Uttoxeter Online Magazine

"Staffordshire Legends" covers a wide timescale from 'Robin Hood Revisited' thorough to 'The Fauld Explosion of 1944', and among its 12 chapters covers topics such as 'The Babington Plot', 'William Palmer - Serial Killer', 'Flash - Fact or Fiction' & 'The Plague'.

Written by Alan Gibson, the well known local author, first published in 2002. £8.95 from our online bookshop. Contact our This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it for more details.

A brief extract follows :

Flash. Fact or Fiction

The village of Flash sits high in the Staffordshire Moorlands, and at a height of 1500 feet above sea level claims, with some justification, to be the highest in England. Its remoteness and geography are easy enough to substantiate; if they were its only claim to fame the village would be allowed to rest in peace. However, its greater fame relates to its reputation as a centre for counterfeit notes and coins. The search for the truth about this continues unabated, although there is very little evidence to substantiate the famous stories that surround this otherwise ordinary moorland village.

The place Flash existed long before the tales of forged notes and coins began to circulate. Flash means a swamp or wet land, and Quarnford, of which Flash is a part, was originally Quernford - or `millford'. But the word flash later came to have connotations with such words as 'spiv' or 'top-show', and ostentatious displays of wealth - the words flash and flashy are still used.

The first reference to Flash as a centre of disrepute appears to be that of a Dr Aiken in a book published in 1795. Dr Aiken's text, plus several others that follow, have a similarity that leads to the conclusion that the later publications may well have been simply based upon Dr Aiken's original publication.

From Dr Aiken's Description of the Country from 30 to 40 miles round Manchester (1875):

In the wild country between Buxton, Leek and Macclesfield, called the Flash, from a chapel of that name, lived a set of pedestrian chapmen, who hawked about these buttons, together with ribands and ferreting made at Leek, and handkerchiefs, with small wares from Manchester. These pedlars were known on the roads which they travelled by the appellation of Flashmen, and frequented farmhouses and fairs, using a sort of slang or canting dialect. At first they paid ready money for their goods, till they acquired credit, which they were sure to extend till no more was to be had; when they dropped their connections without paying, and formed new ones.
They long went on thus, enclosing the common where they dwelt for a trifling payment and building cottages till they began to have farms, which they improved from the gains of their credit without troubling themselves about payment, since no bailiff for a long time attempted to serve a writ there. At length, a resolute officer, a native of the district, ventured to arrest several of them; whence their credit being blown up they changed the wandering life of pedlars for the settled care of their farms. But as these were held by no leases, they were left at the mercy of the lords of the soil, the Harpur family, who made them pay for their impositions on others. ....................