There are several English rivers of the name of Derwent, which is derived from the British dwr-gwent, the water of “Gwent,” or of the high lands, and the word is often locally pronounced “Darent.” There is Wordsworth’s Derwent in Lakeland; a Derwent which falls into the sea near Scarborough; and again a Derwent that is a tributary of the Yorkshire Ouse. But it is the Derbyshire Derwent that we now propose to trace down from its source. In the north-east corner of the Peak district, on the stern and austere Yorkshire borderlands, where the Langsett moors are most lonely and impressive, the stream spends its earliest infancy, and you hear its baby prattle in a rocky region, wild and desolate, where the Titans might have been hurling in space gigantic boulders to bring about chaos. The place where the river actually rises is called Barrow Stones. The traveller on the line from Sheffield to Manchester, when he is at Woodhead, with its dismal tunnel and long-linked reservoirs, passes as near as civilisation touches the spot. For some distance the river bubbles and babbles down a boulder-strewn valley, and is the line of demarcation between the counties of York and Derby. It is here a swift tawny streamlet, with effervescent cascades, and deep pools in which you can discern the pebbles at the bottom of the topaz-coloured water. Weather-worn masses of rock are strewn over this heathery wilderness—silvered with rare lichens, and cushioned with delicate mosses. Here and there picturesque little rills pour out their trickling tributaries from numerous mountain springs and musical ferny hollows. The only sound beside that of running water is the cry of the grouse, the blackcock, or the peewit. The Derwent cleaves its rocky way down the valley into Derwent Dale, past Slippery Stones, Rocking Stones, and Bull Clough and Cranberry Clough, with the Bradfield moors rolling away in petrified billowy waves to the horizon line. Before reaching Derwent Chapel it has received the Westend, a considerable stream, and the Abbey Brook, another important contributor, foaming down a deep rugged ravine, with gritstone ridges. In Derwent Dale alder-trees add a shade to the waterside, and the landscape, although still wild in its mountain beauty, is diversified by their green grace.
And now we are at the lonely little village of Derwent Chapel, with its grey scattered houses. The hamlet in the pre-Reformation times had four chapels belonging to the ancient Abbey of Welbeck. At Derwent Hall, charmingly placed by the river bridge, are preserved several relics of the monkish days. But the most interesting possessions are the old carved oak pieces of furniture. They form a unique collection, and are of historic value. Some of the cabinets and bedsteads are four hundred years old. The Hall, which formerly belonged to the Balguys, bears over the doorway the arms of that family and the date 1672. The Duke of Norfolk is the present proprietor, and has added a new wing at the expense of £30,000. The pack-horse bridge makes a pleasing picture, and the surrounding prospect is as fair as any that ever inspired poet’s pen or painter’s pencil. By leafy labyrinthian ways, in fascinating aquatic vagaries, our river, brown with peat-moss, ripples over the shallows or becomes demonstrative when obstructed by boulders on its way to Lady Bower and Ashopton, sentinelled by the bold peaks of Win Hill and Lose, so called from a sanguinary battle having been fought here between two Saxon kings. The victorious army occupied Win Hill, and the vanquished the opposite height. There are other magnificently grouped hills all around. Ashopton is haunted by painters and anglers. Pleasant it is to lounge lazily over the time-stained bridge that spans the Derwent near its confluence with the Ashop, which has found its way down the “Woodlands” from Kinderscout—famous as the highest point in the Peak, 2,088 feet; while from the opposite side the Lady Bower brook adds its trouty current. Here we are tempted to make a détour to visit Castleton with its caverns, almost as wonderful as the famed Congo cavern in South Africa, the Elephanta cave in India, or the Mammoth cave of Kentucky; to climb up the crag to Peveril’s ruined castle; to explore the beautiful green basin suggestively called the Vale of Hope; and to penetrate the Edale pass until the frowning Kinderscout morosely blocks the way. But we must keep to Derwentside.
THE COURSE OF THE DERWENT.
The river is now a large stream, and—passing Bamford—at Mytham Bridge it receives the greeting of the Noe. Here we strike the Dore and Chinley Railway, a branch line of the Midland system, at present in process of construction. It follows the course of the Derwent valley for some miles, and is not likely to add to the beauty of the scenery. The noisy puff of the locomotive in this Paradise seems a profanation. The line, however, will open out a new holiday ground, and will give the traveller an alternative route between Sheffield and Manchester, London and Liverpool. This railway extension is twenty miles in length. There are five miles of tunnelling under the mountainous moorland, and the cost will not be covered by an expenditure of less than one million sterling. One of the tunnels is three miles in length, and next to the Severn tunnel the longest in the United Kingdom. At Hathersage, moss-grown and still, and one of the prettiest of Peak villages, a station will be erected, and much of its old-world charm will then have gone for ever. In the churchyard on the hillside may be seen the grave of Robin Hood’s stalwart lieutenant, Little John. The resting-place of this romantic outlaw is marked by two stones which by their distance from each other would indicate that he was ten feet high. The famous Forester was born at Hathersage, and fought in the ranks of Simon de Montfort’s rebellious barons at Evesham in 1265. After the many vicissitudes of his adventurous life, he returned to his native village to die. Until recent years his cottage was pointed out to visitors, and at the beginning of the present Century Little John’s bow and green cap were suspended in the church. They were carried away to Cannon Hall, near Barnsley.
AT ASHOPTON, DERWENTDALE.
Hathersage is surrounded with places of interest, and the Derwent is here thirteen miles from its source. Mention should be made of Padley Wood and the ruins of the Roman Catholic Chapel; Burbage Brook, another of the Derwent’s many feeders, that brawls through a defile as sweetly wooded as the Fairy Glen at Bettws-y-Coed; Longshaw Lodge, the shooting-box of the Duke of Rutland, with its pretty grounds and rockeries; Fox House, a famous moorland hostelry; Hu Gaer, a hoary rocky platform which is marked on the Ordnance map as a Druidical relic; Caelswark, an old British fort; the Toad’s Mouth, a huge and hoary block of gritstone bearing a curious resemblance to that unattractive reptile; Stoney Middleton, whose houses seem to hang dangerously from the bordering cliffs; and Eyam, the scene of the great plague of 1666, when out of a population of 350 no less than 260 were swept away by the pestilence. The infection was brought to the village in a box of clothes from London. The place is hallowed by the devotion of the saintly rector, the Rev. Wm. Mompesson. He never deserted his parishioners (although his wife was one of the first victims); and it was by his exertions that the plague was prevented from spreading far and wide.
CHATSWORTH.