Things to do in Derbyshire

Chatsworth House in the Peak District of Derbyshire is one of the greatest country houses in England, the ancestral home of the Dukes of Devonshire for over four centuries and a house of such extraordinary quality in its architecture, collections and landscape setting that it is frequently described as the Palace of the Peak. The house stands in the valley of the Derwent River in Derbyshire below the eastern edge of the Peak District National Park and its combination of baroque and later classical facades, the magnificent park landscaped by Capability Brown, and the extraordinary collections of art assembled across five centuries of ducal patronage creates an experience of country house visiting that is without equal in the north of England. The current house was largely rebuilt in the baroque style for the first Duke of Devonshire between 1686 and 1707, producing the south and east fronts that define the character of the house seen from the park. The north wing was added by William Kent in the 1750s and the entire house was extended and remodelled in the early nineteenth century by the sixth Duke under the direction of the architect Jeffry Wyatville, who added the north wing and gave the house the extra length that today makes it one of the most extensive country houses in Britain. The interior collections assembled by successive Dukes of Devonshire are of museum quality. The house contains magnificent paintings by Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Veronese and Reynolds; an exceptional collection of drawings including works by Raphael and Holbein; and a library of outstanding importance. The decorative arts, furniture, silver and porcelain collections are of comparable quality and the state rooms in which they are displayed represent some of the finest baroque and neoclassical interiors in England. The garden at Chatsworth, combining the formal cascade with the Emperor Fountain, the great rock garden and the working kitchen garden, is one of the most famous in England, and the surrounding parkland with its farmland, woodland and the views to the Peak District moors provide an outstanding setting.

Cromford Mill near Matlock in Derbyshire is the world's first successful water-powered cotton spinning mill, built by Richard Arkwright in 1771 as the prototype for the factory system that would transform the global economy and create the Industrial Revolution. The mill is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Derwent Valley Mills complex and provides the most direct connection available anywhere in the world to the moment when machine production in purpose-built factories replaced the domestic cottage industry system that had organised manufacturing since prehistory. Arkwright's achievement at Cromford was not simply mechanical but organisational and social. He created not only the water frame spinning machine but the complete factory system in which workers came to a single workplace, worked set hours under supervision and were paid wages for their labour. The village of Cromford that he built around the mill, the workers' housing, the market place and the mill pond system that drove the waterwheel, all survive in remarkable completeness as evidence of the complete social and industrial vision that Arkwright implemented here. The Arkwright Society manages the site and the programme of restoration ongoing since the 1970s has brought significant sections of the mill complex back into interpretable condition. The adjacent Masson Mill, Arkwright's later and more impressive building, provides complementary industrial heritage, and the Cromford Canal and the High Peak Trail provide excellent outdoor access to the surrounding Derbyshire landscape.

Dovedale in the Peak District is one of the finest and most celebrated river gorges in England, a limestone valley of the River Dove between the borders of Derbyshire and Staffordshire whose combination of the clear river, the dramatic limestone pinnacles and reef knolls rising from the valley floor, the ancient ash woodland clothing the valley sides and the stepping stones across the river create one of the most complete and most romantic valley landscapes available in the national park. The stepping stones at the southern entrance to the dale are among the most photographed features of the entire Peak District. The geological character of Dovedale is the result of the differential erosion of a complex limestone geology in which ancient coral reef mounds of harder limestone have resisted erosion more successfully than the surrounding rock, leaving the distinctive rock towers of Dovedale Tor, Ilam Rock, Pickering Tor and the Lion Face that give the dale its characteristic skyline. These reef knolls, formed from coral approximately 340 million years ago, are among the most informative exposures of reef limestone geology in Britain. The dale was the favourite fishing water of Izaak Walton, whose 1653 work The Compleat Angler describes fishing the Dove in terms of pastoral beauty that established the vale's reputation as an Arcadian landscape. The grayling and brown trout fishing of the Dove is still considered among the finest in England and the combination of the fishing tradition, the geological interest and the simple scenic quality of the gorge makes Dovedale one of the most visited non-coastal natural attractions in England.

Monsal Head in the Peak District is one of the most celebrated viewpoints in the national park, a clifftop viewpoint above the deep limestone gorge of the River Wye near Bakewell from which the Victorian railway viaduct — now carrying the Monsal Trail walking and cycling route — spans the dale in a composition of industrial heritage and natural limestone gorge scenery. The viaduct was condemned by John Ruskin when built in 1863 but has long since become a celebrated element of the landscape. The Monsal Dale viaduct carries the Monsal Trail, an 8.5-mile route following the former Midland Railway line through the limestone dales of the White Peak, across the gorge at a height providing views along the dale in both directions. The trail passes through several tunnels, now lit and open to cyclists, providing a complete heritage railway experience through the best section of White Peak limestone scenery. The River Wye below the viaduct provides excellent trout fishing and the combination of the water, the limestone cliffs, the hanging woodland and the viaduct above creates a landscape of considerable variety in a short section of the dale.

