Did Bonnie Prince Charlie lose his waistcoat here?

In the late eighteenth century Monyash was home to important Quaker families, and there are some lovely photographs and artefacts from the Bowman family on display in the Old House Museum in Bakewell, celebrating their lives. There is a Bowman family patchwork quilt in the collection. The centre piece is an old fragment of silk, said to have come from one of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s waistcoats. He travelled through this area of Derbyshire, and is reputed to have slept at Hartington Hall. Who can say whether he accepted brief hospitality in Monyash? Some say the name Monyash means ‘many ashes’. The trees are less obvious now, and with the bad news about ash disease, may become a thing of the past. There are hay meadows, cultivated in the traditional way and managed by Natural England. The traditional hay mix would include plants and herbs with properties that would improve the health of the grazing animals and the flavour of their meat and milk. Flowering hay meadows are also a wonderful sight. On one side of the dale is One Ash Grange, originally a grain store for the monks of Roche Abbey. In medieval times the dale was managed for sheep and wool, timber and forestry, stone and lead, creating wealth for the monasteries and a building boom in churches and cathedrals. After the dissolution of the monasteries wealthy estates took over the riches of this part of Derbyshire, and later still in the nineteenth century speculative fortunes were made and lost in the lead mining industry.

Looking for Moominvalley

Next to the spoil heap of rocks from Ricklow Quarry, rejected by the quarrymen in the 19thc, protected by its SSSI status in the 20th, the valley narrows dramatically. The path becomes uneven, as it scrambles over rocks, made slippery by rain and mud and the polishing of an army of walking boots. The dale then starts to resemble scenes from Lord of the Rings. Not so much the New Zealand landscapes of the films, but my childhood fantasies, based on early illustrations for Tolkien’s books as they caught the sixties mood and imaginations. Moss covered trees add to the other worldly atmosphere. Even on a sunny day it feels cool. On a wet day it’s dark and dank and dripping. Perspective and mood change in every section of this walk, a kaleidoscope of feelings. One stretch is dark and mysterious; the next is open and clear. This dale doesn’t present a stable or cohesive personality. The sky, the weather, the landscape and the vegetation are ever changing along its short length. It is only six and a half miles long. At this point the river that gives the dale its name isn’t visible. Limestone bluffs and buttresses tower over each side of the valley. Rocks lie around, thrown by giants. It’s a Narnia landscape, with Aslan’s sacrificial table. My favourite books from childhood come to life. It could even be Moominvalley. Parson’s Tor rises up on the left. In 1776 the vicar of Monyash, the Reverend Robert Lomas, rode his horse over the cliff on a dark and stormy night. I know a Robert Lomas, a joiner who did a lot of work in my house. It must be a local name. Some say the eighteenth century Reverend had been drinking in Bakewell, still a popular pastime. The horse survived but he didn’t, perhaps it fell on him. It is said that a glass jar holding a tuft of grass used to be on display in St Leonard’s Church in Monyash. The grass was removed from Reverend Lomas’s clenched fist when they found the body. How macabre. Why are local legends like this remembered and shared? I’m adding to the process now as I write, but who thought displaying such a strange memento mori? Was it to remind the parishioners’ that all flesh is grass? Or that we know not the day or the hour. Perhaps it was a prop for a contemporary sermon and no-one then had the heart to throw it away.

Dew ponds, sea creatures and water closets

Dropping down from the village of Monyash, following the road towards Bakewell, the footpath is on your right. There is a welcome toilet block, partly paid for by Severn Trent Water. This isn’t meant to be a guide to the amenities of Lathkilldale, and I don’t mean to dwell on the mundane, but for many groups of walkers, and visiting school children, this was something that transformed their experience of the walk. City children don’t go behind bushes, especially with their class mates nearby, and with the number of walkers enjoying the Dale, the bushes would soon be unable to cope. There’s a dew pond on your left. These ponds, lined with clay and then paved with small stones, are a feature of the limestone landscape. English Nature and Peak Park restored many of them in the late 90s. At this point you walk across fields, with perhaps a few cows in the distance. The way is level and dry, and there’s no sign of the river. There are low limestone bluffs to your right, and a scramble up a footpath on your left would bring you to the now deserted Ricklow Quarry. Crinoid limestone from this quarry was a prized building material all over the country. The limestone polishes into decorative ‘grey marble’ full of Derbyshire screws, the tiny fossilised crinoid sea creatures, a little like sea anemones, that make up the rock. Ricklow was a thriving quarry, with piles of waste stone thrown down into the dale at one point, where the old trackway for transporting the stone terminated. I was once asked to play the role of a Victorian quarryman’s wife for a living history day in the dale, organised by English Nature. It was the first hot day of that summer, a Saturday in early May. I dressed in a blouse and long skirt, with boots. I put my hair in a bun, and took a clay pipe, bought in a charity shop. I had an old wicker basket with a glass bottle of water, and some bread wrapped in a white cotton napkin. Further down the dale I knew there was a Stone Age hunter gatherer and a medieval monk. I spoke to anyone passing by about my life and my quarryman husband. Some people got it, and others obviously thought my pipe contained exotic substances. There had been a time when a small stand of cannabis plants had been discovered in a secluded part of the dale, but this was not an aspect of its history I was there to share. It was my first excursion into storytelling and I loved it.