Wonders of the Peak

Buxton Museum & Art Gallery

Local History

Orient Lodge

by Leave a Comment

At one time there was a rather grand house in Green Fairfield.

Orient Lodge stood on Hardybarn Lane, a long single track running from Waterswallows Road.

Built in 1896 for Samuel Swann Brittain and his Arabic wife Emma there are accounts of the grand house of Orient Lodge employing dairy staff, farm workers and servants.

The Brittains landscaped their estate from open farmland with formal gardens, mature trees from Ashwood Dale and overseas. There are tales of an orangery filled with exotic fruit trees, beautifully built stables for a stud farm and shippons with luxuriously tiled interiors.

However quarrying began at nearby Tunstead in 1929 and gradually expanded, moving closer to Orient Lodge.

By the mid 1930’s a family called Bingham owned the estate and had already sold part of the land to I.C.I.

Robert Bingham kept the house on until he died in 1977 before its inevitable sale to I.C.I.

All that remains now is an overgrown tree lined driveway leading to a great cliff edge to the huge Tunstead quarry.

Read more about the Brittains and the Binghams at Orient Lodge on our Buxton Museum and Art Gallery blog:

Orient Lodge

 

One Ash Grange

by

This is a spot to soak up a sense of history.  Semi-derelict buildings abound, many dating back to the twelfth century when this was a farm worked by monks from Roche Abbey in South Yorkshire.

Tradition has it that brothers who misbehaved were sent here to do penance. The life-size, contemporary stone statue of a Buddhist monk in the farmhouse garden is a reminder of those former days, as is the medieval ice-house (a small, adapted cave to the right) and the old run of pigsties, with their clever system of feed chutes and troughs. Ice may have been collected by the monks from the Lathkill River during the winter and used to help keep dairy produce cool and fresh.

A well would also have been a necessity here, sunk deep enough to reach the natural water table, or water may have been collected from the spring back in Cales Dale.  It is not difficult to imagine the monks carrying buckets of water, or ice, up and down the slippery stone stairs, perhaps cursing the day they were sent here.

[Read more…] about One Ash Grange

The Torrs Millennium Walkway

by

This is the Torrs’ star tourist attraction: the Millennium Walkway. Its long sweep of shining steel takes us over one of the noisiest of the Goyt’s weirs, at a dizzying height. It’s an inspired way of linking the riverside park with the trains at New Mills Central Station and Torr Vale Mill.

Millennium Walkway © Simon Corble

The vast edifice of Torr Vale Mill, just across the river, began life as a water-powered cotton mill in the 1780s. It was converted first to steam, then to electricity and spun its last yarn in 2000.

The oldest section of the building faces us, with its typically Georgian rectangular windows. The former mill race passed through the stone arch just below it, to the right.

Torr Vale Mill © Simon Corble

[Read more…] about The Torrs Millennium Walkway

Lovers Leap

by

Lover’s Leap © Trevor Harris via Geograph (CC BY SA 2.0)

This is a fine place to view the lower portion of Dovedale. Opposite, rising out of the ash woods, you can just make out the rock pinnacles known as the Twelve Apostles.

Pinnacles like these are made of harder bands of limestone that were left were behind after the erosion of the last Ice Age. Over the centuries since then, they have been further shaped into craggy towers by water gradually dissolving the rock or repeatedly freezing in cracks until the rock weakens and crumbles away.

Steps up to Lover’s Leap © Matt Fascione via Geograph (CC BY SA 2.0)

Lover’s Leap gets its name from a girl who attempted suicide from this high point, but was saved by her billowing skirts! The steps up to the high point were said to be built by Italian prisoners of war during World War Two.

[Read more…] about Lovers Leap

Winter, 1962.

by

This area of the Peak District is renowned in Britain for extreme winder conditions. Bad snow fall closes roads and can isolate remote, rural communities.

Turn until the chapel is on your left and the road is behind you. Look up the farm track and compare it to this picture, taken up this track in 1962.

Winter at Home Farm, 1962. Kindly lent for photography by M.E. Parker. Buxton Museum and Art Gallery – CC BY-NC.

The winter of 1962/63 is sometimes referred to as the big freeze and was one of the coldest winters on record in the United Kingdom. Many farms in the Peak District had to have food parcels dropped off for them, trapped under up to eight feet of snow in places!

[Read more…] about Winter, 1962.

Hollinsclough band – through the ages

by

We asked local people to share their memories and personal collections about the history of Hollinsclough. M.E. Parker kindly shared these images of Hollinsclough band who first formed in around 1920 practiced here at the Chapel Hall. The band are is active in the local area.

Hollinsclough Band , 1960s, taken at the New Band Hut, Longnor. Lent for photography by M.E. Parker. Buxton Museum and Art Gallery – CC BY-NC.
Hollinsclough Band marching in Flash, Staffordshire , 1950s. Kindly lent for photography by M.E. Parker. Buxton Museum and Art Gallery – CC BY-NC.
Hollinsclough Band at Flash, Staffordshire, 1920s. Kindly lent for photography by M.E. Parker. Buxton Museum and Art Gallery – CC BY-NC.

Stories and photos were collected from local people with the help of Harry Hitchen and the members of History Live.

Welcome to History Live!