Beneath Our
Feet

Following The Flax Back To Ripley

Growing flax in my front garden in Riddings had already made me look at the surrounding landscape differently. Once I began following those threads further, I kept finding traces of flax much closer to home than I had expected: Somercotes Flax Common, the old ropewalk at Waingroves and, most intriguing of all, the former British Hemp and Flax Development Company site in Ripley.

The Ripley factory opened up a much bigger story. A 1950 Hansard record documents complaints from people living near the mill about the smell of retting and records attempts to seal the retting tanks and deodorise escaping gases. That gave documentary weight to a local memory I had already been told about the smell travelling through the streets. A 1956 parliamentary record shows 85 industrial and 6 non industrial workers at the factory on 29 February 1956, immediately before it ceased operating as a government owned flax factory.

The human story widened again through local history. Ripley and District Heritage Trust records that many Italian prisoners of war from Heage Firs worked at the flax factory on Heage Road. Records are still scattered and incomplete, so I am continuing to separate what can be documented from the memories and fragments people bring to the project. That uncertainty is part of the work rather than something I want to tidy away.

From Research To A Public Exhibition

Beneath Our Feet became my response to that research at Creative Connections in Alfreton. The exhibition ran from 12 October to 11 November 2025 and formed part of VAA OpenSpaces 2025. VAA’s own artist directory records more than 75 artists taking part internationally in its inaugural OpenSpaces Art Trail. I liked the idea that a project rooted so closely in Amber Valley could sit inside a much wider artist led experiment about showing work in everyday places.

Rather than turn the history into a neat display of facts, I wanted people to meet it through the material itself. Flax, small baskets, maps, images and research fragments created a place where the story could be touched as well as read. Arts Derbyshire later described the exhibition as a transformation of an everyday tea room into a welcoming exhibition space, with a tactile flax table and room for people to sit, talk and remember.

At the launch, conversations quickly became part of the work. People brought memories of mills, heavy industry and family histories, while Linsey Farnsworth MP joined the gathering. Those exchanges shifted the project again. I was no longer only researching what had happened in the past; I was creating a reason for local knowledge to surface in the present.

Could Flax Connect A Community?

At the centre of Beneath Our Feet was a simpler question: could flax connect a community? As Maker in Residence with the University of Derby, I wanted to test a genuinely arms length form of participation without workshops, applications or an expectation that everybody should make the same thing. I began very close to home, offering seven small boxes of flax seed to my immediate neighbours in Riddings and then watching what happened.

The seed travelled through letterboxes, across garden fences and into other people’s lives, creating reasons to talk, compare what was growing and notice what was happening around us. I documented the growing through my blog, while practical films offered ways to break the stems, make cordage and begin a small basket. The seven boxes became a way of testing whether an ordinary material, rooted in Derbyshire’s textile history, could create new relationships in the present.

Breaking Flax

Making Flax Cordage

Making A Flax Basket

Together, the films offered another way into the project, allowing people to follow the flax from plant to fibre and making without needing to be in the same place or take part in a formal workshop.

From Seven Boxes Across Derbyshire

By spring 2026 the enquiry had moved into Derbyshire Makes, which Derbyshire County Council described as around 100 events across six towns. At Heanor on 2 May, Beneath Our Feet became a free all ages drop in around flax heritage, handling and making. At Bolsover on 16 May, people opened flax stems, twisted fibre into cord, began mini baskets and took seed home to grow.

My own project records show around 50 seed boxes were taken at Heanor and around 50 at Bolsover, with more than 80 postcodes collected as a simple record of where the seed was travelling. Those figures matter to me less as a measure of a crowd than as evidence of small invitations moving outwards into gardens, allotments and homes.

The research also travelled through public conversation. I joined the Where Women Create webinar for Women Who Make, and in July 2026 I spoke at Derby Museums’ Museum of Making about flax to linen production in Derbyshire. Around 30 people attended the Museum of Making talk, where seeds and flax could again leave with people rather than the history remaining behind in the room.

What The Flax Carried

Beneath Our Feet began with flax, but the thing I kept returning to was connection. A box of seed could cross a garden fence, travel home from an event or begin a conversation between people who had never thought about Derbyshire’s flax history before. Some people grew it, some handled the fibre, some stayed to talk and others simply took seed away. There was room for all of those responses.

The project has changed how I think about participation. It does not always need to begin with bringing everyone into the same room or asking people to make the same thing. Sometimes an invitation can be small enough to fit in a seed box, with enough space around it for people to decide for themselves what happens next. The historical research matters for the same reason: it gives people something concrete to connect with, while leaving room for memory, curiosity and new knowledge to keep changing the story.

Beneath Our Feet grew directly from the Riddings Community Flax Project, but the two projects do different jobs. Riddings is the long, seasonal process of growing, processing and learning in one neighbourhood. Beneath Our Feet is the public space where that material research meets industrial history, exhibition, interpretation and wider participation. You can also follow the project through my exhibition planning reflection, Derbyshire Flax Heritage At The Museum Of Making and Arts Derbyshire’s feature on the exhibition.