Looking down on Tansley village from Lumsdale Quarry
Tansley is a village on the Southern edge of the Derbyshire Peak District, two miles East of Matlock. It is recorded in the Domesday Book as Taneslege, and its name comes from the combination of the Old English words lega, meaning "wood or glade" and tan meaning "a branch of a valley". Tansley grew during the Industrial Revolution, its main industry being the quarrying of millstone grit (for making mill-stones, now adopted as the symbol of the Peak District National Park). A copious amount of water runs off Tansley moor above the village, eventually running into Bentley Brook, a tributary of the Derwent. This has been dammed in the past to make a number of artificial lakes which provided water to power two cotton mills. Nowadays the lakes are stocked with fish for angling. The water also led to the establishment of many spas, when hydrotherapy was in fashion and Victorian tourists came to the Matlock area for its Romantic charm. Tansley is now more famous for its many garden centres, and also for its large Sunday car-boot market.
A well dressed by pupils of Tansley Primary School, July 2002
Like many Derbyshire towns and villages, Tansley has an annual well dressing ceremony; some of the springs and former wells in Tansley (which ones varies year to year) are decorated and blessed by the Parish priest in the first week of July.
Carboot sales are held in variously changing sites in fields above Tansley every Sunday and bank holiday.
Tansley has an informal twinning arrangement with the small town of Babadag in Tulcea County, Romania. The two communities have occasional exchange visits, and more frequent postal and email contact, arranged through an organisation named TABALINK (the Tansley Babadag Association). The aims of TABALINK are:
- to promote friendship and understanding between the people of the village of Tansley, and the wider area of Derbyshire, England; and the people of the town of Babadag and the surrounding area of Tulcea, Eastern Romania.
- to build links between the peoples of the communities concerned in all possible ways - educational, cultural and commercial.
- to stimulate and foster mutual exchanges between individuals, families and societies within the communities.
- to organize social and fund raising events and activities to support the objects of the Association.
Coordinates: 53°08'N, 1°31'W
(Source: Wikipedia) |