Peak District Totally Explained

Everything about The Peak District totally explained

The Peak District is an upland area in central and northern England, lying mainly in northern Derbyshire, but also covering parts of Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, and South and West Yorkshire.
Most of the area falls within the Peak District National Park, whose designation in 1951 made it the earliest national park in the British Isles. An area of great diversity, it's conventionally split into the northern Dark Peak, where most of the moorland is found and whose geology is gritstone, and the southern White Peak, where most of the population lives and where the geology is mainly limestone-based. Proximity to the major conurbations of the North East Midlands, Yorkshire, Lancashire and Greater Manchester, coupled with easy access by road and rail, make it the most visited national park in the UK and the second most visited in the world.

Geography

The Peak District forms the southern end of the Pennines and much of the area is uplands above 300 m, with a high point on Kinder Scout of 636 m. Despite its name, the landscape lacks sharp peaks, being characterised by rounded hills and gritstone escarpments (the "edges"). The area is surrounded by major conurbations, including Huddersfield, Manchester, Sheffield, Derby and Stoke-on-Trent.
The National Park covers 555 square miles (1,438 square km) of Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, Greater Manchester and South and West Yorkshire, including the majority of the area commonly referred to as the Peak. The Park boundaries were drawn to exclude large built-up areas and industrial sites from the park; in particular, the town of Buxton and the adjacent quarries are located at the end of the Peak Dale corridor, surrounded on three sides by the Park. The town of Bakewell and numerous villages are, however, included within the boundaries, as is much of the (non-industrial) west of Sheffield. As of 2006, it's the fourth largest National Park in England and Wales. As always in Britain, the designation "National Park" means that there are planning restrictions to protect the area from inappropriate development, and a Park Authority to look after it - but doesn't imply that the land is owned by the government, or is uninhabited.
12% of the Peak District National Park is owned by the National Trust, a non-governmental organisation which aims to conserve historic and natural landscapes. The three Trust estates (High Peak, South Peak and Longshaw) include the ecologically or geologically significant areas of Bleaklow, Derwent Edge, Hope Woodlands, Kinder Scout, Leek and Manifold, Mam Tor, Dovedale, Milldale and Winnats. The Peak District National Park Authority directly owns around 5%, and other major landowners include several water companies.

Geology

Much of the Peak District, and its adjacent areas, approximate to the structure of an eroded dome. The Carboniferous Coal Measures lie just outside the district, especially on the eastern side. Below the Coal Measures are the shales and sandstones of the Millstone Grit. The grit forms the moorland of the Dark Peak, and also extends in two ridges southwards on the west and east sides of the district. The shales occur at the base of the grit.
   Between the two gritstone ridges, the underlying early Carboniferous Limestone is at the surface, forming the centre of the dome. This is the White Peak. The limestone produces numerous caves – this is sometimes known as karst topography.
   The Peak District dome is at the south end of the Pennine anticline.
   For a detailed description of the geology of the area see Cope's monograph.

Ecology

The gritstone and shale of the Dark Peak supports heather moorland and blanket bog environments, with rough sheep pasture and grouse shooting being the main land uses. The limestone plateaus of the White Peak are more intensively farmed, with mainly dairy usage of improved pastures. Some sources also recognise the South West Peak (near Macclesfield) as a third type of area, with intermediate characteristics.
Woodland forms around 8% of the Peak National Park.

