Ann Turner is the woman who made St Paul’s Cathedral out of flower petals.
She’s a buxom lady with deft fingers and a can-do attitude, and we find her
huddled over a clay screen at the village hall in Litton, one of the
happiest little hamlets in the Peak District.
This year, Turner is working on a cottage-garden scene, pricking the design
into the wet clay with a stubby needle, then filling in the picture using
petals and peppercorns, slivers of bark and shards of leaf. A volunteer
battalion of dog-walkers has been gathering the raw materials since last
autumn and, later, a team of locals will help Turner complete the mosaic.
This is not some weird masonic rite, but the intricate Derbyshire folk art of
well- dressing — a kind of microscopic flower-arranging that dates from
pagan times, when chaps in animal skins would garland their local wellspring
as an offering to the water gods.
Today, it’s a community thing, uniting villagers throughout the national park
and variously celebrated with the help of silver bands, soapbox der-bies and
torchlight processions.When well-dressing weekend arrives, the 10ft-tall
tableau is unveiled on the village green, the rector gives thanks for the
water and everyone repairs to the nearest hostelry to give thanks for Black
Sheep ale.
Well-dressing festivals light up the Derbyshire dales all summer long, blazing
from village to village like a beacon chain. They bring a mad burst of
colour to the silver and green countryside of the Peak, with its superlush
pastures, twinkly trout streams and shining limestone scars. Litton’s
well-dressing jamboree takes place today, so, by next Sunday, Ann Turner’s
bits-and-pieces masterpiece will be cracked by the sun, withered by drizzle
and all but wiped out. But the speedy annihilation of the well dressings is
part of their mystique. There are plenty of others you could plan to visit
as part of a weekend tour this summer, as the following itinerary suggests.
DAY 1
Cromford to Baslow
When he built Cromford Mill in 1771, Richard Arkwright didn’t just invent the
industrial revolution, he invented Peak District tourism. The gentry flocked
to gawp at the world’s prototype factory, and Arkwright, ever the
entrepreneur, built the Greyhound Hotel to entertain them.
So, Cromford is a neat place to begin your Peakland drive — and Arkwright’s
cotton mill (01629 824297; £2) remains an architectural powerhouse. Its
stern-faced buildings barricade their central courtyard like the bailey
walls of a Norman castle: no accident, as the great paternalist lived in
fear of the mob marching on his works.
The visitor experience is rather forlorn, though: a small museum in the old
spinning hall, with collapsing plasterwork and dog-eared displays; and a
tour by Keith Sherwin and his dog-eared collie, who barks whenever Keith
rambles on too long. Arkwright himself appears as a papier-mâché effigy on a
plastic chair, so tatty that you can read the small ads in the lining of his
frock coat.
It’s slightly sad — this is a World Heritage Site, for pity’s sake. Yet the
general atmosphere of dust and alienation feels strangely right, given the
mill’s grim history.
Drive out of Cromford on the A5012 and take a right turn onto the road to
Bonsall. Almost immediately, you’re in the Peak landscape you came to see.
The lane squeezes tight between dry-stone walls, big green views billow away
to the north and there are bijou meadows soaked with buttercups as tall as
daffodils.
Beyond the ridge lies Birch-over, and lunch at the Druid Inn (01629 650302;
main courses £8-£14). The new owners here are Adrian Cooling and Richard
Smith, fathers of the Thyme restaurant dynasty in Sheffield. They’ve
introduced dark lea-ther, lilies and sophisticated food in Pennine-sized
portions. Order their prizewinning steak sandwich (with stilton on
black-pudding bread) and you may not need to eat again until Monday.
Afterwards, heave your bulk up the nettly pathway behind the pub to conquer
Rowtor Rocks. Now this is fun: a Flintstones-style adventure playground
fashioned by a barmy 17th- century lord named Thomas Eyre, it has
hobbit-sized hermit holes, fanciful chimneys and, right on top, a trio of
thrones, hewn from the rock, that look like airline seats. Perch here for a
while and let your imagi- nation fly over the hills and dales unfurling
below.
Two options for the afternoon: well-dressing festivities in the sturdy village
of Youlgreave (June 25-30); or a turn around Haddon Hall (01629 812855;
£7.25), where Keith Michell chucked chicken legs in Henry VIII, Cate
Blanchett danced a volta in Elizabeth and Alex Kingston popped her corset in
Moll Flanders.
Haddon is a costume-drama superstar, Britain’s best med-ieval manor house.
