After it has welcomed the meandering Wye, the Derwent spreads through an open verdant country of contemplative beauty, with rounded wooded hills in the distance. This spacious golden-green strath is Darley Dale. Lord John Manners (now the Duke of Rutland), viewing this scene from Stanton Woodhouse, a wooded knoll close by, with weather-beaten tors, lofty hunting tower, and Druidical remains, was inspired to crystallise in verse the deep impression that the pastoral scene and its mountain surroundings had made upon his mind:—
“Up Darley Dale the wanton wind
In careless measure sweeps,
And stirs the twinkling Derwent’s tides,
Its shallows and its deeps.
“From many an ancient upland grange,
Wherein old English feeling
Still lives and thrives, in faint blue wreaths
The smoke is skywards stealing.
“The simple cheer that erst sustained