I have been pondering on the subject of the "Flat 'A'", discussed in the opening post of this thread.

If the mill town mentioned is indeed Glossop (which, on re-reading the first post, seems more and more likely), then the local accent is more Mancunian than Derbyshire. The true Derbyshire accent (found in the heart and east of the county), doesn't seem to me to be too different to Yorkshire; glottal stops replacing the word "the", and the 'A' sound dragged out to several seconds.

Locally, though, the main accent encountered among the young is the slurred mixture of "rat-arsed" (drunk) and Mancunian. Practically nothing can be heard but vowel sounds.

...

"Mills behind high walls" ... Most mills when I first moved to the place backed directly onto the roads; driving past them was a slightly unnerving experience of driving through a blackened stone canyon. A series of fires in the 1990's, some caused accidentally, others by vandals, cleared many of the unused mills. (Some have been converted to other industrial use and are still in use.)

One mill, which did sit behind high walls, was the biggest, the Wren Nest Mill. This was once a very large complex; a Tesco's store and other shopping centres now occupy much of the site. Half of the surviving mill building burned down in a spectacular blaze in 1995, started by vandals. The remaining half is now being converted into flats. (The mill was close enough to my home that the blaze melted the windscreen wipers on my car.)

I have some photographs of the conflagration. I'll see if I can get them scanned and posted somewhere.

Glossop, and other mill towns have changed very much in the twenty years since I moved in. The terraced streets are still there, but the population has almost doubled in the last two decades, and all new housing is estates of detached houses, with 2.4 cars per household, and names like "Shirebrook" and "Lower Bank". What has not doubled is the means of getting all these people and cars out in the morning and back in the evening.

The traffic jams are depressing, and the railway service, while not inadequate, goes to the wrong places. (It is the former "Manchester, Sheffield and Lincoln Railway", and still has some spectacular viaducts at Dinting and Broadbottom.) It calls at stations in North Manchester and at Manchester Piccadilly in the centre; but most Glossop commuters go to Stockport and South Manchester. So, there is no option but to take the car.

...

Glossop's expatriate Welsh community did once try and muster a "Glossop Druids" team to participate in the local Rugby Sevens tournament. We came up two players short.

I am practising a few Welsh tunes for the various informal sessions I attend. A "leek and daffodil" set might add nicely to the "Lurpak", "Bagel" and "Brie" sets many of the regular attendees do. (Those are Norwegian Hardanger Fiddle tunes, Klezmer tunes and French bourees and other musical styles.)