Wonders of the Peak

Buxton Museum & Art Gallery

Natural History

A field rustles, pt 3

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Out of events we  created for the BM125 project, grew poems that we are sharing here.  This is the second half of a poem that began in “A field rustles… parts 1 and 2”

When you visit Arbor Low or Minning Low or walk along an old road,  look at the fields around you as well as at the ancient monuments themselves. Our haymeadows hold their own stories

Poems are often best read out loud, so pause and share this with a friend. or if you are on your own, speak it to the wind and the flowers themselves

 

Hayfield, part 3

Futures are rooted in this rare and ancient place,
Still growing memories
Having fun in the river, catching insects,
A diving beetle!

Knapweed and burnet nod purple heads
Studding the rippling ribbons of colour
Black medick nods, yellow heads in the hot dry grass.
Seeds of the future in a rare and ancient place,
Lose the meadow and the memories wither too,
The cows across the field will sleep only in the present.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A field rustles, pt 2

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Out of events we  created for the BM125 project, grew poems that we are sharing here.  This is the second half of a poem that began in “A Field rustles…”

When you visit Arbor Low or Minning Low or walk along an old road,  look at the fields around you as well as at the ancient monuments themselves. Our haymeadows hold their own stories

Poems are often best read out loud, so pause and share this with a friend. or if you are on your own, speak it to the wind and the flowers themselves

The rhythm of a scythe echoes across centuries
They walked where we walk,
Those old farmers on a summer day,
The slice and hiss of a blade and
The whetstone that hones the edge,
Finding shade under these same trees,
Cutting the waving grass from the same sward.

Harebell and cranesbill
Selfheal and tormentil,
Scabious and burnet,
The names are an enchantment
A spell for a meadow,
Whispered on a dusty wind
Colour, scent, pollen and promise,
Foxtail, cocksfoot,
Fescue, vernal and bent,
The rooted and the free,
Meadow brown and large white,
Ringlet and tortoiseshell,
Prayers blown between earth and sky.

Part 3 follows

 

 

A field rustles

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The Upper Dove Valley

As part of the BM125 project with the Museum, the Creeping Toad team created events in the Peak District landscape. From these events grew writing that we are sharing on this app.

When you visit Arbor Low or Minning Low or walk along an old road, we invite you to look at the fields around you as well as at the ancient monuments themselves. Our haymeadows hold their own stories

Poems are often best read out loud, so pause and share this with a friend. or if you are on your own, speak it to the wind and the flowers themselves

Haymeadows, part 1

We sink
Into a field rustling and bustling with life,
Into a froth of grass,
Into a sea of grasshopper sound,
A dream where nothing changes.
The cows sleeping under a willow
Have been resting there for centuries.

Memories are rooted in these meadows,
In the fleeting lives of butterflies,
In nodding seedheads,
In thistledown drifting on a hot breeze.
Farms, families, paths, tools and stories,
All knitted to the earth as tightly as the turf.
Childhood holidays rooted here too,
New names, first meetings,
Stonechats, curlews, those grasshoppers again

Part 2 follows

 

 

Ilam Rock

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Ilam Rock © Andrew Dennes via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

These delicate fingers of rock on opposite banks of the Dove are one of the scenic highlights of the dale. Amazingly, the 25m- high leaning finger of Ilam Rock has several rock climbing routes up its precipitous sides, while Pickering Tor has a gaping cave at its foot.

Both were left stranded as free-standing pillars of hard reef limestone when the softer rock was eaten away by the glacial meltwaters of the last Ice Age. Artist JMW Turner captured Ilam Rock in a popular painting, which undoubtedly contributed to our view of this as a sublime landscape and reinforced it as a place of interest to visiting tourists over the years.

The path now swings east opposite Hall Dale to pass the impressively-yawning water-worn cavities known as Dove Holes. Beyond here, the riverside path passes a number of weirs before running under the impressive vertical cliff of Raven’s Tor. A gentle meadowland path, rich in lime-loving flowers such as rockrose and thyme, now takes you into the hamlet of Milldale, which is reached by crossing the narrow Viator’s Bridge

[Read more…] about Ilam Rock

The Confluence with Black Brook

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Here is another major convergence of streams, adding yet more power to the River Dane as it carves its way down towards the Cheshire Plain. This is where Black Brook joins the river. Look in the water and we can see how Black Brook got its name.

If there has been a lot of rainfall, the water may look like strong tea, without milk. This dark brown colour comes from peat staining the water. Peat is found on the high moors where both the River Dane and Black Brook have their origins

Black Brook is fed on one side by water running down from the back of an escarpment called the Roaches.  Their name comes from the Norman French word ‘roches’, meaning simply ‘rocks’. There are some dramatic cliffs and spectacular wind-sculpted rock formations up there – well worth exploring another day.

[Read more…] about The Confluence with Black Brook

Lud’s Church exit

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Before we leave the magic of Lud’s Church completely behind, we ought to consider how such an extraordinary feature came to be. Of course, there is a folk tale involving the Devil making a giant gash in the earth with his finger nail.  More logically, can you find any signs of erosion, by water for instance?

This in no way looks like one of those small, water eroded cloughs. In fact, there is no sign at all that a stream has ever run in or out of here. For the record, Lud’s Church is around 17 metres deep and 100 metres long. The sides may be jagged, but they are straight drops of gritstone, draped with cushions of soft moss. There is not much of an eroded look about them.

Think back to the wider picture, though. The River Dane managed to find a passage through the hard gritstone wall of the Roaches somehow. There must have been a weakness. In fact the gritstone of this whole area is traversed by numerous ‘faults’ – cracks inside the rock. These run northwest to southeast, just as Lud’s Church does.

Where the bed of gritstone dips to the north, into what is known as the ‘Goyt Syncline’, a large mass of it simply cracked away. The rock slipped downhill a few metres, breaking along one of these fault lines. This sudden movement under the force of gravity opened up the chasm as we see it today.

[Read more…] about Lud’s Church exit