Icey slippy snow has gone so its off for a spin to Great Longstone, Thornbridge Hall, Ashford-in-Water thence Aldi and home Jeeves.
https://www.strava.com/activities/13362365996
Lovely blue sky, sun shining, very brasen monkies but no wind. Monsall Trail was closed as they are felling thousands of the Ash Trees affected by Ash Die-back in Derbyshire.
GL site of the old village cross 1400 AD made of gritstone. Phone boxes are now mini-libraries or defib stations. The war memorial put up around 1923 after the kaiser’s war, often with a village memorial hall. Later additions for Adolph’s war. The excellent Primary school seen behind. When I lived in GL my liver was partially saved by us being surrounded by Robinsons Brewery pubs. Kak.
Down to the GL station. Unusual because there are two of them, one for the plebs (now a private house) and a posh one for the knobs who came to stay at Thornbridge Hall (now an outward bound centre).
Along Station Road you will see a mixed bag of building materials used in house construction. Often using the creamy coloured, smooth textured Ashford limestone. Some houses have dressed stone blocks on the front (expensive) of the house and random stone or brick side and rear walls.
Davey blocks look like random stone blocks but then you see they are blocks of concrete with limestone embedded. This limestone was a by-product of lead-mining – the oddly sized and shaped pieces of ‘deads’ could be incorporated into building blocks rather than just be discarded. If you go to Holme Bank, Bakewell you can still see the cranes and little railways used in the manufacture of Davey blocks. Now banned for new builds.
Cheaper than gates, squeeze stones allow people to pass into fields holding live-stock BUT if they are the chest-level height stones, then stout can mean a tricky passage! Often they or rather the encompassing walls fall and the squeezers are stepped around. A pen drawing I bought from the dear late local artist Brian Edwards shows stones and walls intact.
Fin Cop, an Iron Age Hillfort high in the distance, the low winter sun highlighting the preliferation of historic dry stone walls, the darker field has been muck-spread. The far side is an excellent source of small peach colored Filbert nuts. The River Wye follows the valleys as it wends its way south from Buxton (next to Morrisons) to Bakewell until it & the River Lath are subsumed into the Derwent at Rowsley alongside the A6; they in turn are absorbed into the mighty River Trent.
Down past Thornbridge Hall into the village of Ashford-in-Water (no preposition). The name indicates the origins of this village. This is a favourite destination for richer retirees, its quaint picturesque demeanor is trashed in summer by the thousands of motorbikes, often – too often, with small-penis syndrome straight through exhaust pipes, playing on the delightfully bendy A6. BTW I always had street legal pipes = !!! Church of England vicars lived a vicariously grand life in days of yore. The village green has two magnificant trees, seen here in their leafless Winter state next to the cemetery overspill and the childrens play area. Life, death, old and young together.
Where the ford was there is now an unused bridge with ducks, a Penfold for lost sheep and where the sheeps were held before their annual bath in the river. British sheep still resent the frequency.
Just up the road is the worked out Black Ashford Marble Mine. Famed for it’s black bits. It’s so black even the white bits are black. Queen Elizabeth I used it as a funery stone and prices per cubic tombstone rocketed. Famed for its fine texture for pietra dura inlay, a craft championed by the Italians, and seen in its finest state at the Taj Mahal.
Queen Vickie-toria came several times to Ashford to buy black marble objects. She even carved her initials into a window pane at The New Bath Hotel at Matlock Bath. No Netflix then. Funery stone columns can be found in Chatsworth House chapel and in Edensor Church where the Dukes get laid out. It’s Limestone not marble.
Leaving the ducks who would be praying for the summer tourists with their crusts of bread. Past the Bull, Cafe and corner shop to the Memorial Hall with it’s carved war memorial and the Old Post Office with it’s ancient King George 5th GR post box.
Bakewell, like most towns had several water-mills. Building up a head of reliable water means there is less water for the next downstream mill. When Arkwright moved in with his factory the amazing waterworks he consturucted that are still there meant that the much older flour mill at Millfield was deprived of water. This led to litigation and Arkwright moved his water collection system upriver to where we see them today. Given a lot of these water supplies are in good condition, I dont know wht we dont have more river hydro schemes. Rowsley mill was generating a lot of electricity, using its old turbine engines until the recent floods destroyed half the village.
Using the pavement as a cycle route along to the site of Arkwright’s Mill. It’s now mostly Thornbridge Brewery, it used to be derelict. The old mill’s frontage is peing preserved for re-use when a hotel is built. The Pinelodge hut manufacturing business has moved to Chesterfield from their enormous semi-cicular corrugated iron roofed bomb shelters to Chesterfield. There are also bakeries and a sourdough place, a tap-room and a cafe.
