We have recently been reworking the catalogue for two collections connected to the mills owned by the Strutt family, which were later taken over by the English Sewing Cotton Company. Both collections relate to the various mills in Belper, Milford and Derby, which were once thriving workplaces within Derbyshire.
The first collection is D6948, which contains a wide variety of business and employee records covering the period of 1751-1938, covering the period for both the Strutt and English Sewing Cotton businesses. It contains 53 boxes and 80 outsize volumes, so there is a lot of material there for anyone to sift through. Just one of the topics covered in this collection are child workers, including the registers and certificates relating to their employment, as well as school attendance registers. I would certainly recommend looking through these very interesting documents.
I recently wrote a couple of blog posts on these child worker records, which you can find here and here.
A few other highlights from the D6948 collection include books listing the amount of linen loaned to the sick by the Belper Humane Society and ledgers listing shipments of cotton from the Caribbean and South America, which would have been picked by enslaved people.
The second collection is D3638, which similarly also contains various business and manufacturing records, but mainly for English Sewing Cotton. This is a smaller collection than the previous one as it contains 3 boxes, 1 outsize volume and one object.
The items that I have been helping to recatalogue from this collection have been photographs covering a wide variety of things relating to Belper and Milford. A highlight from these have been the social gatherings for employees.
I would also like to thank Adrian Farmer, Heritage Coordinator at Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site and Chairman of the Belper Historical Society, who has provided a lot of insight, particularly for the photographs.
If you would like to see the catalogue for the collections mentioned, you can visit our catalogue using this link, and type in these reference numbers into the search bar to discover more: D6948 and D3638. If you have any further enquires, or would like to look at anything within these catalogues, please contact Derbyshire Record Office either via email: record.office@derbyshire.gov.uk or tel: 01629 538347.
Derbyshire Record Office 
An excellent collection, thank you.