When neighbouring Chatsworth House was remodelled in the 1680s, the Duke of
Rutland kept up with the Joneses by abandoning Haddon for a swish new pad at
Belvoir Castle, so the painted chapel, tapestried galleries and Stygian
kitchens are frozen exactly as he left them. Better still, the famous rose
gardens are now in nose-exploding summer bloom. Romantic doesn’t begin to
describe it.
()From here, double back to pick up the B6012 through Chatsworth Park. This is
a special bit of road, coursing across Capability Brown lawns and past
neoclassical fountains and follies. Suddenly, you clap eyes on the house: a
giant gold ingot glowing beside the River Derwent. Chatsworth was the model
for Pemberley, in Pride and Prejudice; the mere sight of it made Elizabeth
Bennet fall for Mr Darcy. You’ll fancy him a little yourself.
The road leads to the Cavendish Hotel (01246 582311, www.cavendish-hotel.net;
weekend doubles from £152, room-only), itself part of the estate, and the
sort of place Austen heroines are reduced to when Papa loses his fortune on
the Exchange — just the 24 bedrooms. Furnished by the Duchess of Devonshire
and run by the cravat-wearing Eric Marsh, the hotel is as English as they
come, with putting on the lawn and treacle pudding on the menu. Spiffing.
DAY 2
Baslow to Hathersage
Chatsworth (01246 582204; £9.50) makes tough demands on visitors determined to
get their money’s worth: you’ll need to marvel at the frescoed halls; admire
the Van Dycks; paddle in the 300-year-old cascade; climb to the Elizabethan
hunting tower; feed the goats.
It takes a full day to do it properly (maybe two if you get lost in the maze),
so unless you’ve one to spare, make do with a pre-breakfast stroll into the
grounds, accessed via dew-dipped pastures from the gate of the hotel. Get up
early enough, borrow a cravat and you’ll feel like the duke himself.
Then make for Bakewell, pausing for a look at Pilton, an estate village where
every last window frame and fencepost is painted in the Devonshires’
prescribed shade of blue. (Would it be blood blue, perhaps?) Pilton has
another curiosity — the Chatsworth farm shop, which has ballooned into
Britain’s poshest supermarket, complete with wicker trugs instead of
shopping trolleys and quails’ eggs by the dozen.
Far more sensible to shop in busy-busy Bakewell, especially if you’re visiting
in well- dressing week (June 25-July 3) or on the last Saturday of the
month, when the excellent farmers’ market pitches up. Pick up your picnic,
then head for the Old House Museum (01629 813642; £2.50), with its
divertingly odd array of wonders: elephants’ feet, sinister dolls,
improbable musical instruments.
Your main ambition here, however, should be to consume as many Bakewell
puddings as possible in an hour, and decide which of the several bakeries
claiming the “original” recipe deserves to be called “the best”. Elevenses
never lasted so long.
Now it’s time to peel back the sunroof and just drive: along the A6 to Ashford
in the Water, then north to Monsal Head, where you can break out your
farm-fashioned hamper and have a panoramic picnic on the rooftop of the
dale.
From here, the riverside lane snakes on to Litton, Ann Turner’s home, which
has a smart-looking set of stocks and more village greens than it knows what
to do with. If you miss this week’s well-dressing jamboree, the Red Lion
(01298 871458) has photos of past wells — and a droll landlord, good
steak-and-kidney pudding and ambience by the flagon.
Your afternoon target is Eyam, where the scenery seeps down to fill the end of
every street, and fells fly like flags above the chimneypots. It’s not all
milk-and-honey sweetness, though — the village is notorious for two tragic
years of its history, 1665-66, when bubonic plague visited in a tailor’s
flea-infested trunk from London.
The villagers quarantined themselves to prevent the epidemic ravaging the
Peak. It wiped out 257 of them, and to limit contagion, most were buried in
Eyam’s gardens. Today, you can follow the progress of the pestilence from
cottage to cottage: each has a plaque listing those who perished. At the
Thorpe House, where the hollyhocks seem to grow especially vibrantly, nine
family members died. The experience is poignant and slightly macabre, but
the locals cheer themselves up by unveiling their well dressings on Plague
Sunday (August 28).
Your bed for tonight is in Hathersage, an archetypal Dark Peak village of
resolute chapels and Sunday craft jamborees. Its well-dressing week is July
2-9, and at St Michael’s Church, you’ll find an unholy marriage of Robin
Hood and Jane Eyre — read all about it at the bookshop in the nave. On Main
Street, the George Hotel (01433 650436, weekend doubles from £122, B&B)
has been feeding and watering travellers since the 1500s, but rarely so well
as since its recent revamp.
Still not had your fill? There’s always Chatsworth House for tomorrow.
For a complete well-dressing calendar, call Derbyshire Tourism on 01246
345777
