A Cabinet of Treasures

A Cabinet of Treasures

what makes Glossop special?

we might
look at carvings

From the old trees of Manor Park to the waters of Shelf Brook; from the crashing river of Kinder Downfall to ghosts following the old paths of Doctor's Gate, the Glossop area is full of treasures. Those treasures might be landscapes, or stories or histories or uncertainties (why is REDGATE in Little Padfield called Redgate?) but they might just as easily be the house where you live, the park where you play, your family, your friends, the neighbour who always helps.

We are collecting Treasures. Inviting people to add their own treasure: person, place, activity; animal, plant or story, to our Cabinet of Treasures.

Working through Derbyshire Makes with High Peak Community Arts, Creeping Toad will be running public events through April, inviting people to drop in, to think and make and talk and simply be creative!

Last year, we collected the Lost Stories of Glossop. This year we'll go for an even more personal response to the question "what makes Glossop (and the surrounding area!) special?" As we gather these Treasures, we'll build them into a doll's house of a Cabinet that will go on display in Glossop in May 2026 and become a digital gallery here at Creeping Toad.

we might make a tiny woodland

Mixing new drawings with old photographs, collage with cutting and colouring and sketching, we'll be making tiny scenes to display, to hang: to hold a treasure. We can work with anything from the Royal Forest of the Peaks to last year's Christmas present, from mysterious folklore to an over-exciting shopping list....

Events planned so far:

• All events are free: no tickets or booking needed
• Allow about 45 minutes for the activities
• Materials are provided
• If you are under 12, please bring a grown-up with you

Kinder Downfall
(with visitors)

Tuesday 31st March: Glossop Library, Talbot St, Glossop, 

SK13 7DG
10:30 - 15:00

Wednesday 1st April: Gamesley Library, Grindleford Grove, Gamesley, Glossop,SK13 6HW
14:00- 16:00

Thursday 9th April: Hadfield Library, Station Rd, Hadfield, SK13 1AA
14:00 - 16:00

Saturday 11th April: Manor Park, Manor Park Rd, Glossop SK13 7SH (Corn Street Car Park is probably easiest if travelling by car). Find us on the lawns by the cafe. 13:30 - 15:00

Saturday 9th May: Derbyshire Makes Festival at Glossop: look out for the Creeping Toad team and the Cabinet of Treasures: find us to add your own treasure to the Cabinet, listen to stories and meet the Babbling Vagabonds!

Creeping Toad are delighted to have been awarded a Derbyshire Makes Creative and Community Grant by Derbyshire County Council to support the creative work we are doing in the county. Derbyshire Makes is a three-year programme to celebrate the past present and future of making in Derbyshire.   

See: www.derbyshiremake.so.uk 

Lightbulb trees

Under the Lightbulb Trees

the Lost Stories of Glossop

Crystal trees and lightbulb trees

and the Rabbit who has an orchard of Easter Eggs,

Sunburst spiders,

a cat called Red Leicester,

and the place where unicorns go.....

 

Have you ever walked down a street and wondered, "Just what might have happened here?", or looked up at a building and thought "why on earth has it got that statue there?"

 

There is often (always?) a sensible response to questions like that. There are archives to explore, libraries to visit, historical societies to consult, maybe even householders to chat to...and those usually provide those sensible answers. With Lost Stories we were wandering off along uncharted streets and opening long lost story cupboards....Lost? Well, no, as that suggests that at some point, someone knew they were there. 

 

This project wasn't about sensible, historical or accurate answers. It was about sheer unbridled imagination. Encouraging participants to start with what they could see: in a photo, on a map, out of a window or growing next to them in a park and we then invited them to start drawing and talking and letting their imaginations run 

 

In a world where information and misinformation is so readily available, we wanted people to embrace an idea that simply invited them to come and out and play, here, where the cheese vans run, or, here, where the elephants wait, or, here!, where the unicorns play.

 

The Lost Stories of Glossop started with photos from the Glossop Heritage Trust and the Picture the Past archives and invited people to invent buildings, parks, and wild adventures that might have, could have, should have, happened in Glossop, Gamesley and Hadfield (with a quick detour to Chinley)

 

In the current collection, you can hear about those cheese vans, about a buried treasure that can traced by smell (only no-one dares to dig it up). Here is the Pink Palace of Chinley and the misadventures of William Worm.

