CHAPEL, DOVEHOLES,
Distance: 9 miles
Difficulty: Difficult
Weather: Chilly, snowing, windy
Walkers: Pete Beal, George Whaites, Phil
Welsh, George Dearsley, Alan Hart, John Laverick, Julian Ross, Colin Davison, Jock
Rooney and Tips, Tom Cunliffe, Lawrie Fairman
Apologies: Mickey Barrett (colonoscopy.
Camera up backside to you)
B Walkers: Geoff Spurrell, Tony Job, Mike
Walton
Leader: Davison Diarist: Dearsley
Starting Point: The road near
Chapel-en-le-Frith railway station
Starting Time: 9.42am. Finishing Time:
2.40pm
When it snows, ain't it
thrilling,
Though your nose gets a chilling
We'll frolic and play, the Eskimo way,
Walking in a Colin wonderland.
This week’s diary may by a little short on
ambulatory and geographic detail, given that all three pens in my pocket froze
up, my notepad resembled a damp mop head and I lost the will to live about 30
minutes from the end of the walk.
Yes, as Spring approaches and the debate
about global warming rages, the Wednesday Wanderers found themselves up to
their cojones in… snow.
It did not help that our esteemed leader Mr
Davison spent a lot of the time at the rear, barking orders to the bemused
ramblers at the front.
Then, in a misguided effort to boost
morale, he claimed it was “only an hour back to the cars” from the Wanted Inn,
when it was actually nearer two.
Maybe Captain Lawrence Edward Grace
("Titus") Oates’ sacrifice was nothing to do with ill health and bad
feet but came in disbelief after a chirpy assertion from Scott that the 'One Ton' food
depot that could save the expedition was only a stone’s throw away.
It was fortunate that Mr Fairman agreed to
abandon the day’s original route which he deemed “too dangerous” and said
involved a path with “a 100 foot drop on one side”.
Incidentally, before I go on, I must apprise you
of a cartoon I spotted which appears to feature Mr Fairman.
Lawrie?
Of course, there was little forewarning of the
Nanook-style conditions to come as we set off from the station car park.
We crossed the rail line and went straight up the
lane, passing Ridge Lodge.
We then passed an expensive looking gated
property on the left.
At the top of the track we turned left and after
about 400 yards we turned left again over a stile.
Mr Davison was soon a faller, trapping his ankle
between gate post and wall.
We eventually reached a road and turned right.
After 100 yards we turned left, went through a
farm and saw the vista that is Doveholes looming to our left. We reached a road
and turned left.
This brought us past the railway station and down
to the main road that leads out of Doveholes, arguably the town’s greatest
asset.
In 2001, you may recall, the village was voted
the ugliest village in Britain in a Radio 5 Live poll.
In a desperate piece of crisis news management, Ken
Gibson, of the Dove Holes Community Association, said: "Although Dove
Holes may not seem the prettiest of villages as you drive through, it really
does have a community spirit second to none.
"The village sports two village shops, a
busy rural post office, two pubs, village school and an active brass
band."
No, a thumbs down from me.
We crossed the road and visited our old friend,
the “Stonehenge” with no stones.
This huge Neolithic earth and limestone monument sits behind a
church, school and sports centre to the west, a small housing estate to its
north, a playing field to the south and abandoned limestone quarries to the
east.
That it survives at all seems a miracle
especially as it was under cultivation by the 18th century, suffered quarrying
in its northeast sector in the 19th century and would have been swallowed up by
the quarries to its east were it not for the prompt action of some Buxton
archaeologists at the turn of the 20th century.
Henge
No one really knows what the Bull Ring was
used for. It may have served as an easily accessible meeting point or trade
centre for the prehistoric inhabitants of the High Peak area, some of whose
descendants are easily recognisable today by the way their knuckles drag along
the pavement.
Maybe the stoneless henge once had stones
after all. A single standing stone
(orthostat) was recorded as remaining in 1789, potentially the remnant of a
stone circle. It has been suggested that stones from the henge were used as
sleepers for the Peak Forest Tramway circa 1790.
Anyhow, we didn’t dawdle too long to
consider the cavemen sitting around arguing about the price of flint arrowheads.
Instead, we took a track to the right and
went down a tricky narrow path to the Tramway, where Pie Time was declared at
10.54am.
