Back in the 1990s, in that long-ago Pleistocene era when I was at secondary school, we were taken on a trip to the small Peak District village of Cromford. There, aside from pulling strange faces at bemused locals, we were regaled with stories of noted industrialist Richard Arkwright, who in 1771 snapped up a modest section of land in the village and built a cotton mill. People a lot smarter than me argue this was the birthplace of modern manufacturing – triggering a centuries-long chain that led to the creation of… well, pretty much everything we buy today.
But its significance to the industrial revolution is not why I love Cromford. I love it for something much more prosaic: its fabulous little bookshop.
What a place.