 

The current collection of stories can be found at:

Lost stories texts

 

Lost Stories was part of the Glossop Hub for Derbyshire Makes, coordinated by High Peak Community Arts

 

and beyond a single reference, no-one knows anything more about Lightbulb trees. Funding is being sought now for an expedition into the Glossop Wilderness to find a grove of these rare plants and, for the first time ever, film them....or possibly find that dragons nest among the lightbulbs and eat camera crews....

And a little bit about Derbyshire Makes: 

Launching in February 2025, Derbyshire Makes shines a spotlight on the industrial history, inspiring landscapes and local communities that make Derbyshire unique. Taking place over three years, this programme of making-related events and activities begins with an annual free festival, from Friday 28th March to Sunday 27th April 2025. Spread across six local town centres in the spring, there will be walks, talks, exhibitions and more. A roving workshop on wheels. And a mass making project all about designing, making and showcasing textile-based creations – led by Alex Murphy, Derbyshire resident and recent contestant on the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee.

 

People from across Derbyshire and beyond are all invited to be a part of it: families, young people, adults and retirees. Come with your Nan, or your newborn. Make your mark, make a mess, and make a difference – because Derbyshire Makes needs you to make it special.

 

With many thanks to

Glossop Heritage Trust 

Derbyshire County Council:

Archives

Glossop Library

Gamesley Library

Hadfield Library

High Peak Borough Council

Derbyshire Makes

High Peak Community Arts

 

and all the scribblers and drawers, the cutters and gluers and storymakers and wonderfully crazy people who joined in our workshops!

 

 

Glossop stories

 

an arch, a door, a Narnian lamp-post...

THE LOST STORIES OF GLOSSOP

Derbyshire Makes in the High Peak

The house where…..
The road where the castle wasn’t...
Manor Park Palace...
The Garden Shed witch...
Car Park monsters?
The Partington Theatre Ghost...

Who knows?

Cuthbert's, High Street West

As part of Derbyshire Makes (see below), I am going to be working with people in and around Glossop over March and April. Our challenge is to create The Lost Stories of Glossop: and, no, they don’t need to be anchored in anything other than celebration. We want to remind people that there can be adventures anywhere: that the door down the street that never opens might hold mysteries. That window, that balcony, that chimney pot might all hide stories. Old photos are often so evocative of lives lived and, maybe, forgotten. As well as sheer fantasy, there might also be quiet stories of shoemakers and spinners, "butchers and bakers and candlestick-makers"


Working with High Peak Community Arts (HPCA) and using images from Glossop Heritage Trust for inspiration, our imaginations can be unleashed! We’ll use old images as our starting points, finding wonder in those monochrome memories. There will be free drop in public events with an invitation to create your own stories, make your own little pop-up scenes to illustrate your stories and the chance to add a wonderful building to our giant Lost Stories pop-up where all our stories are being built together into an imaginary Glossop that you can come and visit (and drop yourself as a tiny adventurer into Imagined Glossop) during the Norfolk Square celebrations on 15 and 16th April

As events finalise, details will be published here and on the Creeping Toad and HPCA social media pages...look out for us:

• in local libraries: 
• Gamesley (Monday 7th April): Lost stories of Gamesley
• Glossop (Wednesday 9th April), details: Lost Stories event
• Hadfield (Thursday 10th April) details: Secret Stories event
• in family-learning groups at Gamesley Primary School: 2nd April
• in Manor Park (Sunday 6th April): Manor Park Mysteries

And a little bit about Derbyshire Makes:

Launching in February 2025, Derbyshire Makes shines a spotlight on the industrial history, inspiring landscapes and local communities that make Derbyshire unique. Taking place over three years, this programme of making-related events and activities begins with an annual free festival, from Friday 28th March to Sunday 27th April 2025. Spread across six local town centres in the spring, there will be walks, talks, exhibitions and more. A roving workshop on wheels. And a mass making project all about designing, making and showcasing textile-based creations – led by Alex Murphy, Derbyshire resident and recent contestant on the BBC’s The Great British Sewing Bee.

People from across Derbyshire and beyond are all invited to be a part of it: families, young people, adults and retirees. Come with your Nan, or your newborn. Make your mark, make a mess, and make a difference – because Derbyshire Makes needs you to make it special.



Photos

• Cuthbert's: photograph courtesy of Glossop Heritage Trust
• Other images: G MacLellan

 on Lindow Moss

poems and puppets from a workshop at Wilmslow Library as part of the Discover Lindow Festival

 

Wandering on Lindow where the Common meets the Moss, where tree gives way to peat, where canopy becomes open sky, we look around and see

 

Beautiful, a butterfly like a bird, flies

Under the tree, knowing it is

Time for dinner, flying through

Tree trunks, like an

Elephant's loopy trunk, and there -

Rabbits ahoy!