Since Mr Cunliffe’s walk the other week Pie
Time has become the reverse of Fergie Time, like an egg timer with parallel
sides. Barely had the Wanderers snapped the lids from their Tuppaware than an
imaginary whistle had blown and we were off again at 11.03am. I intend to call
this Cunliffe Time.
Someone said we should take the bull by the
horns or the bull by the fetlock as the Tesco meat purchaser says. In any
event, there was substantial confusion as an advanced party of Wanderers turned
left, only to be recalled by a hitherto pre-occupied leader Davison and
instructed to go straight over.
Repairs for Mr Hart
The Peak Forest Tramway, by the way, was originally planned to be about four-miles
long, running from Chapel Milton to the limestone quarries at Dove Holes but
the Peak Forest Canal Company, acting on the advice of Benjamin Outram and
Thomas Brown, their consulting and resident engineers respectively, decided to
terminate the canal at the village of Bugsworth.
This was as far forward as the Peak Forest
Canal could be cut without the need for a second flight of locks. Authorisation
for this change in design was given on the 8 July 1795 and, as built, the
tramway from Bugsworth to Dove Holes was about 6 miles long.
At first, the tramway was single track,
with passing places, and the gauge was 4 feet 2 inches. The Tramway was the
first to be built by Outram that fully complied with his famous paper, 'Minutes
to be observed in the Construction of Railways', first published in February 1801
in the periodical, Recreations in Agriculture. This periodical was almost
entirely written by Dr James Anderson, a Scottish economist (also described as
a lawyer, scientist, agriculturalist and writer) whose daughter, Margaret, just
happened to marry Benjamin Outram on the 4 June 1800. Do I detect some graft
here?
Mr Beal shows how it should be done
An old boar meets a friend. Mr Hart is on
the right.
We went through a farm and pretty soon saw
the Wanted Inn in the distance.
We reached the hostelry at 12 noon. Unicorn
was £2.90 and Double Hop £3.
Here Mr Laverick confessed he was
celebrating his 60th birthday and like the Yeoman he is ordered a
pint for all the Wanderers. What a jolly good fellow.
We have written before about the pub. But there’s more. The
earliest reference to Sparrowpit is found in 1618 as "Sparrow Pit
House" (which relates to the Wanted Inn).
On a map of 1640, the Sparrowpit yatte appears. This related
to the "Sparrowspit Gate", which was the old road which continues to
Peak Forest outside the Wanted Inn, which was built as a farmstead in 1618 by the
Earl of Devonshire of Chatsworth House (1552-1625) who was the son of Bess of
Hardwick, and appointed as Earl during that year. The tenants were the Vernon
family, who had resided in the district for generations. It must have been a
welcome sight for the travellers bound for the area, with its unpredictable
weather.
The building stands on an ancient saltway route which began
in Cheshire and ended in Sheffield. The sight of the long line of packhorses
with bells on their necks to warn people must have been delightful .
In 1700 the farmstead also became an Inn, and was known as
the "Three Tuns". The earliest coach road developed from the various
packhorse ways linking villages, the first part to have been turnpiked from the
west, from Manchester to Chapel-en-le-Frith in 1724; In 1749 this was extended
eastwards, through Sparrowpit, to Peak Forest, which is when it became a
prominent Inn, but the linking turnpike from Sparrowpit to Sheffield was not
promoted and authorised until 1758.
In 1762 tolls on the turnpike included; Packhorse carrying malt, salt, flour, corn or grain - 1/2 d
Packhorse carrying other goods - 1d
Packhorse carrying other goods - 1d
The salt ways from Chapel-en-le-Frith continued over
Peaslows to Sparrowpit and down Winnats into Castleton. Winnats is supposedly haunted by the
ghosts of two runaway lovers, Clara and Allan.
On their way to Peak Forest and marriage in 1758, they
stopped at a Castleton Inn to refresh themselves, and check their route. Their
talk was overheard by five miners who noted the couple's obvious wealth, and
slipped out quietly to wait for them up Winnats.
Allan and Clara were murdered with a pick, their bodies
thrown down a cavity and the riderless horses galloped into Sparrowpit, outside
the Inn. The killers were never caught, and when the whining wind is lashing,
you can hear Allan and Clara begging for mercy.
In 1820, the turnpike up Winnats was deprived of its main
function, or so they thought, by the new road up Mam Tor, but we all know what
happened to that! The Inn was still known as "The Three Tuns" in
1835, and what a sight it must have been, as "Yoho" was shouted, at
the arrival of the stage coach on route, in Sparrowpit at midday, by the driver
on its way to Nottingham.