Economy

Tourism is the major local employment for Park residents (24%), with manufacturing industries (19%) and quarrying (12%) also being important; only 12% are employed in agriculture. The cement works at Hope is the largest employer within the Park. Tourism is estimated to provide 500 full-time jobs, 350 part-time jobs and 100 seasonal jobs.
The springs at Buxton and Ashbourne are exploited to produce bottled mineral water, and many of the plantations are managed for timber. Other manufacturing industries of the area are varied; they include David Mellor's cutlery factory (Hathersage), brake linings (Ferodo at Chapel-en-le-Frith) and electronic equipment (Castleton). Limestone is the most important mineral quarried, mainly for roads and cement; shale is extracted for cement at Hope, and several gritstone quarries are worked for housing (see also Conservation issues: Quarrying). In the Bronze Age the area was well populated and farmed, and evidence of these people survives in henges such as Arbor Low near Youlgreave or the Nine Ladies Stone Circle at Stanton Moor. In the same period, and on into the Iron Age, a number of significant hillforts such as that at Mam Tor were created. Roman occupation was sparse but the Romans certainly exploited the rich mineral veins of the area, exporting lead from the Buxton area along well-used routes. There were Roman settlements, including one at Buxton which was known to them as "Aquae Arnemetiae" in recognition of its spring, dedicated to the local goddess.
Theories as to the derivation of the Peak District name include the idea that it came from the Pecsaetan or peaklanders, an Anglo Saxon tribe who inhabited the central and northern parts of the area from the 6th century AD when it fell within the large Anglian kingdom of Mercia.

Medieval to modern history

In medieval and early modern times the land was mainly agricultural, as it still is today, with sheep farming, rather than arable, the main activity in these upland holdings. However, from the sixteenth century onwards the mineral and geological wealth of the Peak became increasingly significant. Not only lead, but also coal, copper (at Ecton), zinc, iron, manganese and silver have all been mined here. Celia Fiennes, describing her journey through the Peak in 1697, wrote of 'those craggy hills whose bowells are full of mines of all kinds off black and white and veined marbles, and some have mines of copper, others tinn and leaden mines, in w[hi]ch is a great deale of silver.' Lead mining peaked in the 17th and 18th centuries and began to decline from the mid-19th century, with the last major mine closing in 1939, though lead remains a byproduct of fluorspar, baryte and calcite mining Visitor numbers didn't increase significantly until the Victorian era, with railway construction providing ease of access and a growing cultural appreciation of the Picturesque and Romantic. Guides such as John Mawe's Mineralogy of Derbyshire (1802) and William Adam's Gem of the Peak (1840) generated interest in the area's unique geology.
There is a great tradition of public access and outdoor recreation in this area. The Peak District formed a natural hinterland and rural escape for the populations of industrial Manchester and Sheffield, and remains a valuable leisure resource in a largely post-industrial economy. The Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout, the highest point in the Peak District, in 1932 was a landmark in the campaign for national parks and open access to moorland in Britain, at a time when such open moors were strongly identified with the game keeping interests of landed gentry. The Peak District National Park became the United Kingdom's first national park on April 17, 1951. The first National Trail in the United Kingdom was the Pennine Way, which starts from the village of Edale in the heart of the Peak District.

