Return to Cressbrook Hall

We went to Litton Well Dressings last weekend.  Litton is up on the limestone plateau between Bakewell and Buxton.  In winter it can be a bit grim and drafty, but in the flowery height of summer, and bedecked with bunting, the place looked buxom and bucolic.  We parked the car outside a stone cottage with a window sticker that said "Neighbourhood Witch".  In the window of the 4X4 outside was a "My other car is a broomstick" sticker.  We made a mental note to be extra careful not to trash her verge.  Well, you wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of that particular villager would you?

There were two wells dressed. Neither were real wells, but the symbolic type much favoured by villages that have lost their original water sources, or the real ones are too muddy and too off the beaten track for cake seeking car bourne tourists like us to tramp all the way to.  I liked the idea they had of rigging up a tiny temporary garden fountain in front of each. 

The charming Red Lion pub has tiny rooms, so what with the brass band setting up outside and sunday lunches in full swing, the odds of getting a seat were slim.  We opted for tea at the village hall where a goodly spread of cake made up for the lack of lager.  After munching our way through a couple of slices I bought a couple of items from the elderly lady running an animal charity stall and we wandered back out to the green.  A poster near the village shop (a co-operative venture owned by villagers, but sadly now in need of more stakeholders) advertised the fact that Cressbrook Hall was opening its gardens on Sunday afternoons. 

I have always liked the look of this Victorian Gothic country house, poised on the slope by the Water Cum Jollydale gorge.  In fact L and I nearly stayed in one of their self catering cottages once.  (I forget what stopped us - poverty or a better offer perhaps).  The old man on washing up duty in the church hall assured us that it was at most a mile and a half from Litton to Cressbrook, so we decided to walk there.

It was a dull, overcast day, and rather windy. The road winds up by the cemetery then through fields of staring cows, then past a row of 19th century cottages inaccurately called "New Houses".  From thence it drops down past a Victorian chapel into Cressbrook Village - a cluster of dark stone houses that looked as if they were probably built as estate cottages for workers at the hall.  Cressbrook had a couple of wells dressed too, and bunting was flapping in the breeze.  After viewing the wells we found the twisty lane that led up towards the Hall.  But a dissappointing notice announced that the gardens were "Closed Today".  Peeved, we set off back to Litton. To add insult to injury it was uphill all the wall back.  But at least we got back in time for the well blessing outside the chapel.

This Sunday I was determined to go back and get into those gardens.  I had e-mailed Mrs Bobby Hull Bailey, the owner, and told her our sad tale.  She mailed back to assure me that the gardens would be open from 11.45am. 


Di's Brew Stop


This time we walked from Millers Dale.  For once the weather forecast spoke true and we had a mini heat wave.  After weeks of cool showery weather, it felt curiously tropical striding through the Wye Valley gorge with the sun shining and a sticky patch of sweat under my rucksack.  (Sorry, too much information!)

Litton Mill was dusty and baked in the heat.  We stopped for a slice of my homemade Pineapple and Coconut cake and a nectarine.  By Cressbrooke Mill we were in need of a cuppa and happily "Di's Brewstop" was open.  This odd little hole in the wall isn't really a cafe.  There is no loo and inside only a few old chairs like you used to see in oldfashioned Youth Hostel Common Rooms.  But it is much enjoyed by muddy booted walkers and our shoes were distinctly muddy by this time, it having evidently rained hard the night before. The strange, crenallated building looks like a mini castle but was apparently the Mill overseers' house. 

Fortified by an ice cream and a mug of tea we continued on our way up a steep hill towards Cressbrook Hall.  The fact that everything is on a steep slope, obscuring the view, and the lanes wander up and down a bit made it quite hard to find the right approach.  But eventually, having passed the Lower Lodge and made our way up and then down the hillside into the estate, we came to the back entrance door of the hall.  It is a house in the mock Elizabethan style, with over tall chimneys and pointed garbles. Built 1835 (four years before our cottage!) its glory is its location, on a shelf of land overlooking the wide rocky river gorge, with a stoney slope rising high on the opposite side.

A notice asked garden visitors to ring the bell, which we did and a pleasant middleaged woman in a flowery blue dress (not posh enough sounding to be Bobby) took our money, gave us a leaflet and asked if we wanted tea or coffee.  "When you're ready sit on the terrace and I'll bring it out for you" she instructed.  There were no other visitors and so we had the lovely gardens to ourselves.  They aren't large, but the island beds, planted in a very High Victorian style, were immaculately edged with was not a weed in sight nor a blade of grass out of place.  I admired the Black Elder and several other choice plants.  Beyond the terrace balustrades, the ground dropped away to the wilder woodland along the river. 

