BAKEWELL.
This town seems to be Roman, and possibly its name was Braciaca, because of the inscription found near here in Camden, DEO MARTI BRACIACAE. There is a large tall stone in the church-yard, raised on a pedestal, as a cross, with engravings, very ancient, of George and the dragon, a crucifix and other things, with flower-work: it is eight foot high, besides the pedestal. The church is a large handsome building, but in very bad repair; a spire-steeple upon an octagonal tower, and that set on a square one; the whole in the middle of the church; the choir large: an alabaster tomb before the altar, of one of the family of Vernon: the south transept has, in a large chapel, many tombs of the Vernons, and Manners’s, ancestors of the duke of Rutland, but in a ruinous condition: many other old tombs; a knightly one of Colepepper, one of Foljamb, &c. a very ancient font with images, as rudely cut as those on the cross. The church stands much higher than the town. The Wye is a very rapid river; it never overflows, so great is the descent from it. The castle is a square plot of high ground, with a large tumulus hollow at top. I cannot affirm there is any thing Roman. This town stands in a flat valley, where the river passes in meanders; and the prospect every way is very romantic. A cold bath at the Angel inn, arched over, and made very convenient. Derbyshire marble wrought here, very beautiful, bears a good polish, full of belemnites and other curious shells petrified together.
CHATSWORTH.
We reviewed this noble seat of the duke of Devonshire’s. The front of the house is a fine design; the colour of the stone agreeably overcast with a faint redness. Several antique marbles: upon the pedestal of a busto this inscription, P. Ælius Aug. libertus. Lycus fecit Solusæ libertæ suæ. a sepulchral urn.
Another, Dis manibus Ti. Claudi thalliani Vix. Ann. XX. dieb. XX. Claudia felicula Mater filio piissimo.
The canal hewn out of the rock is made where a great hill was: now it opens a beautiful prospect towards Winster: it is 325 yards long, 25 broad: the hill was 44 foot high: the cascade is 212 yards long, with 23 breaks. There is an admirable antique Plato in the duke’s library, like that at Wilton; and a cast of Hobbes from the life: also an antique ram’s head. The painting about the house is by Verrio, la Guerre, Thornhill: the gallery is a curious room, painted by Cheron. Vast quantities of Derbyshire marble, of all colours, and beautiful.
BUXTON.
Just before we come to this place, on the right hand is a square vallum, ditch inward; both small, about fifty feet each side: eastward adjoins a roundish space, marked out in the same manner. There are barrows upon the tips of the hills hereabouts. We found infinite quantities of shells among the stone: but the belemnites are most frequent; they are dropped as it were into the superficies of the stone, while soft, with the points downwards. The soil of this country is sandy and rock: the whole superficies of it is a rock, whose strata lie every where parallel to the declivity of the ground: it is lime-stone, like that at Bath; but the layers of it are much thicker. One may guess hence, that this sort of stone by some means procures the warmth of the waters.
We saw Mam Torr from hence seven miles; a steep huge rock elevated above the hills. There is a great yawning between two rocks split as it were from top to bottom: on the precipice of one jaw is an old castle, whence the adjacent town Castleton. Between it is the great cavern called the Devil’s Arse. A few little houses under the very rock. This country is fruitful in what we may call the magnalia naturæ. By these wonders of the Peak, and the warm waters, people are tempted to visit these wild wastes. At a place called Hope I learnt there are some stones, called Marvel-stones, which cannot be numbered: I guess them to be a Celtic temple. I could not hear of those at Chelmerton, though I fancy there must be such, because of some barrows on the hills looking that way: it requires some time, labour, and hazard, to hunt them out, by reason of the rockiness of the country. The sides of the hills, where the villages are, are divided into closes by stone walls, as in other places by hedges.
We went into Pool’s Hole again. This cavern rises, as we go farther in, with the hill: the stones within are covered over with petrifaction, from the water distilling down: some of the icicles are three or four yards long, hanging from the roof; the slow accretion of ages: the springs dribble down every where, as draining through the strata into this cavity. I fancy there are such in most rocky hills, and they cause springs: for we may conceive that after the harder shell of a hill was condensed, and first, as being outermost and more exposed to the external heat, in the infant globe; the internal parts, when they came to harden afterwards, by attraction of so much solidity, cracked and shrunk (as we see clay does in the open air) and so left casual fissures every where: the water then by degrees found or made an outlet from many meeting together; and this created fountains, most commonly toward the bottom of hills. This reasoning is strengthened by springs running in less quantity in summer than winter, because the sun exhales the dew and moisture, not suffering it so freely to sink down into the earth.