A view of the tower.
Earl Grey’s Tower, also known as the Reform Tower, stand on the edge of Stanton Moor in Derbyshire was built as a monument to the 1832 Reform Act. I passed it on my second history hike on Sunday, completely unexpected and somewhat awe inspiring given it’s history.
The tower was built by the Thornhill family to commemorate Early Grey, a Whig Prime Minister who supported the passing of Great Reform Bill of 1832, thus creating an “Act to amend the representation of the people in England and Wales”.
The bill, which passed on it’s third attempt and after much too and from between the Commons and Lords, abolished rotten boroughs, added 67 constituencies to the House of Commons and extended the voting franchise to small landowners, tenant farmers, and shopkeepers in the counties. All householders who paid a yearly rental of £10 or more plus some lodgers were also added as voters in the boroughs.
A painting by Sir George Hayter that commemorates the passing of the Act. Source: National Portrait Gallery
The aims of the act may seem noble and arguably they were for it got rid of the Tory-dominated corrupt practises in the rotten boroughs and granted constituencies to rapidly growing industrial cities.
But in reality it did little to extend the vote to ordinary working people, compared to the previous, parlous state of affairs. While the electorate pre-1832 had been around 400 000 people, the act increased it to just 650 000 out of a population of just under 14 million people.
The Act also provided for the formal exclusion of women from voting for the first time, as it defined a voter as a male person. There had been instances of women voting due to land qualification in the past but these were rare. One can see where this “male person” definition might cause problems these days.
Earl Grey’s Tower was built sometime after 1832 by the Thornhill family, who owned the land on which it stands. It’s rumoured that William Pole Thornhill, a firm advocate of reform and also a Whig, built the tower so that it would be visible from the lands of the 5th Duke of Rutland, a Tory who opposed the changes brought by the Act in Parliament, a delicious irony at the time and now.
Made of blocks of gritstone from the moor, it once had a doorway on it’s eastern face. Unfortunately, vandalism over the years have meant that this is now bricked up and visitors can no longer access the roof the tower and what must be spectacular views over Derbyshire. Similarly, a stone carved plaque above the doorway explaining the tower’s dedication, fell out in the 1980s and has not been replaced despite local efforts to do so.
You can visit Earl Grey’s Tower for free. It’s on one of my history hikes, details of which I’ll publish later.
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