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There is some debate as to how the village got its name. The English Place Name Society accept it as being named after a Saxon chieftain named Tidi, others that the name comes from a "tiding well" situated in the north of the village.
Tideswell is known locally as Tidza or Tidsa. In addition, local residents are known as Sawyeds, owing to a traditional story about a farmer who freed his prize cow from a gate in which it had become entangled, by sawing its head off. Today the story is re-enacted raucously and colourfully every Wakes week by a local mummers group called the Tidza Guisers.
In the Middle Ages, Tideswell was a market town known for lead mining. The Tideswell lead miners were renowned for their strength and were much prized by the military authorities.
Tideswell is now best known for its 14th-century parish church, the Church of St John the Baptist, known as the "Cathedral of the Peak", which contains three 15th-century misericords. A sundial lies in the churchyard; it is positioned on steps which local historian Neville T. Sharpe thinks likely to be those of the village's market cross. A market and two-day fair were granted to the village in 1251. The Foljambe family, later the Foljambe baronets, were the principal landowners from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries.
The town has a week-long festival near the summer solstice known as the Wakes, culminating in "Big Saturday", which includes a torchlight procession through the streets, led by a brass band playing a unique tune called the Tideswell Processional, and townsfolk dancing a traditional weaving dance.
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