Retired Minister Adrian Smith tells how he returned to the village that just ‘gets better and better’.
WHEN I RETIRED and returned to Tansley with my wife Sue over 11 years ago, an old friend whom I had known from my childhood in the village said to me: “Welcome back, Tansley gets better and better”. He was right. It is true that in common with many small villages that are close to towns (in this case, Matlock) many of the facilities that were taken for granted 100 years ago no longer exist. Tansley at one time had 10 shops, four blacksmiths, four rope-makers, a shoemaker, a laundry, a chimney sweep, a hydro, various mills on the Coach Road, a saw mill and timber yard, many nurseries large and small, a post office, an Anglican church (Holy Trinity, built in 1839), two Methodist churches built 1829 and 1864 respectively, three pubs, a public Reading Room, and so on – all to serve a village of some nine hundred people!…