OFF PEAK WALKS
By Michael Hull (1998)
ISBN: 0907758991
Paperback, 144 pp.
£6.95
If you fancy a change from the hustle and bustle of the Peak District, if you want some peace and tranquillity, and if you want to get to know an overlooked part of Derbyshire – this is the book for you!
The author has chosen twenty of the most scenic walks in North East Derbyshire, which take in the varied landscapes of the area – rolling, lush farmland, peaceful woodland, rugged moorland, and charming villages.
The walks are all very accessible from Sheffield, Chesterfield, Matlock and surrounding towns. The walks to the north of Chesterfield take in Holmsfield, the Cordwell valley, Barlow, Eckington and the Moss valley. The walks to the west and south of Chesterfield are principally around Linacre, Old Brampton, Holymoorside, Ogston reservoir and Ashover.
As well as clear and concise route descriptions, there are sketch maps showing each route. The author has provided historical and biographical information about the places of interest (and the people of note associated with them) featured on the walks.
THE COAL MINES OF BUXTON
By Alan Roberts and John T. Leach (1985)
ISBN: 9780907758105
Paperback, 100 pp.
£9.95
THE COAL MINES OF BUXTON may seem like a fictional title, but it is fact. The book traces the rise of the coal industry in the neighbourhood of Buxton, examines its hey-day, and details its decline, quoting extensively from contemporary documents. If you still need proof of its existence, check out the numerous industrial remains which are also described in these pages.
ALAN ROBERTS came to Buxton in 1960 to work at the Safety in Mines Research Establishment, Harpur Hill, carrying out research on fire and explosion problems in coal mines. JOHN LEACH, formerly an engine driver with British Rail, came to Buxton in 1971, where he is now a member of the Derbyshire Museum Service.
Each with an interest in hill-walking and local history, they began to identify traces of coal-mining on Axe Edge and the Goyt Valley, and to pick up isolated scraps of information. They were independently researching the history of these workings, gradually piecing together a more coherent picture, when a chance meeting and exchange of views led to their collaboration on this book.
THE DERBYSHIRE PORTWAY
By Stephen Bailey (2008)
ISBN: 1900446138
Paperback, 80 pp.
£6.95
What links the Hemlock Stone, Dale Abbey, two hermitages, Alport Heights, Robin Hood’s Stride, a stone circle, several hill forts and Mam Tor? The Derbyshire Portway, an ancient prehistoric trackway, which can be traced from the north of Derbyshire to the edge of Nottingham at Stapleford, connects all these places and many others.
This book describes the route northwards from the Nottinghamshire border to Mam Tor near Castleton. The journey of about forty five miles can be walked in stages or as a whole, and passes Morley, Coxbench, Holbrook, Milford, Wirksworth, Alport, Ashford and Wardlow. The route takes the walker through some of Derbyshire’s most delightful scenery, from the lush Derwent valley to the moors of the Dark Peak.
VESTIGES OF THE ANTIQUITIES OF DERBYSHIRE
By Thomas Bateman (Facsimile reprint – 2008)
ISBN: 9781900446099
Paperback, 264 pp.
£12.95
A facsimile reprint of the 1848 work on Derbyshire prehistoric and ancient archaeology by the noted Victorian archaeologist Thomas Bateman. It contains a wealth of information on archaeological sites and finds in Derbyshire with numerous line drawings.
Thomas Bateman (1821 – 61), born at Rowsley, Derbyshire, was the first of the ‘modern’ barrow-digging archaeologists. He and his associates, Samuel Carrington in Staffordshire and James Ruddock in Yorkshire, opened over 400 burial-mounds, carefully preserving and recording the finds, and helping to lay the foundations of our understanding of death and burial in the British Early Bronze Age.
Vestiges is Bateman’s first book, written with co-author Stephen Glover (1798 – 1869), who was responsible for the post Anglo-Saxon periods, and the subscription list. Unfortunately Bateman felt, with some justification, that the latter had been mishandled, and his subsequent writings were all self financed. Vestiges doubtless owed its inception to Sir Richard Hoare’s Ancient Wiltshire, though much more limited in scope and size. Published in 1848 it paved the way for a series of works on Barrow-digging in other parts of England, and as such was very much a groundbreaking study. (Barry M. Marsden).
DRIVING THE CLAY CROSS TUNNEL
By Cliff Williams (1984)
ISBN: 9780907758075
Paperback, 88 pp.
