Wonders of the Peak

Buxton Museum & Art Gallery

Archaeology

Buried Beneath Stanton Moor

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You are standing on a small area of upland known as Stanton Moor. The area is known for its prehistoric archaeology and contains four stone circles (most famously the Nine Ladies) and more than 70 barrows. In fact, the moor is designated as a Scheduled Ancient Monument.

Many early archaeologists came digging at Stanton Moor, opening up barrows to see what they could find. Objects travelled all over the country to be studied, including many fine examples of bronze age pottery. Some of these pots were placed with the dead, such as small ‘incense’ cups. Others, such as large cinerary urns, held the cremated remains of the dead themselves.

Clay ‘incense’ cup with cut triangle decoration. Bronze Age, 4,500 – 3,500 years old. Image kindly provided by the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, all rights reserved.
Bronze Age cinerary urn discovered on Staton Moor, 4,000-3,500 years old. Buxton Museum. Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0.

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Soaring Pinnacles and Secret Caves

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A riverside walk in the Peak District

Dovedale is a glorious medley of soaring limestone pinnacles, secret caves and natural arches, making it one of the most popular destinations in the Peak District.

Through its heart burbles the crystal-clear waters of the River Dove, dubbed “the princess of rivers.”

On this walk we’ll find out what makes the river so regal, how this rocky wonderland was created, and how it became an inspiration for Romantic poets and painters.

From the car park, turn right and walk up the road past the water company’s flow meter. Stop by the first bridge and look up at the hills on either side.

Please note, this walk has two options for its return route:
1. the flatter option is to retrace your steps back down Dovedale (total distance = 6 miles)
2. the higher level option is a circular route back around Ilam Tops and Bunster Hill
See Stop 6 for full details. (Total distance = 6.5 miles) 

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Many Waters

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A short watery walk in Derbyshire’s White Peak

Lathkill Dale has its beginnings behind Monyash village, around three hundred metres above sea level. The name Monyash is thought to come from the Anglo-Saxon many and the Celtic word aesc meaning waters.

There is only one big mere (shallow lake) left in the village today, but there were five until they were filled in quite recently to provide the village with local amenities.

The five ponds must have been vital during the sixth century AD, when the Angles were starting to arrive, settle and learn about the area from the native British.

But why were these natural ponds so important? A walk down the upper half of Lathkill Dale reveals the full story of a landscape shaped and governed by the presence, or absence of water.

From the car park, cross the road and through the gate, following the public footpath sign. Head towards the dew pond in the field before you.

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View from the Sand Pits

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The view back up to Minninglow from here provides a layer-cake scene through the historical use of this landscape. On the hill’s summit the prehistoric burial site; below that the natural outcrops of limestone (which provided the slabs for those tombs); then stone walls dating back to the enclosure acts of the late eighteenth century; finally the magnificent railway embankment of 1831.

The view of Minninglow Hill © Simon Corble

But what are these huge earthworks in the foreground all about?  A clue lies in the track surface we have just walked over. You may have noticed that, unlike the rest of the route, it was very sandy back there. By a happy accident, a large pocket of very valuable silica sand was discovered just below the surface of the soil and right next to the railway line.

It is part of series of such deposits, stretching in a line between here and Brassington, to the south east. The silica deposits were laid down in the hollows of the limestone by some long vanished river, during the late Miocene Era – around 10 million years ago.

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Minninglow Hill summit

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Surrounded by a magical ring of beech trees, the hilltop is littered with strange slabs of pale limestone; they could be teeth extracted from some stone giant. Take a closer look and you will see that they are not like the random blocks we passed on our way up here, but deliberate human constructions.

Neolithic tombs © Simon Corble

These are Neolithic tombs, dating from around 3,000 BC. They developed in a growing complex, which eventually became one big circular mound during the Bronze Age (1,200 to 700 BC). The hilltops or ‘lows’ of the White Peak were sacred places to its prehistoric inhabitants. After much looting and destruction this is a desecrated scene today, but many of the tombs retain their distinctive form. Take a peek under the slabs.

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Crane at the Quarry

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We are now looking up at the remains of a sizeable quarry, complete with a rusting crane which once loaded the limestone blocks onto trains.

The quarry crane © Simon Corble

This is a typical Peak District scene. If you follow the High Peak Trail all the way to its northern end, just outside Buxton you will run into some truly vast quarries still in operation. They load directly onto a dedicated ‘mineral line’, just as happened here. Such railways are a much greener option than road transport.

Looking at the map, you may notice the route of the old railway seems to snake around all over the place. It’s quite unlike the normal pattern of straight rail lines we are used to. This is because the engineers who designed the line were not railway builders, they were canal men. In order to make the gradients as easy as possible they followed their habitual method of following the contour lines of the hills.

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