Hope Cement Works: an Industrial/Rural Walk
Hope Cement Works, seen on the way up to Back Tor.
When you first begin to explore the High Peak area, the regular appearance of Hope Cement Works is jarring: it’s grey-white blockiness is inescapable in a vista of soft greens and browns; or else the smoke catches the light; or you might sometimes hear it. When you’re taking in the views from Mam Tor and Win Hill, there it is, and it’s even visible from Stanage Edge.
When I was new to walking in the Peaks, I was slightly alarmed to see the UK’s biggest cement works in the midst of the countryside. These days, not only am I fairly obsessed with the incongruence of the industrial in the rural, but I see Hope Cement Works as a significant landmark that helps me piece together the fragments of the Peaks I’m familiar with.
Hope Cement Works from Stanage Edge.
There’s been a cement works ruining tourists’ expectations of a pastoral idyll since 1929, over two decades before the Peak District National Park was established. Even before then, the geology of the Hope Valley that makes it the perfect site for a cement factory (seams of shale and limestone that are easy to quarry) meant that this was always an industrial area, mined and quarried as far back as Roman times.
At a time when the British economy was ailing and unemployment was high, G & T Earle’s Cement Works would have been a boon to the local and wider area. Three years previously, there’d been the General Strike and such was public opinion that, earlier in 1929, the Labour Party won the most seats in the House for the first time.
Ramsey MacDonald’s government did not give the go ahead for the cement works though: it may have been planned as early as 1910, but war and recession intervened. The plant immediately became the largest source of employment in the Hope Valley. As well as creating jobs directly through its construction, quarries and works, the works required a 3km rail spur to connect it with the Sheffield-Manchester mainline (cement trucks were steam-hauled until 1963, and steam engines are still kept on site), and Hope village grew substantially with new housing for workers in the 20s and 30s.
The National Park Authority seems not to have restricted the expansion of the works, even as its appearance became more and more conspicuous. The fifth kiln (‘A5’) was already being planned in 1949, and with it came a 120 metre smokestack, causing huge controversy. But the stack you can see today wasn’t in construction until 1969, and stands at the opposite end of the site. (I have no idea how tall the existing smokestack is, or even if it’s taller. If you have insider intelligence, or are just better at googling than me, tell me the stats in the comments.)
The plant in 1954, with its controversial 120 metre smokestack.
Despite attempts at sustainability and environmental protections, the manufacture of Portland cement (the type produced at Hope Works and used most widely around the world for concrete, mortar and grout) accounts for 10% of global CO2 emissions due to a combination of vehicles on site, the release of carbon from fuels for the kilns, and the methods of distribution that follow. Many plants now double as municipal furnaces for waste since the kilns reach such high temperatures that they’re able to deal with a variety of materials. But unless the waste being burned is a good substitute for coal (in which case the plants claim that they’re ‘carbon neutral’), the main benefit is simply that waste doesn’t end up in landfill.
Hope Cement Works employs this approach of burning waste, and perhaps its partnership with the National Park means it does a bit better environmentally than the average cement plant. Even before the inception of the Peak District National Park in 1951, environmental restrictions were in place from the outset: unlike other plants, kiln dust could not be dumped. Today, the works must move the majority of its cement via rail, both for sustainability reasons and to protect local roads and infrastructure, and this has effectively kept the spur line in use (and even recently upgraded), while other factories lost their railways in favour of road haulage.
There are more benefits to Hope Cement Works being located within a National Park, too: because the Park Authority requires the works to mask the noise and appearance of the quarries and works as much as possible, thousands of trees have been planted; and, where safe, the land has to be accessible to the public. The upshot here is that an ancient footpath goes right alongside the plant, and — because of all the trees — it seemed like Winter was the right time to look. We went just before Christmas.
We started off in Smalldale, Bradwell, in the car park of Ye Olde Bowling Green Inn (which is so Olde it’s on the 1899 map above). After a steep walk up Michlow Lane, a signed footpath takes you up a grassy bank and through and across fields. Almost immediately after entering the woods, you find yourself next to the works. There are no gates — just signs telling you to watch out for plant traffic heading to and from the coal stores. A little further on there are huge cylinders to the right, and conveyors overhead, bringing limestone down from the quarry. Large crushers are set into the hillside. The path goes directly under one of the conveyors for 100 metres or so, before veering away. There are some good views of the famous smokestack before you’re taken back into the woods, where the footpath meets Pindale Road.
Pindale Road is both steep and rocky, and it meets a disused quarry. This combination of factors apparently makes it perfect for off-road hobbyists with a lot of money. I learnt this because the sounds of revving engines approaching us was becoming alarming, and then two 4x4s appeared from up the hill. Their drivers manoeuvred them slowly over the rocky lip into the quarry. And then out again. And then passengers became drivers and they did it all over again. I’d heard about the complaints of countryside dwellers about off-road vehicles wrecking ancient tracks and land, but I had assumed that the damage was incidental to rich people driving around. I had no idea that practicing clutch control was so exciting and popular. By the time we’d hiked high enough to look down into the old quarry, there were four sparkling 4x4s, each with disco lights mounted above their windscreens. On the way back down, there was only one, but it was accompanied by two motorbikes, which took turns to loudly whine up and down the quarry floor.
At the top of Pindale Road, you turn left, where there are a host of warning signs and a blockade. If you hop over this, you’re rewarded with some stunning views over the quarry and a chance to get your breath. (I utterly failed to capture the size and depth of the quarry due to not being a great photographer, looking into the sun, and relying on my phone camera, but it honestly is massive and spectacular.)
We followed the path along the quarry and went onto a bank of scrub to get the view over the cement works, before retracing our steps . . . and then struggled to find anywhere in the whole Hope Valley where we could eat, having inadvertently gone out on the day that every Peak District walking group was having its Christmas meal.
I discovered later that we’d missed the cement works’ 90th birthday celebrations by four months. If it seems odd that a cement factory had a birthday party — and it should — then it tells you something about its importance to the area. Hope Cement Works is still the largest single employer in the Peak District, and the current owners, Breedon Group are keen to stress how much the the works contributes to the local economy (£53 million, apparently). The works figures are also fairly mind-bending: two and a half million tonnes of stone is quarried every year, and 1 million tonnes of cement leaves the site over the same period.
Whether you’re a fan of the cement works or someone who is constantly miffed by it cropping up in your view, I hope this touch of context augments your stares of adoration or hatred on future walks.
I’ll leave you with a terrifying accidental find:
The ghost child of Win Hill (no relation), stolen from Google Maps.
Links:
This blog was brought to you by some brilliant sites:
There is some great railway nerdery and local history information at this excellent site.
If you want to know more about cement, or get insanely detailed specs for extant and disused cement works, Cement Kilns is your best friend. (I can’t tell you how much I love that this site exists.)
Historic England has made thousands of images available on Britain From Above.
I’d be nothing without Old Maps Online. It might be my favourite site.
