DERWENT TERRACE, MATLOCK.
The Wye is the most important feeder of the Derwent, and runs through scenery that is romantically beautiful. Its length from Axe Edge to its junction with the Derwent at Rowsley is twenty-two miles, although the distance as the crow flies is considerably less. But the little river winds about in capricious curvatures, and its serpentine wanderings add much to its peculiar charm. There are two distinct Wyes, uniting in the Buxton Gardens, to which pleasaunce they add attraction. The larger stream issues from the gritstone formation; the other comes from the limestone. The one is coloured by the peat of the mosses; the other is of pellucid purity. The limestone water has its birthplace in the gloomy recesses of Poole’s Cavern, and you may hear it fretting in the chill darkness, as if it were impatient to greet the glad sunlight. In Ashwood Dale, just below the Lovers’ Leap, and a mile from the fashionable watering-place, the character of the scenery with which the Wye is for the most part associated begins. Limestone tors, of great height and beautifully wooded, rise above a contracted valley along which the stream pursues its lively course. The river leaves Topley Pike abruptly to the right, and enters Chee Dale. Nature here is in the imperative mood. Chee Tor soars to a height of 300 feet sheer above the water—a solemn limestone headland, its gaping fissures here and there clothed with a pendent tree. It is convex in shape, and is faced by a corresponding bastion, concave in form. In the narrow channel between these bold walls of rock the Wye forces its way through the pent-up space, making a tumult over the obstructing boulders. A scanty footpath is carried over the abyss, making a passage of unequivocal sublimity, for the defile has no superior and few equals in all Derbyshire. Miller’s Dale afterwards opens out its picturesque features, although its idyllic charm is marred by the screaming railway junction and by the quarrying operations that are toppling bastions of rock—ancient landmarks—into lime-kilns. Two miles from Miller’s Dale is Tideswell, with its grand old church—“the Cathedral of the Peak”—its secluded valleys and immemorial hills. Litton Dale and Cressbrook Dale follow—both wild glens that will repay lovers of rocks, ferns, and flowers. At Monsal Dale the scenery is no longer savage as it was at Chee Tor, but is of winsome loveliness. The Wye winds in green meadows below wooded heights, with here and there a rocky pinnacle jutting out like a spire; “lepping” stones cross the stream, and rustic cottages, with blue filmy smoke curling from their chimneys, stand just where an artist would have placed them. Well might Eliza Cook sing—
“And Monsal, thou mine of Arcadian treasure,
Need we seek for Greek islands and spice-laden gales,
While a Temple like thee, of enchantment and pleasure,
May be found in our native Derbyshire Dales?”
Close by is Taddington, an abode of miners, which contests with Chelmerton the claim of being the highest village in England. There is a quaint church, and in the churchyard an ancient cross which archæological authorities argue is the work of the monks of Lindisfarne, who introduced Christianity into Derbyshire. The Peakrels, in their caustic humour, gravely furnish the visitor to Taddington with the information that “only blind, deaf, and dumb persons, and those who do not live in the parish, are buried in the churchyard.”
Past Demon’s Dale, and we are at the pleasant village of Ashford-in-the-Water, celebrated for its inlaid marble manufactures. In the old church are hung five paper garlands. They are the relics of the obsolete custom of carrying garlands before the corpses of maidens in the funeral procession, and subsequently suspending them in the church. The custom is alluded to by Shakespeare. These garlands are Ophelia’s “virgin crants” in Hamlet. The Priest tells Laertes that but for “just command” Ophelia would have been buried—as a suicide—in “ground unsanctified,” and “shards, flints, and pebbles” only would have been “thrown on her”—
“Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants,