The Tempest Family
The Tempest family dominated Little Eaton throughout the 19th century. They owned three mills, employing over 200 people at a time when the population of the village was 700 -900. They owned three grand houses and built over 20 cottages for their workers. They made substantial contributions towards establishing two schools and to refurbish the church. They were major shareholders in the companies which constructed the canal and the Tramway and owned substantial tracts of land.
The Tempest family came to England with the Normans and settled in the north. A branch of the family became farmers in Duffield at Burley Grange. By the mid seventeenth century, Michael Tempest was head of the family – shown below …….
Michael leased some land in Little Eaton and the Award map of 1789 records that two fields in Little Eaton were held by John Tempest and one field by William Tempest. John’s granddaughter, Juda, had an illegitimate son, Thomas Tempest. She then married Thomas Brown and settled in Park Farm with her family in about 1800 (see article on Park Farm).
Meanwhile, two of Michael Tempest’s sons, Michael and William, married two sisters, Dorothy and Ann Hawkins, whose mother, Judith Hawkins, had several land holdings in Little Eaton. The holdings included two mills – The Bleach Mill in the village, and Peckwash corn Mill on the Derwent. Judith left the two mills to Dorothy and her grandson, Thomas Tempest. She also left land to her daughter Ann and to a third daughter, Elizabeth, who married John Wall, the village blacksmith (see The Little Eaton Smithy). Extracts from her will of 1793 are shown below …...
Thomas Tempest (1765-1832)
Thomas Tempest inherited the Bleach Mill and Peckwash Mill from his grandmother. He let the Bleach Mill to Elisha Smith who continued to use it for bleaching. Peckwash Mill had been a corn mill dating back to the twelfth century. In c 1800, Thomas rebuilt the mill as an extensive paper mill, using cotton waste from the mills in Cromford, Belper and Milford as raw material for the paper making process. In the early 1800s he bought two new machines, invented in France but developed in England by the Fourdrinier family; he later added two more, making Peckwash one of the largest paper making factories in Europe. He bult a row of cottages on Rigga lane to house some of the workforce and a fine house, Derwent House, for his wife and family.
Derwent House
Thomas and his cousins also took on swathes of land in the village. He and William Tempest leased over 20 fields and houses, including land around Park Farm and Peckwash.
Thomas died in 1832. He passed on the business to his son John. He had two other sons, William and Thomas but he had already given them money and they remained childless.
John Tempest (1791 – 1863)
The business continued to prosper and in 1854 John opened another paper mill in the village. This was the Brook Mill, situated between Bottle Brook and Alfreton Road. He appointed Robert Harvey as manager and built the Poplars, on Station Road, for his residence. Robert married John’s daughter, Sarah, see family tree above. They lived in the Poplars until they moved to Derwent House when Sarah’s father died.
The Brook Paper Mill
The Poplars
John Tempest (1820 – 1882)
Meanwhile John’s son, another John (1820-1882), married Robert Harvey’s sister, Selina. They took over the business and built Eaton House (below) to live in. He also took over Church Farm and land on Vicarage Lane, inherited from Selina’s Wall and Harvey families. When John junior died, Selina carried on living in the house until she died. There were no children. Robert Harvey took over the business.
Eaton House
The Tempest Harveys
By 1970, the business began to lose its edge. Cheap German imports of paper began to appear on the market and Robert Harvey did not have the business acumen to respond. He sold the Brook Mill and The Poplars to the Cudlip family in 1880. In the 1890s he made the disastrous decision to convert from water power to steam power and built a tall chimney to take the smoke from the furnaces. He joined some of his family for a picnic at the top of the new chimney to celebrate.
A neighbour, Charles Catt from The Outwoods objected, and obtained an injunction to stop production. There were also problems with flooding in the area, claimed to result in part from the weir at the mill.
By this time the business was in real trouble. Robert Harvey’s son, John Tempest Harvey, did his best to pay off the debts but the business folded in 1903. All the Tempest businesses, including the Bleach Mill, were sold, together with the Tempest houses. John Tempest Harvey’s son, Roland, left the village in the 1930s but returned in 1941 to manage the Brook Mill, then in the hands of the Dowding family. That business ran into trouble too and the Harvey family left the village for good in 1953.
Philip and Ruth Hunter
We are grateful to Mr and Mrs M Bagshaw for a family tree on the Tempest family and to Mick Fitchew for information on Peckwash mill.