Transport

History

The first roads in the Peak were constructed by the Romans, although they may have followed existing tracks. The Roman network is thought to have linked the settlements and forts of Aquae Arnemetiae (Buxton), Chesterfield, Ardotalia (Glossop) and Navio (Brough-on-Noe), and extended outwards to Danum (Doncaster), Manucium (Manchester) and Derventio (Little Chester, near Derby). Parts of the modern A515 and A53 roads south of Buxton are believed to run along Roman roads. Packhorse routes criss-crossed the Peak in the Medieval era, and some paved causeways are believed to date from this period, such as the Long Causeway along Stanage. However, no highways were marked on Saxton's map of Derbyshire, published in 1579. Bridge building improved the transport network; a surviving early example is the three-arched gritstone bridge over the River Derwent at Baslow, which dates from 1608 and has an adjacent toll-shelter. Although the introduction of turnpike roads (toll roads) from 1731 reduced journey times, the journey from Sheffield to Manchester in 1800 still took 16 hours, prompting Samuel Taylor Coleridge to remark that 'a tortoise could outgallop us!' From around 1815 onwards, turnpike roads both increased in length and improved in quality. An example is the Snake Road, built under the direction of Thomas Telford in 1819-21 (now the A57); the name refers to the crest of the Dukes of Devonshire. – poses unique challenges to managing the area. The Peak Park Authority and the National Trust, with other landowners, attempt to balance keeping the upland landscape accessible to visitors for recreation, whilst protecting it from intensive farming, erosion and pressure from visitors themselves. An inevitable tension exists between the needs of the 38,000 residents of the Peak Park, and the conservation requirements of the area.
The uneven distribution of visitors creates further stresses. Dovedale alone receives an estimated 2 million visitors annually; other highly visited areas include Bakewell, Castleton and the Hope valley, Chatsworth, Hartington and the reservoirs of the Upper Derwent valley. Over 60% of visits are concentrated in the period May–September, with Sunday being the busiest day. Large quarries not only leave scars on the landscape but also cause dust and noise pollution and traffic congestion, particularly where stone is transported in lorries rather than by rail. However, the industry is critical to the local economy, employing 12% of those residing within the Park. The proposals dating from 1999 from Stancliffe Stone Ltd to re-open dormant gritstone quarries at Stanton Moor have been seen as a test case. They are hotly contested by ecological protesters and local residents on grounds that the development would threaten nearby Bronze Age remains (in particular, the Nine Ladies stone circle) as well as the natural landscape locally.

Peak District in literature and arts

The landscapes of the Peak have formed an inspiration to writers for centuries. Various places in the Peak District have been identified by Ralph Elliott and others as locations in the 14th century poem 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'; Lud's Church, for example, is thought to be the Green Chapel.
   Key scenes in Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice are set in the Derbyshire Peak District. Peveril of the Peak (1823) by Sir Walter Scott is a historical novel set at Peveril Castle, Castleton during the reign of Charles II. William Wordsworth was a frequent visitor to Matlock; the Peak inspired several of his poems, including an 1830 sonnet to Chatsworth House. Snowfield in George Eliot's first novel Adam Bede (1859) is believed to be based on Wirksworth, where her uncle managed a mill; Ellastone (Hayslope) and Ashbourne (Oakbourne) are also featured.
   Children's author Alison Uttley (1884–1976) was born at Cromford; her well-known novel, A Traveller in Time, set in Dethick, recounts the Babington Plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots from imprisonment. Crichton Porteous (1901–91) set several books in specific locations in the Peak; Toad Hole, Lucky Columbell and Broken River, for example, are set in the Derwent Valley. More recently, Geraldine Brooks's first novel, Year of Wonders (2001), blends fact and fiction to tell the story of the plague village of Eyam, which also inspired Children of Winter by children's novelist, Berlie Doherty (b. 1943). Doherty has set several other works in the Peak, including Deep Secret, based on the drowning of the villages of Derwent and Ashopton by the Ladybower Reservoir, and Blue John, inspired by the Blue John Cavern at Castleton.
   Many works of crime and horror have been set in the Peak. 'The Terror of Blue John Gap' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) recounts terrible events at the Blue John mines, and Sherlock Holmes investigates the kidnapping of a child in the region in 'The Adventure of the Priory School'. Many of the horror stories of local author Robert Murray Gilchrist (1878–1916) feature Peak settings. while In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner, an Inspector Lynley mystery by Elizabeth George, is set on the fictional Calder Moor.
   Other writers and poets who lived in or visited the Peak include Samuel Johnson, William Congreve, Anna Seward, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lord Byron, Thomas Moore, Richard Furness, D. H. Lawrence, Richmal Crompton and Nat Gould. In recent adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, Longnor has featured as Lambton, while Lyme Park and Chatsworth House have stood in for Pemberley. Haddon Hall not only doubled as Thornfield Hall in two different adaptations of Jane Eyre, but has also appeared in several other films including Elizabeth and The Princess Bride. The long-running television medical drama Peak Practice is set in the fictional village of Cardale in the Derbyshire Peak District; it was filmed in Crich, Matlock and other Peak locations.

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