Welcome to the Discover Buxton podcast! Called Buxton Calling. It’s an eclectic mix of fascinating snippets from our history and how the old is adapting to make way for the new.

In this first episode, you can hear about Burbage’s church bells, about 12 minutes in to the programme, and the history of Cavendish Golf Club, around 20 minutes into the programme.

Who would have thought that we would ever be talking about the excitement of football and the finesse of golf in the new sport of ‘Footgolf’. I wonder whether Mary Queen of Scots would have taken up that particular pastime? Documentary evidence of 1567-1568 indicates that Mary, Queen of Scots “was seen playing golf and pall mall in the fields beside Seton”. According to the British Golf museum, the earliest known written reference to golf dates to 1457, when King James II of Scotland banned golf and football on the grounds as they were keeping his subjects from their archery practice. The ban was repeated in 1471 by James III and in 1491 by James IV for the same reason. The fact that the game was banned in 1457 suggests that it was played prior to that year and it may have been many years earlier. To our knowledge there are no royal edicts banning the potential double jeopardy of golf and football!

We hope you like the explosive sound of the church bells and the genuine explosions from the quarries. The story of Buxton could not be told without talking about quarrying and especially lime. People do not settle or survive in areas that offer few natural resources and we are rich. There is of course the marvellous Buxton waters but also coal and limestone.

Over the coming months, we will be returning to the story of lime and particularly the photographic archive at Lafarge Tarmac. Their story starts as early as 1874 when John Brunner and Ludwig Mond established the Solvay process for the manufacture of soda ash at Northwich. The raw materials for this process were salt (obtained locally) and limestone or lime from Derbyshire. The Buxton suppliers amalgamated in 1891 to form Buxton Lime Firms, who continued to supply ever increasing amounts of high purity limestone and lime to the Brunner Mond Company and, in 1918, Buxton Lime Firms was finally bought out by Brunner Mond.
The business therefore became part of Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in 1926 when ICI was formed by the merger of Brunner Mond with other major UK chemicals firms. We are hoping to bring this huge, and quite frankly magical, collection of photographs to the local community soon and there will be an exhibition of some of the iconic images from this fabulous collection in June. We have a little teaser of this towards the end of our programme, so sit back, ease back and enjoy.

As always, do get in touch if there is anything else you believe we should explore. The stories of our town are many and varied so, if you fancy telling a story on our podcast, then let us know.

Listen on Soundcloud here or play it below.