News

New Leaflet for Longnor Village

Penny Anderson Associates is delighted to have been approached by Longnor Action Group to assist with the design elements of the creation of a new leaflet for visitors to the village of Longnor in the Stafforshire Moorlands. PAA won the contract to convert the text and images into a clear and informative leaflet, including using GIS and graphic design software to create a village trail map and overview map of the region.

From being the most important settlement in the late 1500s in Alstonefield Manor to featuring in the BBC’s Peak Practice and Pride and Prejudice, Longnor is celebrating its heritage in a new leaflet-cum-trail. Free for anyone to take, it will be locally stocked. Written mostly by the Longnor Action Group and collated by Penny Anderson, it has been beautifully designed by Chris Chapman as a deviation from his normal GIS mapping role in PAA. The focus is on the older buildings and way of life and it is illustrated with a selection of old photographs. In 1563, the village had only 20 households, but by the 1841 census, this had risen to 561 and incorporated a wide range of services like pedlars, bakers, 8 butchers, 15 cordwainers (shoe makers) and 6 tailors to name just a few. Did you know that by 1841 Longnor had a dozen busy ale-houses when it was a market town and even a police station with cells? It was described in 1865 as ‘quite as beautiful as Buxton’, a sentiment locals might change now to be more beautiful!

The leaflet is a Community project supported by the South West Peak HLF funded Landscape Partnership programme which runs until the end of 2021. For more information see www.southwestpeak.co.uk/