By now it was very hot and still, with not a breath of wind.  Our host brought out a tray of tea, plenty of biscuits and a brochure about the hall.  When we asked how much, she said it was included in the price.  Jolly decent I thought.  We complimented the gardens and she explained that they were not hers, she was merely helping out.  (I was right about Bobby then). 

The brochure revealed that prior to 1979, when the current owners bought it on a whim for its stunning location, the house had been home to a pig farmer, Colombia Pictures, an estate agent and a community of nuns. Not all at the same time one hopes.  After enjoying the refreshments we explored The Nun's Steps and the little private garden belonging to Garden Cottage.  Evidently nobody was in residence that week. 

Then it was time to go and we took what we thought was a short cut along the drive and out of Lower Lodge.  Up the lane was a footpath to Litton Mill, avoiding the mud of Water Cum Jollydale by skirting the wooded slope of the gorge.  After making our way carefully along the steep, rocky and rather slippery path we eventually popped out at the bottom of the Nun's Steps.  Meaning that had we but known it, we could have cut quite a long section off our route.  But no matter.  The weather was still warm and sticky but pleasant for walking and strangely for such a damp green route by the river and wetland, there were no bothersome midges or insects to annoy us.

We walked back long the road from Litton Mill to Millersdale, avoiding the steep scramble up to the Monsall Track on the opposite bank.  What a lovely Derbyshire day!

Lifestyle Envy In The Secret Garden

This weekend was "Hidden Gardens & Courtyards of Wirksworth", where for a trifling £3.50, people like me, who enjoy peeping into other folk's gardens and houses can gratify their curiosity and enjoy a good deal of home made cake, all in one fell swoop.  Wirksworth is the ideal kind of town for this, where town houses and workers cottages rub shoulders in an "up hill, down dale" topography.  It's a place with many crooked alleys and narrow ginnels weaving between limestone walls, and being invited to have a snoop into some of them is an opportunity not to be missed. 

The 20 gardens are spread out all over town, so there is the added advantage of getting some exercise to work off the calories in between tea n' cake stops.    We began by parking at the Ecclesbourne Steam Railway station, where steamy types go to eye vintage rolling stock.  Tickets for the weekend event were on sale at the Wirksworth Community Garden, just up the hill.  This is a worthy project, in which townsfolk grow fruit and vegetables on a plot cleared from the weeds and nettles of the slope overlooking the railway.  As a saxophone quartet tootled in the background, visitors admired the raised beds and claimed their lapel stickers ready for the hike up Wash Green to the next garden. This is an interesting part of town which I had never explored before, full of all kinds of domestic and workshop buildings, thrown together in a higgledy piggledy way.  Prospect House had an acre of well tended lawns intersperced with fruit trees, and a good view down over Wirksworth.  The fairy cakes were most acceptable.

Back down the hill in Coldwell Street, "Greengates" was a perfect hidden garden, squeezed between tall stone houses and on many levels.  There were some beautiful old fashioned roses, a mossy old apple tree, a charming summerhouse and a tree peony with fascinating flowers. A couple of stalls sold vintage gardening tools and another plants.  It was all very Country Living.  Next door, some chaps with guitars and a washboard were entertaining the visitors squeezed into the mediterranean style courtyard of a B&B. 

 Church Walk, 15 St John's Street, Birch House...more tiny but inspired gardens full of flowers.  The smell of roses and lavender was delightful.  The worst thing about this type of event is that occasionally, as you pass the door to someone's perfect kitchen, the type with blue enamelled range cookers and Sweet Williams in artsy jugs on the sunny windows, you feel a dark undertow of bitter envy.  When are my lottery numbers going to come up, so that I too can have a house this cute and a potager this neat and a summerhouse this ditsy?

At Orchard House, just off the main road through Wirksworth, a young guy in dungarees with a long straggly white beard welcomed us friendly tones to a large, romantically rambling green oasis, which was a cross between The Good Life, Glamping, and Away With The Fairies.  A small rose garden redolent of perfume gave way to a wildflower meadow, beyond which was an enclosure for pygmy goats and a turkey.

 Further on was a pond full of wriggling tadpoles, overlooked by the perfect Hippy summerhouse, complete with floral curtains, pot pourri, a tigerskin chaise longe and a Still surrounded by empty gin bottles.  A hammock and one of those swingy lougers looked nice places to relax on a summer evening.  I bet it's fun with candles in the lanterns but I guess you have to be careful not to fall in the pond when half cut.  