Flying low, looking for flowers,

Leaves all around, but one flower bright as a

Yellow banana

 

and we enjoy the butterfly's seeking flight, fluttering through the trees and out onto the grass

 

Rabbits run from the Fox,

All the way to the field

Bouncing to a hole

But bouncing over the hole

In and out, dodging, dashing, running,

Trying to survive

 

We watch the rabbits run, trying to tell them that we are not foxes, not dangers but friends. They do not listen. Then, on a stone, warmed by the sun and dreaming quiet, reptile dreams,  we find a wonder, a rare and marvellous moment

 

Sliding through the forest,

Never stopping hunting,
Always catching prey,

Killing with his fangs,

Everyone runs away.

 

Or so they say! We don't run. We watch! How beautiful is the adder on his stone.

 

A shadow flickers over the grass and makes us look up

 

Speedning and darting,

Powerful predator,

Acrobatic.

Run!

Run!

Out come the talons,

Woe to the prey.

Handsome carnivore,

Amazingly quick,

Watching for prey, before the

Kill!

 

And quietly, we walk back to the path and our everyday world.  We head home knowing that there is a wonderful, wild world there, just over there, past the fence, through the gate, on the edge of our safe human world.

 

With many thanks to the Discover Lindow team 

and the wonderful folk at Wilmslow Library

But most of all to our team of young poets and puppeteers

Spring stories 2024

 

Spring stories, 2024

Stories in school and just about anywhere 

celebrating the richness of the changing year, here are stories, shadow puppets, book building, story-making, pop-up landscapes and boxes of treasures. Outdoors or indoors, the natural world will give us stories and offer inspiration for child-led creativity!

 

With stories spinning from the first signs of spring through mountain giants and excited rabbits to pirates and mermaids, here are stories and activities to enchant and inspire.

Gordon MacLellan – Creeping Toad – is one of Britain’s leading environmental art and education workers. Take a look at the Toadblog: Creeping Toad

 

Drawing on 30 years of professional experience, Gordon’s work blends environmental experience with creativity. “Much of my work uses storytelling and story making but I also make small masks, giant masks, flags, lanterns, pop-up landscapes and create wild and wonderful occasions. We might work outdoors and take ideas form the world around us and our discoveries there. Indoors, there may be shadow puppets and boxes of treasures to inspire children and encourage some fabulous stories”

 

A day’s visit to your school might include:

storytelling performances: lasting up to 60 minutes for up to 90 children at a time 

stories out of anything! outdoors or in, we'll use leaves and pine cones, twigs and stones and shells to inspire words, create poems and shape a set of stories never told before (allow 60 minutes for a class session)

finger puppets: we can make quick finger puppet animals or adventurers and create instant stories

shadow puppets: playing with light, translucence and animation to create stories and instant performance ….see here for more information

From across lands and times: I can select stories to suit times and places: so we have had days of Native American stories, or Egyptian or Greek or Roman, there have been Chinese tales and African animal stories….lots of exciting resources to draw on here, to make new writing vibrant and lively. Castles are popular, too, with boxes of treasures to inspire a new adventure and release a bold princess or courageous dragon

story and book workshops: taking a bit longer (allow 90 minutes for a class) as well as discovering those stories no-one has ever heard before, now we will build those into the books that no-one has ever read before and leave the classroom with a library no-one has ever visited before!

pop-up storyscapes: allow an hour for a class: gathering ideas, images and words we’ll make quick 3-d landscapes holding the essence of a story in a setting, key characters and the words that set the adventure running

tales of old Scotland: a collection of stories of Highland folklore and Scottish histories, of heroes and sorrows, bravery and the magics of sea, mountain and moor. These can be steered in various directions and we might listen to stories from Viking days or medieval and Stuart stories and even add some Scottish explorers and their adventures and disasters…

your own themes and ideas: or are you exploring a particular theme that you would like to involve some stories in? In recent projects, we have also made talking stone puppets, a giant eagle to hang from a classroom ceiling, prehistoric rockpools, a swarm of shadow dragons, pop-up castles

 

Charges: on request 

Fee includes storyteller’s fee, travel and materials. Can be paid on the day or I can invoice you. 

 

Activities can be adapted to suit groups from P1/Yr 1 through to Secondary

 

 

For further information or to book:

contact Gordon directly at

            creepingtoad@btinternet.com