Nearby to the Wanted Inn is Slack Hall, where one of the
fields is known as Bedigo's. It was here on 13th June 1836 that a prize fight
took place of some magnitude between Bendigo and Bill Looney (real name Charlie
Langan).
The fight drew people from all over the country, and one can
imagine the gossip that took place in the Wanted Inn after
the performance.
It was £100 a side
and the fight took 144 minutes, and 99 rounds. In the 99th round, Looney
"came in as blind as a bat". Nevertheless, he "rushed in with
his right, when Bendigo mustered all his remaining strength, gave him another
fall".
Bendigo won all three events - first blood, first knock down, and
the battle.
Afterwards, he still walked about a 1/4 of a mile to his
carriage. No hot baths and rubs downs by the physio in those days.
In 1839 the name of the Inn was changed to The Devonshire
Arms. It was owned by the Duke, who was also Lord of the Manor, and Joseph
Vernon became Inn Keeper. In 1847, Samuel Vernon became mine-host here, he was
also a quarryman, and in 1851 lived there with his wife Ann and four children.
In 1888 an immense snow storm covered the Inn, and anyone wishing
to get inside had to go through a tunnel two to three yards in length. A
similar occurrence happened in 1920. A picture of of one of these incidents is on
the pub wall.
When the 10th Duke died in 1950, his second son became heir,
and because of massive death duties, soon after put the Inn up for auction;
however, it did not get a bid and remained "unwanted".
In 1956 it was
purchased by Mr and Mrs Jack Buswell from Whitehough, at the second auction.
They redesigned and restored the house and, after much thought, renamed it.
However, it was not
prize fights or the Duke’s patronage that captured Mr Ross’s attention…. but
the many sex aids in the gentlemen’s toilet.
They included something
unknown to your scribe called Pheromone Wipes.
As every schoolboy
hopefully doesn’t know, Pheromones are chemicals that send out subconscious
scent signals to the opposite sex that naturally trigger attraction.
When a person receives
the chemical-hormonal signals, they automatically, instinctively respond -
without even realizing what is drawing them.
The term
"pheromone" was introduced by Peter Karlson and Martin Lüscher in
1959, based on the Greek word pherein (to transport) and hormone (to
stimulate).
Whatever next?
Apparently, boar
pheromones are sprayed into the sty, and those sows that exhibit sexual arousal
are known to be currently available for breeding.
Let’s hope Mr Hart
never got any on his trousers when he was admiring the specimen above!
We left the Wanted at 12.50pm,
turned right and headed up the hill.
Again confusion reigned
as Mr Davison was nowhere to be seen.
Maybe he had gone back
for some of those wipe-thingies.
When he emerged he told
us to go right, over a wall and to turn left, crossing the fields.
At 1.16pm we reached a
road and stopped for lunch until 1.21.pm. More Cunliffe Time.
We went down the road.
Here my pens gave up until we reached the Chapel to Buxton Road (A6).
We crossed the road and
after 50 yards turned left up a narrow track.
Here we lost Jock
Rooney who decided, wisely as it turned out, to stay on the road.
The Wanderers sallied
on, climbing some stone steps and passing some houses before reaching a road
and coming face-to-face with a snow plough.
Snowplough ahead
By now the snow was falling quite hard and
the wind was getting up.
But as if we were recreating a scene from
the acclaimed Turkish film Yol, which you can read about here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yol we
trudged on.
Our route took us up a narrow track where
the wind was blowing snow into drifts.
I’m indebted to m’learned friend Mr Davison
for the atmospheric picture below, which features Mr Ross.
Julian Ross
We reached the cars by 2.40pm, de-booted
and cleared the snow off the vehicles.
Clearly fired by the taste of our Scott-like
heroics, Mr Cunliffe mistakenly directed your diarist to turn right rather than
left at the end of the road leading to the station and we ended up heading back
into the white hell before good sense prevailed.
Oh for an avalanche… (picture courtesy of
Mr Welsh)
We were back in the Cock at Whaley Bridge
by 3.05pm.
Here we met up with the B Walkers who had
started at Disley, walked through the Torrs to the Soldier Dick and then along
the canal to the Cock.
Next week’s walk will start from Clough House
car park, near Wildboarclough. The half way point will be the Hanging Gate and
we will have a post-walk pint in the Stanley Arms.
Happy Wandering!
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