The village of Tintwhistle lies in the High Peak district in the county of Derbyshire in Northern England. The High Peak area is the more elevated section of the Dark Peak which is made of moorland and bogs. It’s limestone foundation is covered in sandstone and shale. In winter, with heavy rainfall and snow, the soil is almost always saturated with water and ice.
The countryside around the village is attractive but not a little wild and the fairly bucolic pastures soon give way to the moors themselves.
The most notable former resident of the village is the fashion designer and activist Vivienne Westwood. Westwood grew up in a row of stone cottages known as Millbrook located just outside the village on the main Manchester road. The village of Hollingsworth lies to the West, the town of Glossop to the South.
Westwood was born Vivienne Isabel Swire in Glossop. Her father was a storekeeper, her mother worked in the local cotton mill. The Millbrook cottages and the surrounding countryside was her playground. She went on to become the arguably best fashion designer (and certainly the most innovative) the UK has ever produced.
“Millbrook Cottages were at the bottom of an old quarry and from the earliest age my mother lifted me over our back wall to play in a dell where bluebells grew. As I grew up I was free to wander in a countryside which was beautiful and intimate until you got to the moors. After that it was wild and a little frightening”.
Although the city of Manchester (with its music clubs and art galleries) was not too far away, the Pennine area Westwood grew up in would have seemed culturally remote in the monochrome 1950’s.
“I lived in a part of the country that had grown up in the Industrial Revolution. I didn’t know about art galleries until I was 17. I’d never seen an art book, never been to the theatre.”
Westwood moved with her parents to London when she was 17 and she has lived in the city ever since. It is London, or rather her shop premises at 430 Kings Road, Chelsea that is for ever associated with her daring designs. From its rock’n’roll, fetish wear and punk roots in the 1970’s, the shop that was initially known as ‘Let it Rock’. It them became ‘Too Fast To Live, Too Young to Die’, then ‘Sex’, then ‘Seditionaries’ and finally ‘Worlds End’ as it is still known today. (World’s End is the name given to this eastern part of the district of Chelsea in London where the shop lies). With the changes of name, the designs and very nature of Westwood’s creations would abruptly change.
In this year of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and her recent death, it is worth looking back at Westwood’s attitude to the Monarchy.
Initially, you could be forgiven for taking the view that Westwood was an out and out Republican. One of her initial designs featured a screen print of the famous Cecil Beaton portrait of the Monarch with a safety pin through her lips.
Her shop at 430 Kings Road helped clothe the Sex Pistols who stormed the UK music charts with their ultra controversial hit single ‘God save the Queen’ at the time of the latter’s Silver Jubilee in 1977.
Westwood herself was arrested and detained on the day of the Jubilee celebrations in 1977 following a very infamous boat trip with the Sex Pistols and various luminaries on board. The group belted out their songs as they sailed along the Thames until they passed the Houses of Parliament when their boat was detailed by a flotilla of police officers who promptly arrested all and sundry, including Westwood.
Nevertheless, Westwood is very much a monarchist who holds the Queen and the Hereditary monarchy in high regard.
“ The Queen performs a national service. She holds the country together. She is a figurehead of international diplomacy. We all owe her our gratitude’’.
‘’I think that it is important that our Royal family is hereditary, the family members learn diplomacy by osmosis and develop a sense of duty to our country and the world.’’
Westwood is very much an Anglophile and monarchist in her designs and she has often use royal images and traditional materials ranging from a Harris Tweed collection to worsted’s, tartan kilts and bondage jackets and to the choice of an Orb logo for her business logo.
Her notorious 70’s rubber clothing was stitched and assembled by obscure fetish wear manufacturers in the North of England who had been making garments in the material for their specialist customers for many years.
Westwood was born in Glossop, a town just South of her home in Tintwistle. Glossop is where she went to school. There was talk a few years ago about building a museum in the the town dedicated to her life and work but the idea was apparently rejected. A local graffiti artist, Deggy, recently created his own mural in the town in honour of Westwood.
Glossop is a handsome town with loads of character and it is certainly worth a visit in its own right. Our favourite place is The Globe pub on the High Street
The pub is a well known music venue and it serves an exclusive Vegan menu of super cheap and very tasty bar classics. Recommended.
When it comes to beer, the local Distant Hills brewery and tap room is also a good bet.
In 1992 Westwood received an OBE from Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen made her a Dame in 2006.
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