This is the life!  Note handy gin bottles



Two small black sheep where cutting the grass near the neat vegetable garden.  A plant stand near the house displayed old shoes in which sedums and other plants were growing.  So many imaginative and amusing touches in this garden, like the Hansel and Gretel wigwam, and the fence panel made out of the tangled stems of an ancient ivy, cut from some wall where it had grown into hoary, hairy wood.  Sadly, just as we came within sight of the tea urn and cake stall, the sunny sky darkened and it began to rain.  This soon turned into hail.  It being nearly five, the gardens were beginning to shut up shop anyway, so we took refuge in the Mistral for a coffee until the shower blew over. 

With several gardens yet to be viewed, we were pleased to discover that our lapel stickers entitled us to another go tomorrow.  So we wended homewards with the hope that the weather would be kind enough to allow us a further afternoon of snooping on Sunday.

From Steamy Architecture to Rude Ladies: Alderwasley Walk



We popped in to High Peak Junction first of all, to take a peek inside Leawood Pumping Station, which was in steam today. 

Some steam enthusiasts with bushy beards had one of the two large boilers well stoked up and the massive beam engine inside was busy lifting water from the River Derwent to feed the Cromford Canal.  In the days when the canal was working, barges moving through the locks between here and Langley Mill, plus leakage from the canal (at a higher level than the river) meant that water had to be pumped in to keep boats from grounding.


Two steam boilers, once stoked up and one empty


It is the first time I have been inside this sturdy Victorian building, and I was impressed how well the volunteers keep it.  It was interesting to see the water surging into the canal, under the surface, and the ducks no doubt enjoyed the jacuzzi effect.

From thence we drive on to Ambergate, and parked at the station, where the day's walk proper began.  The first stretch, into Shining Wood, leads through a strange expanse of derelict factories, the "Wire Works", where ruinous old houses, massive abandoned concrete and steel warehouses, and a clutter of brick outbuildings, are slowly being invaded by nature. It would make a great setting for one of those films about most of the earth's inhabitants being killed by an alien bug, a murder story, or a trendy urban backdrop for some futuristic fashion shoot.

Abandoned house near Wire Works

Happily, the ugly factories eventually give way to the green slopes of Shining Wood.  Apparently this woodland is very ancient - being part of Duffield Frith, a Norman hunting forest once owned by the de Ferrers family.  There are some very old and beautiful sweet chestnut trees along the path, with their characteristic gnarled and furrowed trunks and long sawtoothed leaves. The path was quite steep and wet where a little stream was trying to adopt the path as its bed, but I made it to the top without getting my sandal clad feet wet.  Here the path emerged into meadow land, which looked to be part of the Alderwasley Hall estate. A wide expanse of wildflowers brightened the slope down to our right.  Ahead, the Hall now a private school) provided a landmark to steer by.



In Shining Cliff Woods


Emerging onto a lane we decided to make a detour to visit St Margaret's Chapel, the oldest building in the village.  This early 16th century "chapel of ease" was apparently abandoned for many years but rescued in 1980 and converted into the parish hall.  The main gate to the chapel grounds is locked but an entrance to the graveyard is hidden further up the lane. I was interested to examine the reputedly haunted building, because it is said to have a medieval  "Sheela Na Gig" carving - one of those rude semi pagan carvings of a hag displaying her naughty bits.  We found the worn exhibitionist ancient set into the wall of the South front, at a convenient height to photograph.  One has the feeling that she was not originally built into this part of the chapel.  The stone looks too large for the wall, even though the roofline was once lower.  On a Victorian photo of the chapel which I found on an archaeology web page, she does not feature at all.  Perhaps she was moved here in one of the 19th or 20th century alterations to the structure.

Photographing Sheela

Back on the path we wended our way back down into the river valley and crossed the river and the busy A6 road at Derwent Hotel.  The ivy clad pub was closed up, and we concluded that like so many other hostelries in the area, like the late lamented Holmesford Cottage, it had fallen a victim to the current recession. 

Musing on the dismal state of the national economy, we walked down a long stretch of canal towpath along the Cromford Canal.  This part was even more leafy and weedy than the Cromford to Whatstandwell section and there was not the evidence of tree clearance that we had seen on previous walks along the canal.  With the trees now in full leaf it was quite shady and the sky threatened rain, but it came to nothing in the end.  Feeling in need of refreshments we took another detour at this point - to the "greasy spoon" trailer in the bikers' layby that plies its wares on the noisy road between Ambergate and Matlock.  The bill of fare centred exclusively around butties - bacon, sausage, egg etc and a strong reek of frying fat filled the air.  Scared of a cholestrol induced heart attack simply from inhaling, we bought a tea and a hot chocolate and sat on the nearby wall to drink it while we eyed the bikes.

From there it was but a short stretch to a hump backed stone bridge where the canal starts to peter out, and descending to the road near the Hurt Arms we soon found ourselves back at the station car park.