The Peak District. Gilchrist Murray
swings, shooting galleries, and everything that from long usage appeals to the innocent rustic mind.
There are many handsome old houses here, but the finest, Holme Hall, is not visible from the highway. The church is a graceful building, admirably placed, with a tall slender spire, which looks its best when pricking through a golden December mist. Near the porch is a curious epitaph: “Know, posterity! That on the 8th of April in the year of grace, 1757, the rambling remains of John Dale were, in the 86th year of his pilgrimage, laid upon his two wives.
“This thing in life might cause some jealousy,
Here all three lye together lovingly;
But from embraces here no pleasure flows,
Alike are here all human joys and woes;
Here Sarah’s chiding John no longer hears,
And old John’s rambling Sarah no more fears;
A period’s come to all their toylesome lives,
The good man’s quiet, still are both his wives.”
The interior of the church is of great interest, since here is the richly coloured Vernon Chapel, where lie the famous Dorothy and her husband Sir John Manners, also the lady’s ancestor, Sir George Vernon, King of the Peak, and Sir Thomas de Wendesley, who fell at Shrewsbury. Some of the effigies are strangely realistic, with appropriate inscriptions culled from Holy Writ. Perhaps the most interesting to the antiquarian is that of Sir Godfrey Foljambe, the founder of the Chantrey of the Holy Cross, and of his wife Dame Avena. These figures, represented from the waist upwards, are carved in alabaster, under a canopy with two shields, the one displaying escallops, the other fleurs-de-lis.
From Bakewell Bridge may be had one of the most beautiful glimpses of the Wye, which divides there to encircle a green eyot. Against the brown bed of the shallow stream, sleepy fish lie with scarce a tremor. The grass of the banks hardly loses colour in the heart of winter.
BAKEWELL, SOUTH CHURCH STREET
After leaving the town, the Buxton road soon reaches the village of Ashford-in-the-Water, a strange old place with a picturesque mill. In the park of Ashford Hall the Wye is artificial but charming, its waters spreading into emerald-green reaches. The church of Ashford contains some of those funeral adornments known as “maidens’ garlands”, cages of cut paper which were carried at the funerals of such girls as died unmarried.
A mile or two beyond this sleepy hamlet, Monsal Dale opens to the right. On one hand are osier beds, rich in colour at every season; on the other the Wye rushes happily over a stony bed. Beyond Monsal the well-wooded valley contracts, and the road climbs to the grey village of Taddington, in whose churchyard may be seen one of the oldest crosses in Derbyshire. Taddington is devoid of interest; one leaves it without regret, and, after crossing some miles of bleak uplands, begins to descend to Ashwood Dale. There the road has several sharp curves, and travellers of all kinds must go warily. Nearer Buxton the Wye glides smoothly in an ugly concrete channel, suggestive of a gutter. To the left, a mile or so before reaching the town, a wonderful little ravine, known as Sherbrook Dell, with a Lover’s Leap Rock, abruptly cleaves the hillside. Except in times of drought this opening has a fascinating appearance; it is like the scene of some old story of gnomes and fairies.
Buxton itself is interesting—if unpicturesque. Throughout the year it has a swept-and-garnished appearance. The shops are excellent, as befits a watering-place frequented by fashionable folk, ailing and sound. There are several hotels to which the vulgar word palatial may be applied, there are hydropathic establishments and boarding houses in plenty, and there is a fine hospital of widespread fame, with a dome that enjoys the distinction of being greater in diameter than that of St. Peter’s at Rome.
The most striking feature of the town is the Crescent, a fine half-circle of brown stonework that was erected in the eighteenth century. It is three stories high, with an arcade that extends from end to end. Formerly it consisted of hotels and one private boarding house, and the lower-floor rooms were used as shops; but now it is occupied entirely by two hotels, the “St. Anne’s” and the “Crescent”. In the latter may be seen one of the finest Adam rooms in the country. This was formerly known as the “Assembly Room”, and has been scarcely altered since the day of opening. The length is 75½ feet, the width 30 feet, and the height 30 feet. There is an air of old-time dignity about the place, and it is easy for the imaginative to repeople it with the stately folk of Georgian days.
Buxton, notwithstanding its fame of old, has but few antiquities. Before 1570 the Earl of Shrewsbury erected a great house for the accommodation of visitors. It was probably in this place that Mary Stuart rested during her cure, and wrote with a diamond upon glass:
“Buxtona, quæ calidæ celebrabere nomine lymphæ,
Forte mihi posthac non adeunda, vale”;
in translation:
“Buxton, whose fame thy milk-warm waters tell,
Whom I, perhaps, no more shall see, farewell”.
A hundred years later the hall was taken down and a “most commodious edifice” raised by the Earl of Devonshire, Bess of Hardwick’s great-grandson. In old maps may be found a picture of the former building, which is thus described by Doctor Jones, in 1572, in his treatise on the Buxton waters:—
“A very goodly house, foure-square, foure storeys high, so well compacte with houses of office beneath and above and round about, with a great chambre and other goodly lodgings to the number of 30: that it is and will be a bewty to behold, and very notable for the honourable and worshipful that shall need to repaire thither, as also for other. Yea, the poorest shall have lodgings and beds hard by for their uses only. … A phisicion to be placed there continually, that might not only counsyle them how the better to use God’s benefyte, but also adapt their bodies making artificial baths, by using thereof as the case shall require, with many other profitable devyses, having all things for that use or any other, in a rediness for all the degrees as before it bee longe it shall be the scene of the noble earle’s own performing.”
For the gentlemen Doctor Jones recommends the diverting exercises of bowling, shooting at butts, and tossing the wind-ball. The ladies may enjoy the calmer pleasures of walking in the galleries, and “if the weather be not agreeable to their expectacion, they may have in the ende of a benche eleven holes made, into the which to trowle pummets or bowles of lead, bigge, little, or meane, or also of copper, tynne, woode, eyther vyolent or softe, after their own discretion, the pastime Trowle Madame is termed. Likewise men feeble, the same may also practise in another gallery of the new buildings.”
Even in those days men of note came here to take the waters—the lords Leicester and Burleigh amongst others. In the Harleian MSS. one may see a letter to the Earl of Essex, in which the latter writes:—
“Your Lordship, I think, desyreth to heare of my estate, which is this: I cum hither on Sunday last at night, took a small solutive on Monday, began on Tuesday, yesterday I drynk of the waters to the quantity of 3 pynts at 6 draughts; this day I have added 2 draughts, and I drynk 4 pynts, and to-morrow am determyned to drynk 5 pynts, and mixt with sugar I fynd it potable with pleasure even as whey. I mean not to bath these 8 dayes, but wyll contynew drynking 10 dayes.”
The Earl of Essex himself writes, several years later: “The water I have drunke liberally, begynning with 3 pynts, and so encreasing dayly a pynt I come to 8 pynts, and from thence descendyng dayly a pynt till I shall ageyne return to 3 pynts, wch wil be on Thursday next, and then I make an ende”.
The church of St. Ann is singularly small, and uninviting of exterior aspect. Inside, however, one may see ancient ceiling beams and a quaintly illuminated altar. The only person of any note buried in the dreary little graveyard was one John Kane, a comedian, who in 1799 died because he mistook monkshood for horse-radish.
One of the wonders of the Peak is Poole’s Hole, a cavern situated less than