For nigh upon half-a-century the postal business of Grindleford, which includes Stoke and Nether Padley, has been with one family. At the end of this month [Ed: the end of September 1906] the long association of the name of Kenyon with the village mails, and all the accessory matters connected therewith, comes to a close. Miss Kenyon, the present postmistress, has now got beyond the Psalmist's allotted span, and we gather from a circular before us, the Post Office authorities thought the age one at which retirement should take place. She has consequently resigned the position. In the circular referred to, we are told that “the remuneration received by Miss Kenyan has only sufficed for a bare living, and has not enabled her to save anything, and she is left, at the age of 73 years, without any means of support”. It is further stated that “she in not eligible for a pension, but it has been intimated to her that the Post Office authorities, will grant her one quarter's salary in lieu of notice”. A testimonial is, therefore, being promoted with the view of raising a substantial sum in recognition of her long and faithful service, and in consideration of her circumstances at the end of it. Subscriptions are received by Mr. R. Athorpe, Highcliffe Farm, Eyam; Mr. E.S. Bramwell, Ivydene, Grindleford; and Mr. Alfred Booth, Leam Hall.

Grindleford was a favourite village of Sheffield folks long before the Dore and Chinley Railway afforded such facility of access to its pleasant ways by wood and water, by hill and dale. Now, it is one of the most frequented places on the line. A few far-seeing ones, convinced a railway would come there some day, were wise enough to secure for themselves a bit of land on which to put a house before the advent of the line caused values to advance. Others have followed their example since the railway was opened. At the end of the Station Road there is quite a little colony, the residences being built on the land acquired by the Grindleford Estate Company (Limited). Anyone who is about the station when the last trains come in at night can form a good idea of the popularity of Grindleford, as well as of other places a little farther off, amongst which Eyam probably ranks next. Grindleford, indeed, is becoming practically a suburb of Sheffield, and as the years go on there is certain to be an increasing desire on the part of citizens with country inclinations, after their day's work is done, to go through the tunnel and sleep on the health-giving hills.

But to our story of the Post Office. Forty-eight years ago there lived in this old village, at the foot of Sir William Hill - how came this hill to get its name? - one James Kenyon, who combined the position of schoolmaster and postmaster. He was Grindleford's first dominie. Keeping school in there days was not very much more remunerative perhaps than keeping a rural post-office in ours, and Mr. Kenyon added to his scholastic and postal duties the further business of collecting butter and eggs, which he took on Saturdays for sale in Sheffield. And thereby hangs a little tale. Eyam was one of the places where he made his butter and egg calls. Returning one night he was set upon. between the tannery and the bottom of the lane, by two footpads, who took what he had upon him - some five or six shillings in money, a penknife, and his snuff-box. However. that was the only adventure he had during the whole of the long period he discharged his dual duties in the village school and post office, to say nothing of the extra calling he added thereto.

In Mr. Kenyon's twenty years as postmaster he was assisted by two of his daughters, one of them, the present postmistress, having managed the office for him during the last eleven years he held it. On her father's death, on the 29th of July, 1879, she was appointed his successor and has held the position ever since, to the satisfaction of all with whom she had to do - native and visitor alike. The duties, of course, have greatly increased during her tenure. Her father was not troubled with postal orders or registered letters, and neither the parcels post nor the half-penny stamp had then been introduced. As for ordinary letters these have been in her time sometimes more in a single week than her father used to deal with in a whole year. Last Christmas Miss Kenyon thinks was the “record” for Grindleford.

Of the rural post offices in that and the adjoining Derbyshire districts, Hathersage, Bamford, Castleton, Eyam, Stony Middleton, Calver, and Grindleford Bridge, are all under Sheffield. At one time the mail cart came from Tideswell, picked up the Eyam mails, then down the dale to Stony Middleton, and on to Calver, from which it passed along to Grindleford. How often, from Bank Top, in the summer mornings of other days, have we watched the red between the green on the low road! From Grindleford the mails were taken on to Fox House, the Castleton driver carrying them forward to Sheffield, except on Thursdays when the Tideswell mail-cart went all the way. In the course of conversation Miss Kenyon recalled the time when the now long-established universal penny post had its limitations. Round the village, and as far so Goatscliffe on the one side and Leam on the other, the penny stamp sufficed, but there were several houses beyond Leam Hall, and at Padley Mills, where the people had to pay two pence for their letters. Miss Kenyon has recently had two letter-carriers to assist her in the deliveries, yet she still takes her part in the work, beginning at the old Red Lion and going as far as Stoke Cottage. Stoke Hall, a little further on, is in the Calver district.

During the whole of her long period as post-mistress, Miss Kenyon has gone down to the row of cottages of which that well-known road-side inn, the Red Lion, was the centre, and waited there at seven o'clock every morning to receive and forward the letters, and return at six o'clock in the evening for the same purpose. In that work, and the duty of delivery, she has, as she puts it, “weathered many storms”, her round including Leam Hall, Goatscliffe, and Padley. The most vivid recollection she has of severe storms is that memorable “visitation” of more than twenty years ago, still known in Derbyshire as “the great snow”. From Tideswell a telegram was sent to let Sheffield know the mail-cart could not get through. The Sheffield postmaster wired back that a start must be made at six o'clock next morning, even if they had to employ a hundred men to cut the snow. Seventeen men were set to work clearing a way through that portion of it from Grindleford, up Padley Wood, to Fox House. Miss Kenyon remembers going down at six o'clock, and waiting until nine, and next morning at eight o'clock. What should have come there in the morning did not arrive until one o'clock.

The Post Office Corner, which we illustrate, has a history of its own. The old village store - now superseded by a large modern building on the opposite side - was where Mr. Kenyon gave Grindleford its first school, and what is the Post Office now was then the store. At the side, reaching down to the highway - the low road to Hathersage - are two cottages, which look as if they were strung together with ivy and roses. These cottages are said to have been as they are for over fifty years; but Miss Kenyon tells us they once formed a Methodist Chapel. “I have heard my mother say”, she added, “that John Wesley preached in that little chapel”. If so, it must have been about the smallest place of worship Wesley ever did preach in. And, by the way, in that case “The Old Chapel” about which “Rambler” wrote some time ago, must have been but the successor to the original “old chapel” by the roadside. Are there many hamlets in our neighbourhood which, in such a scant handful of houses, can show three chapels almost touching each other, and all the buildings still standing, and in use as chapel, village club, or dwelling?

The Grindleford postmistress is the last of a family of ten. Her years and her work do not seem to have told upon her as might have been expected, for she goes about her duties looking wonderfully hale and hearty, and she has ever been meet civil and obliging. Her father's schoolhouse, afterwards the village store, is now a dwelling-house. The new post office will be one of the cottages above the old Red Lion, Miss Kenyon continuing to occupy the premises where she has worked so long. Amongst several portraits and pictures on the wall, a piece of needlework, framed, helps us to a date. It represents all the subjects, the chapel which is now the village club, and bears the inscription, “M.C.B. 1830”, meaning thereby that the Methodist Chapel, usually called “the old chapel” - though, as it appears, there was one yet earlier - was built seventy-six years age.

One of a collection of transcriptions by Rosemary Lockie from various sources, 2000-2021.