustees to the Jessop family in 1887 and subsequently by the Jessops to the Clay Cross Company in 1919. The Clay Cross Company had been established by the railway pioneer George Stephenson and developed into a major coal and mineral mining company throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. The company purchased the Overton Hall estate primarily for its mineral deposits which included limestone, fluorspar, barites, lead and millstone grit. Lead had been worked on the estate for many hundreds of years and the Overton mines are the only important workings in Derbyshire that are freehold, and not subject to payment of royalties to the Crown. Part of the famous Gregory lead vein passes underneath neighbouring Old Engine Farm, where the mine entrance still exists. The mine-pumping lagoon is now a popular local fishing pond.
The 1919 estate sale document records that Holestone Moor Farm comprised 116 acres of grass and arable land and was rented to W. Shaw and Son at £62 per year. The property also included the 3-bedroom farmhouse with dairy, a cottage, cowhouse for 17, a 3-stall stable with granary over, barn, cartshed and piggeries. The Shaw family rented Holestone Moor until after the 2nd World war when the Clay Cross Company started to split up the estate and sell off the assets. The farm was sold to the Hopkinsons (father and son) in 1967 and then on to Tony Jackson in 1983.
In 1989 Mr Jackson split the farm into two plots; the old farmhouse and the stone barns with 6 acres for residential use and the remaining 80 acres or so as a working farm. A mains water supply was installed into the farmhouse at this time; previously the occupants had relied upon the spring in the garden!
The derelict stone barns were converted into holiday cottages in 1999, opening for Christmas of that year.
George Rhodes & his wifeGeorge Rhodes' gravestone is in the graveyard of the Church at Ashover
