White Peak Walks: The Southern Dales. Mark Richards
perfect place to gaze across an ocean of heather moor.
Revidge is a retiring, unsung hero, a viewpoint with the right sort of credentials. True, it is not an all-round panorama, but there is no finer stance or promenade from which to consider the upper Manifold valley. Filling the eastern gaze, a tantalising hillscape includes Axe Edge, the Dowel Dale hills, Sheen Hill and the rich tangle of hills south of Hartington and Hulme End. As a backdrop, the White Peak plateau reaches the far horizon with stretches of the Tissington Trail apparent due east. As like as not your happy deliberations will be solitary, for few walkers pass this way to idle a merry afternoon away, repelled, no doubt, by the thought of disturbance by khaki manoeuvres (see below).
Heather in full bloom on Revidge, looking to Morridge
Rainbow arcs the track leading north off Revidge
Backtrack down to the main track and continue north to where a branch track breaks acutely right, short of a cattle-grid, with a notice warning of MOD vehicles or troops. Follow this track to a hand-gate and galvanised gate with its ‘Hayes Farm’ sign. Leave the track, keeping south with the wall close right. After two stiles reach a wooden footpath sign guiding half-left along the line of a shallow ditch lined with gorse. This leads to a further footpath sign; follow the finger pointing towards ‘Brund and Hulme End’ down to a gate and by the ruins of Hayeshead. The crumbling walls give cause to pause and ponder on the past life of this farmstead. A footpath sign directs to ‘Hulme End’ at the gateway facing the integrated derelict cottage and beneath a giant beech tree. Traverse the damp field diagonally, clipping a projecting wall corner to reach a squeeze-stile beside a wooden field-gate in the far corner.
Pass through the garden of Hayes Cottage via two wicket-gates and along a hedge-line to step down after a wicket-gate and cross a paddock to pass Steps via the red gates. Leave the access track right to a twin stone squeeze-stile; enter pasture once more and aim towards the farm-buildings of Upper Brownhill, a busy livestock farm (plenty of mud potential). Go through the fence-stile short of the farmyard and bear left, rounding the new barn on the left. Continue to a wicket-gate in a fence short of the tall trees. Briefly join the open farm access track, but where the power lines cross, bear off following the power line down to a recessed stile onto the road.
Cross straight over through the gate and traverse the large cattle pasture to a wicket-gate. Keep the fence close left with the shallow valley right. Go through a hedge via a stone stile and across the farm access track through facing light fence-stiles. Look out for waymarking guiding you right of the brook to a stile onto the road beside the large brown ‘Manifold Valley Visitor Centre’ road sign. Turn left and right as into Cawlow Farm, taking the less-than-obvious stile left of the galvanised gate (left) as the large square four-chimneyed farmhouse comes into view right; the adjacent outbuildings have been sensitively converted into holiday lets. Cross the meadow to the stile back onto the Manifold Track and turn left to finish, déjà vu.
WALK 5
Manifold Track and Ecton Hill
| Start/Finish | Hulme End |
| Distance | 8.5km (5¼ miles) |
| Time | 4hrs |
| Terrain | A modestly hilly walk, with two steep ascents and descents, all the time on firm paths; the walk begins and ends with soothing strides along the level trackbed trail. |
| Refreshments | The Manifold Inn at Hulme End and Wettonmill Café |
| Parking | (GR 103593) Hulme End National Park Authority car park (pay and display) and picnic site, at northern end of Manifold Track and former light railway station, now popular cycle hire centre |
Although created as long ago as 1937 the Manifold Track is still one of the prime visitor attractions of the White Peak, and is particularly welcomed by those who have young children in pushchairs or who are confined to wheelchairs or lack the vigour of their youth. Hulme End, the former terminal of the Leek and Manifold Light Railway, provides the perfect springboard not merely to sample the Track but also to explore Ecton Hill with its heritage of copper mining.
Follow the track south to Dale Bridge. Leave the Track, rising left with the minor road. Cross the road junction and ascend the metalled lane to Radcliffe’s Castle, presently enveloped in scaffolding. Today Ecton is a quiet place, but during the 17th and 18th centuries it was subjected to the frenzy of copper fever. Evidence of those years’ activity can be seen today in the form of spoil (although a great deal was removed and used as ballast for the railway). The walk passes two buildings surviving from those days on the rise to Radcliffe’s folly castle: a former sales office and the mine agent’s (captain’s) house.
Radcliffe’s Folly is a classic example of pre-planning regulation eccentricity. Despite its copper hood this oddity has no links with Ecton’s mining days, having been shoddily built in the 1930s by Arthur Radcliffe.
MINING ACTIVITY ON ECTON HILL
Visitors who have delighted in the grandeur of Chatsworth House and Buxton Spa would do well to consider from where much of the wealth for their creation derived. The productivity of Ecton Hill’s copper, lead and zinc deposits (though prone, like all mining ventures, to great variation) tended to reach its zenith whenever the Dukes of Devonshire desired funding for their various building enterprises, the increasingly rich pickings probably prompting equally big ideas! During the heyday years in the latter half of the18th century the principal beneficiaries were the Devonshires (from Ecton Pipe Vein) and the Burgoynes (from Clayton Pipe Vein). The 19th century saw an appreciable decline in the ventures due to flooding and the likely exhaustion of easily obtainable ore. The horseshoe of conifers seen on the ascent from the Folly surrounds the spoil from the Dutchman Level (the level is blocked, though easily located by the spring of water). The ruins here are of an engine house, smithy and carpenter’s shop used chiefly during the construction of the Goodhope Level in the 1850s. Above this is a barn adapted for farm use but which was erected in 1788 to house a Boulton & Watt steam engine, which raised ore and pumped water from the Deep Ecton Mine. When sunk in the years to 1795 the shaft was the deepest in Britain, being some 282m (924ft) feet below adit level (by 1840 the shaft from the surface was 400m/1312ft deep, hence my warning about the open top below). Speleological access is strictly controlled.
Pass through the archway to a wall-stile left. Proceed along the path, mounting the steep scarp obliquely beneath the mine spoil plantation and above the scree quarry. The views throughout this section are quite delightful and frequent halts are in order, the severity of the slope dictating that walkers keep their eyes resolutely on the narrow trod whilst actually moving!
Coming onto a shoulder look down on Swainsley House with its riverside dovecote. At the crest, contour to a short hedge rising to a stile. Traverse the open pasture (some walls have been removed, antiquating the OS map); glance by a projecting wall corner, at which point aim half-right to a gateway. Go through and continue below Summerhill Farm to a wall-stile and gate. Bear left with a wall left to reach a wall-stile gaining entry into a lane from Broad Ecton.
Swainsley House and the Manifold valley from Ecton Hill
Turn right, and as the track bends left go through the wicket-gate on the right. The path follows the wall down the shallow dale, passing through a rustic drum-stile and loose gate from where the dale narrows. Advancing to switch sides of the dale wall coming above scrub to slip through a wall squeeze-stile (NT Dale Farm sign). The path smartly encounters a fence-stile and descends a loose trod in the woodland beside the great limestone bluff of Sugar Loaf to enter the open pasture of the nameless dale. A delightful stroll down the wood-flanked meadow ensues to pass through a gate and through the farmyard at Dale Farm, continuing on the lane to Wettonmill Bridge.