The Alfreton area in the 1840s

In the 1840s Swanwick was part of Alfreton parish. The district, which included the villages of South Normanton, Pinxton, Pentrich, South Wingfield, Butterley and Riddings, was at the heart of the early industrial revolution. This started on a domestic scale with families operating framework knitting machines in their own homes alongside their farming activities. Jedediah Strutt of South Normanton had patented the Derby Rib machine in 1759 and this rapidly replaced the conventional stocking frame machine.

With the enclosure of the common fields, villagers who had previously had perhaps just a few strips to cultivate and a cow and a calf pastured on the commons, lost the means to support themselves by agriculture and became dependant on industry. Jedediah Strutt collaborated with Richard Arkright in building the world's first cotton mill at Cromford in 1771, and then built his own mill, also water-powered at Belper, both less than ten miles (16 km) from Alfreton.

As the factory system developed and depression followed the end of the Napoleonic War, many country folk were squeezed between falling wages and rising prices. Aspirations of political reform were rigidly repressed and working people in many areas of the country turned to desperate measures. North-east Derbyshire became a hot-bed of radical political activism, much of it secret as even membership of trades unions was illegal and severely punished. As early as the winter of 1811-12 there were sporadic incidents of machine-breaking in Swanwick, South Wingfield and Pentrich. For a while incidents of machine-breaking became rife in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Leicestershire.

In 1817, when Joseph Cree was eleven years old, discontent reached a peak following an appallingly long, cold winter. Snow fell as late at 7th June and a couple of days later the most violent of the revolutionary actions took place. Planning meetings were held at the White Horse in Pentrich, just a mile from Joseph's home. There is no evidence that Thomas Cree took any part but he must have known some of the participants. The organisation and execution of the rising were pathetically ill-conceived and it was doomed from the start. An agent provocateur had infiltrated the leadership and the whole plan was known to the authorities. But a man had been killed and an example had to be made of the revolutionaries - three were executed, fourteen transported.

Joseph would have known the families of some of the men involved in "England's last revolution" and the ferment of rebellion in the area would have had a lasting impression on him. The late baptism of four of his six children may indicate that he was a reluctant adherent of the Church of England. There is also some evidence in the letters suggesting that he was reluctant to conform to traditional customs.

This background is important if we are to understand the motives of Joseph and Martha Cree in taking their young family to America. The letters provide some further clues, notably by the many references to "going out west" and acquiring the ownership of land.

Swanwick, from Pigot's Directory of Derbyshire, 1835

Swanwick is a hamlet, in the parish of Alfreton, about a mile and a half S.W. from that town. There are places of worship for baptists and Wesleyan methodists, and a free-school, erected and endowed in 1740 by Mrs Elizabeth Turner.

It is likely that the existence of the Turner Free School is the reason why Joseph's mother Elizebeth (née Cutts) was literate. Joseph himself would have been brought up in Pinxton

Alfreton, from Pigot's Directory of Derbyshire, 1835

The manufacture of stockings is a branch of trade here of some importance, and in the immediate neighbourhood are iron foundries. At Pye Bridge, three miles east of Alfreton, are the Alfreton iron works, belonging to Messrs. James Oakes and Co., where have been constructed some of the largest iron bridges, and almost every other sort of castings of smaller dimensions; a considerable number of cannon and a large quantity of shot have also been produced here - these works are at the present time in full employment: there are also several productive coal mines in the neighbourhood; and the Erewash canal passes through the parish.

Transformation of a Valley - The Derbyshire Derwent by Brian Cooper, Heinemann, 1983 ed. p 275.

The Pentrich area had already seen outbreaks of Luddite violence. In two separate riots during the winter months of 1811-12, twenty-five [knitting] frames had been smashed in the village, and others close by at South Wingfield and Swanwick.

The Making of the English Working Class by E P Thompson, Penguin, 1980 ed. p 733.

We may see the Pentridge rising as one of the first attempts in history to mount a wholly proletarian insurrection, without any middle-class support. The objectives of this revolutionary movement cannot perhaps be better characterized than in the words of the Belper street song - 'The Levelution is begun...' The attempt throws light on the extreme isolation into which the northern and Midlands workers had been forced during the Wars, and it is a transitional moment between Luddism and the 'populist' Radicalism of 1818-20 and 1830-32.

A History of Alfreton by Reginald Johnson pub. priv. 1968.

During the 19th Century the modern village of Swanwick grew on the Derby and Heage Turnpike Roads. Haslam Bros. opened collieries to the west of the village, but agriculture and framework knitting were the main occupations of the inhabitants. It was amongst the humble, badly-paid workers that Baptist pioneer preachers worked and founded a Baptist chapel in 1796. It was enlarged in 1828... The Wesleyan Methodists had a chapel built in 1824... rebuilt in 1845...

The Rev. John Wood... was the central figure in Swanwick and Pentrich for half a century and... although he succeeded his father as "Squire of Swanwick", he remained vicar of Pentrich from 1818 to 1855. In 1803 he had married Emelia Susanna Bellairs daughter of... the owner of the Derby Bank."

We shall read in Letter 3 about the extent of the Rev. John Wood's influence over the lives of the people of Swanwick.

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