ALLGREAVE
September 21, 2022
ROSE AND CROWN AT ALLGREAVE, BURNTCLIFF TOP, GRADBACH, FOREST WOOD, HANGING STONE, DANEBRIDGE, THE SHIP INN AT WINCLE, ALLMEADOWS, ROSE AND CROWN
Distance: 6.5 Miles Ascent/descent: 1,350 ft
Difficulty: Very easy
Weather: Dry with lots of sun.Warm
Walkers: Peter Beal, Andy Blease, Alastair Cairns, Tom Cunliffe with Daisy, Jock Rooney with Millie, Dean Taylor, Keith Welsh, Dave Willetts, Simon Williams
Apologies: Alan Hart (bowling), Chris Owen (Covid), Hughie Hardiman (physio), Julian Ross (Portugal hols), Cliff Worthington (Spanish hols), Mark Enright (working), George Dearsley (Turkey)
Leader: Rooney Diarist: Beal
Starting point: Rose and Crown pub car park on A54
Starting time: 9.43 am Finishing time: 1.29pm
It doesn’t get much easier than today’s walk. Deprived of our scheduled leader Chris, struck by Covid, we nevertheless cobbled together what can be described as a leisurely ramble around the Cheshire and Staffordshire hills.
The start was the Rose and Crown at Allgreave, the domain of the fearsome landlady Luda, formerly of the Hanging Gate, one of our former favourite haunts. In fact, the Rose and Crown has effectively been boycotted by the Wanderers for many years after what went down in history as The Great Chip Robbery. This was when the effusive Luda sold two of our number reasonably-priced bacon butties and then persuaded them to have some chips which turned out to be £5 a bowl. Not that we bear grudges. (or chips on the shoulder, Ed)
Luda was nowhere to be seen today and it has to be said the pub is delightful inside and in the splendid beer garden where we all enjoyed post-walk drinks.
In the absence of our planned leader, Jock emerged as the person with a really impressive- looking map marked with what looked like a route so he was appointed leader for the day.
We left the top of the car park above the pub and turned left along a minor road. The pub unfortunately has no link to any footpaths. We followed this road for 1.25 miles as far as Burntcliff Top, where a plaque told us the house was at one time the Eagle and Child pub.
We turned right here through a gate and dropped steeply downhill on a grassy, and at times stone-stepped path to cross a footbridge over the River Dane to emerge at Gradbach Mill. This imposing building was once a busy silk spinning mill before closing around 1900. In 1978 it became Gradbach Youth Hostel and later a local authority education centre. Now it is an up-market conference and events centre called The Mill with a seven-bedroomed luxury self-catering farmhouse next door.
We crossed the courtyard and went through a gate to a path alongside the river. A series of gates and stiles brought us to Forest Wood, where a sign pointing uphill to the left indicated Lud’s Church. This 60-foot deep moss-covered chasm was a secret meeting place in the 1400s for the persecuted religious group the Lollards, followers of dissident John Wycliff.
We climbed uphill through the woods to reach a rocky outcrop at a junction of tracks. Left would have taken us to Lud’s Church and on a longer route planned by Jock, who was valiantly leading from the rear, but our group decided to press straight on along a path just east of the ridge to come to a gate at a track junction, where pie-time was called.
We turned right through the gate along the ridge, soon dropping down to the rocky outcrop of Hanging Stone (3 miles). This was not a place of execution but more likely named because of its rock overhang, or from the old English ‘hangra’, meaning wood.
We descended stone steps to the right of the rock. From here we could seen plaques on the two outward-facing slabs of the rock, both placed by the Brocklehurst family, former owners of the nearby Swythamley Hall.
One – a memorial to a gundog – read:
‘Beneath this rock August 1st 1874
Was buried
BURKE
a noble mastiff
black and tan
faithful as woman
braver than man
a gun and a ramble his heart’s desire
with the friend of his life
the Swythamley squire’
The other plaque read:
‘Lt Col Henry Courtney Brocklehurst
10th Royal Hussars
pilot in the Royal Flying Corps 1916-18
Game Warden of the Sudan
Born at Swythamley May 27th 1888
Killed on active service
in Burma on commando 1942’
It was Henry Courtney who introduced wallabies to the Swythamley estate. After the hall was sold in the 1970s they escaped and the colony made its home in the nearby Roaches rocks, where one could occasionally be spotted. They died out in the 1980s, many victims of cars on the nearby busy A53.
His brother Philip was a geologist on Shackleton’s 1907 Nimrod expedition, where he lost toes to frostbite but went on to have a distinguished military career.
We descended from the rock to a nearby track, where we turned right and almost immediately left over a stile into a field, where we dropped down into a wood. A path dropped down with a stream below on the right to emerge on a track close to the road at Danebridge, where the bridge marks the Cheshire-Staffordshire border.
We turned right across the bridge and climbed through the village to the Ship Inn at Wincle (4 miles). Our direct route meant we had arrived before it opened but we waited at a table at the rear and the beer drinkers were soon enjoying John Willie Lees’ Dragonfly pale ale, which was pronounced excellent at £3-80 a pint.
Leaving the pub we turned right up the road and almost immediately right up stone steps in a gap in the wall. We crossed a private drive and went straight ahead through a kissing gate in to fields. We followed the path through a wood to cross Hog Clough on a small bridge and then carried on through stiles and gates through fields with the Dane below us on our right.
This path emerged on a minor road at Allmeadows Farm, where we turned right to soon come to the A53. An unavoidable short stretch on the main road took us right, up a hill to reach the Rose and Crown after a few hundred yards.
All nine of us sat in the beer garden, where the Isobar IPA, from Macclesfield’s Storm Brewery, was declared top-class, again at £3-80.
Next week’s walk will take us to Edale. The starting point, at 9.45am is the free National Park car park at Barber Booth. For those who might not have been there before – take a left off the Castleton road, towards Edale and at the bottom of the hill, where the road turns sharply right, turn left. This lane goes under a rail viaduct and soon after is the roadside car park. We intend to cross Rushup Edge and Mam Tor before refreshments at the Nag’s Head in Edale.
Happy Wandering!
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