The Nine Ladies Stone Circle on Stanton Moor in the Derbyshire Peak District is a small but evocative Bronze Age monument of approximately 3,500 years ago, a ring of nine slender millstone grit standing stones each less than a metre high set on the high moorland of the moor in an open landscape of heather and bilberry that has preserved the circle's setting with unusual completeness. The circle is one of numerous prehistoric monuments on Stanton Moor, a flat-topped sandstone plateau that served as an important ceremonial landscape during the Bronze Age and whose concentration of burial cairns, standing stones and the circle itself makes it the most significant prehistoric site in the Peak District. The name Nine Ladies derives from the Christian-era legend that the stones are women turned to stone for dancing on the Sabbath, a tradition common across Britain that was applied to many prehistoric stone circles as an explanatory myth for monuments whose original purpose was no longer understood. A single outlying stone, the King Stone, stands a short distance from the circle and represents the musician whose playing caused the women's transgression, completing the narrative. The circle sits within a heather moorland managed for grouse that provides a characteristic upland Derbyshire setting, the views from the moor extending across the Derwent Valley below to the White Peak limestone country beyond. The walk to the circle from the car park at Birchover is straightforward and takes approximately twenty minutes through pleasant moorland scenery. The wider Stanton Moor landscape, with its more than seventy recorded Bronze Age monuments concentrated in a relatively small area, represents one of the most intensively used ceremonial landscapes of the period in the British Isles and rewards extended exploration beyond the circle itself.

Thor's Cave is one of the most impressive natural cave entrances in England, a vast limestone arch set high in a cliff above the Manifold Valley in Staffordshire within the Peak District. The cave's enormous triangular entrance, approximately 10 metres high, commands a sweeping view down the valley and has made it a recognised landmark of the limestone country of the Staffordshire Moorlands for millennia. The approach up a steep rocky path from the valley floor is demanding but rewarding, with the scale of the entrance growing more imposing with every step of the ascent. The cave penetrates the limestone cliff to a depth of about 75 metres and connects with a smaller secondary entrance on the eastern face of the crag. The interior is a single large chamber rather than an extensive cave system, with a floor that slopes steeply toward the rear of the cave and walls of pale grey limestone showing the characteristic bedding planes and solution features of calcium carbonate rock that has been slowly dissolved by mildly acidic groundwater over millions of years. Archaeological excavation of the cave during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries revealed evidence of human occupation extending from the earliest prehistoric periods through to the Iron Age. Artefacts recovered include stone tools dating to the Palaeolithic period, confirming that people sought shelter here during the last Ice Age, when the climate of this region would have been extremely cold and the cave a relatively warm and defensible refuge. Bronze Age and Iron Age pottery, bone objects and animal remains from later periods provide evidence of continuing human use across tens of thousands of years. The Manifold Valley below the cave provides one of the most beautiful cycling and walking routes in the Peak District, the former railway trackbed having been converted to a traffic-free trail that follows the river through the limestone gorge. The valley is particularly notable for the way the River Manifold disappears underground through the porous limestone in dry summer conditions and re-emerges several kilometres downstream near Ilam.

Tissington is one of the most attractive and best-preserved estate villages in the Peak District, a cluster of limestone buildings around a triangular green most celebrated as the origin of the well-dressing tradition. This distinctively Peakland practice of creating large decorated pictures from flower petals, moss, leaves and other natural materials pressed into clay frames around the village wells has been practiced in Tissington on Ascension Day each year for over four hundred years, attracting visitors throughout the dressing season from late spring through summer. The origin of the well-dressings is traditionally attributed to gratitude for the village's clean water supply during the Black Death of 1348 to 1349. Whether this specific origin is accurate or not, the dressings represent a continuation of a very old tradition of venerating water sources that may have pre-Christian roots in the veneration of sacred wells found throughout the British Isles. The village itself is a handsome example of an estate village, its buildings arranged around the green in a composition reflecting the care of the FitzHerbert family who have owned Tissington Hall since the sixteenth century. The Tissington Trail, following the disused railway line through the White Peak limestone country, begins in the village and provides excellent cycling and walking in the surrounding national park landscape.

Wirksworth is an attractive and historically important small town in the Derbyshire Dales whose combination of the medieval church, the Georgian and earlier stone buildings of the town centre, the remarkable heritage of lead mining that shaped its history and the contemporary arts and crafts community that has developed in the regenerated town create a destination of unusual depth and character for a Derbyshire market town. The town has been recognised as one of the most successful examples of cultural-led regeneration in the East Midlands. The Church of St Mary contains one of the finest collections of early medieval carved stones in England, including the Wirksworth Stone, a carved coffin lid of approximately 800 AD depicting scenes from the life of Christ in a style of considerable sophistication and historical importance. The collection of Saxon and early Norman carved stones within the church represents a body of early medieval sculpture equivalent in quality to much better-known sites and relatively little visited. The National Stone Centre at Middleton-by-Wirksworth, a short drive from the town, provides excellent interpretation of the geology of the Derbyshire limestone and the history of quarrying and lead mining that shaped both the landscape and the economy of the area. The Ecclesbourne Valley Railway, a heritage steam railway connecting Wirksworth with Duffield and the national network, provides a nostalgic transport connection to the surrounding Derbyshire countryside.