What to See in Glossop - Top Sights and Attractions

City or town hall in Glossop, England. Glossop Town Hall, Market Hall, and Municipal Buildings is a complex in the centre of Glossop, Derbyshire, providing offices for High Peak Borough Council, a retail arcade, and covered market. The Town Hall was constructed in 1838 and significantly extended and altered in 1845, 1897 and 1923. The Town Hall building was designed by Weightman and Hadfield of Sheffield for the 12th Duke of Norfolk. It is constructed from millstone grit ashlar and topped with a distinctive circular cupola and clock. It is Grade II listed in a group with the market and Municipal Buildings to the south, and rows of shops either side which were also part of Hadfield's design, and which marked the transition of Howard Town from a satellite industrial village to a freestanding urban entity.

It lies in the Norfolk Square Conservation Area which includes a number of other listed buildings around the square. The main elevation, intact with many surviving architectural details, forms an important part of the composition of the historic Norfolk Square. A blue plaque was erected by Glossop Heritage Trust in 2015 to commemorate its architect Matthew Ellison Hadfield and his contribution to the area.^[1]

Building in Glossop, England. Ardotalia is a Roman fort in Gamesley, near Glossop in Derbyshire, England.

Ardotalia was constructed by Cohors Primae Frisiavonum—The First Cohort of Frisiavones. Evidence for the existence of this unit exists not only from the building stone found at the site but also from various diplomas and other Roman writings. This unit would have had around a thousand men, including the specialist craftsmen needed to perform the skilled work of building the fort.

This unit was assisted in constructing the fort by the 3rd Cohort of Bracara Augustani. These men were probably Iberian Celts from the colony of Braga in Portugal, who seem to have been attached to the XX Legion Valeria Victrix in Chester.

Whilst it is unknown which of these Cohorts manned the fort, it seems more likely that the 3rd Cohort of Bracara Augustani performed this duty, as they were from a hilly region and so were more experienced in holding terrain such as that found around Glossop. The Frisiavones were from low-lying lands beyond the Rhine and so may have been divided between the lower terrain of Manchester and Northwich.

The First Cohort of Frisiavones were also present at Brocolitia, one of Hadrian's wall forts and settlements, at Carrawburgh, Northumberland. Evidence for this relies on an inscription on an altar stone, which tells us that Optio Maus (an NCO within the Cohort) had repaid a vow to the goddess Coventina. Whether this altar was the repayment of the vow is unknown.

The name Melandra is of unknown origin but may have been originated by the John Watson, Rector of Stockport, who visited the site c. 1771 when substantial stone remains existed. The name Ardotalia is a hypothetical emendation of Zerdotalia written in the Ravenna Cosmography. The site is a Scheduled Ancient Monument. As of 2020, it is on the Heritage at Risk Register, its condition described as "enerally unsatisfactory with major localised problems".

Doctor's Gate Roman road ran between Ardotalia fort and Navio fort at Brough-on-Noe.^[4]

Viaduct in England. Dinting Viaduct is a 19th-century railway viaduct in Glossopdale in Derbyshire, England, that carries the Glossop Line over a valley at the village of Dinting. It crosses the Glossop Brook and the A57 road between Manchester and Sheffield.

First opened in 1844 as part of the original Woodhead Line by the Sheffield, Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester Railway (later the MSLR and GCR), the viaduct has been modified a number of times, most notably by the addition of seven brick strengthening piers in 1918–20. The viaduct comprises three sections: starting from the south end, there is a series of seven stone arches, each 50 feet (15 m) wide. The central section consists of five openings (later divided by strengthening piers). A further four stone arches take the railway to the northerly junction with the branch to Hadfield and into Dinting station. It is of similar design to the shorter Broadbottom Viaduct about 1.5 mi (2.4 km) west down the same line, which crosses the River Etherow at Broadbottom.^[6]