£7.95
When George Stephenson first surveyed the route of the North Midland Railway from Derby to Leeds, he realised that the major engineering challenge was to drive a tunnel beneath Clay Cross, then a tiny hamlet. This book tells how, once opposition had been overcome and the bill steered through parliament, the engineer, Frederick Swanwick set hundreds of navvies to work to drive the tunnel; how they shattered the peace of the village with their drinking and fighting, as they faced privation, maiming and death to complete the task.
When the work was done and the navvies left, Stephenson and his Clay Cross Company stayed on. Tunnel and Company together transformed Clay Cross from a quiet rural community into a roaring industrial town.
The author, CLIFF WILLIAMS, was born and bred in Clay Cross, and is employed as a youth and community worker. His first book, “One Hundred Years of Progress – a Pictorial History of the Derbyshire Miners” was published in 1980. Like the present work, it rose out of his passionate interest in local industries and the contributions made to the community by the working man. Cliff Williams is currently completing a much wider study of Clay Cross as a product of the Industrial Revolution, which he hopes to publish in the near future.
DIARIES OF MARIA GYTE OF SHELDON, DERBYSHIRE 1913 – 1920
By Maria Gyte, ed. By Gerald Phizackerley (1999)
Paperback, 356 pp.
ISBN: 9780907758969
£14.99
The Diaries of Maria Gyte of Sheldon are not only an everyday record of country life but also a powerful indictment of war. They reveal the effect which the Great War had on the small Derbyshire village of Sheldon, near Bakewell, in the Peak District. Almost like a Greek tragedy, they show the reluctant but inevitable steps by which Tony, the youngest of the Gyte family, was called up, briefly trained and sent to France. This young farm lad arrived in Flanders in the autumn of 1917, just in time for one of the most awful conflicts in the whole war, the Third Battle of Ypres, known as Passchendaele. Tony was soon killed. His mother, Maria Gyte, a woman of great fortitude, confided to her Diaries her grief and sense of desolation. Her daily record, her recalling of events and their anniversaries, must have been a kind of therapy for her as she expressed her shock, anger, bewilderment and sadness. Perhaps she found it easier to write, than to speak, those deep feelings of her heart.
WALLS ACROSS THE VALLEY
By Prof. Brian Robinson (revised and reprinted 2012)
ISBN:
£60.00
The Derwent and Howden Dams are a principal source of drinking water for much of South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and the East Midlands, including the cities of Sheffield, Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. They are magnificent engineering and architectural structures and have acquired additional fame as one of several locations used in training the Dambusters Squadron. Prof. Brian Robinson’s grandfather worked on the project and his mother was born in the temporary navvies’ village of Birchinlee in 1909, and indeed Brian himself has the stature of a powerful workman. Though a molecular biologist by profession, Prof. Robinson has had a lifelong interest in the construction of the Dams and in the lives of the workmen employed there, and in 1993, Scarthin Books of Cromford, Derbyshire were able, with support from the Severn Trent Water Authority, to publish his highly illustrated magnum opus, Walls across the Valley; The Building of the Howden and Derwent Dams in an edition of some 1500 copies. “Walls” has been out of print now for over a decade and has become Scarthin’s most legendary publication, with the few examples that come onto the market selling for £200 or more. At the time of writing, not a single copy for sale can be traced on the net.
The building of the Dams was one of the great engineering feats of the early 20th. Century, involving the building of a railway up the valley and the village for the workmen, Birchinlee and the moving of well over a million tons of earth, stone and cement. The opening ceremony was held on the 5th of September 1912, so centenary celebrations are not far in the future.
The publication of the first edition of Walls across the Valley brought to light much new material, as well as a few factual revisions, and as the original edition sold out, Brian Robinson and publisher David Mitchell invested much time and effort in revising the text, but production of a second edition was beset by technical gremlins too costly to overcome and ten years past before Scarthin Books took up the challenge again. The advance of publishing technology has allowed this scholarly and superbly-illustrated volume to be completely re-originated with the revised text, and long-established Sheffield firm J.W.Northend have undertaken to print it to their accustomed high standards.
WALK THE PEAK 2
By Rod Dunn (2011)
ISBN: 9781900446143
Hardback, 248pp.
£25.00
WALK THE PEAK 2 takes you on another fifty-walk journey from north to south through the Peak District. Whilst Walk The Peak described many classic routes, this companion volume fills in a few gaps before describing many paths seldom trodden. Together, the two volumes provide a record of walking in The Peak at the start of this 21st century.