Tales from the Derbyshire Dales

Five years ago this week my mother left her home in the Peak District and moved to Chester.

She had lived in Thorpe, a tiny hamlet near Ashbourne, Derbyshire, for 40 years, having moved there with my father in 1980.

My father worked for Nestlé his entire working life. He started at the company’s chocolate factory in Hayes, Middlesex in the Fifties. Then, in 1965, he moved to the company’s UK head office in Croydon.

Prior to Ashbourne, where he was in charge of a factory that produced canned milk products, he managed factories in Dundee and Milnthorpe, near Kendall in Cumbria.

My parents moved to Derbyshire during my final year at university. Shortly after I graduated at Aberdeen I got a job in London so I never lived in Thorpe, but I always enjoyed visiting.

Their house had an uninterrupted view of Thorpe Cloud, a craggy limestone hill that attracted a lot of hikers. It was easy enough to climb (even I could do it!) and from the top, on a clear day, you could see five counties. Allegedly.

On the other side of Thorpe Cloud lies Dovedale, a popular beauty spot best known for the stepping stones that cross the River Dove.

Ashbourne, four miles away, is a small market town with lots of independent shops whose fortunes seem to fluctuate wildly according to the state of the economy.

I remember times when there were numerous up market boutiques and shoppers would come from far and wide (by which I mean Sheffield.) During a recession the same shops might close as quickly as they had opened.

Sheffield is 40 miles from Ashbourne but over an hour by car, which gives you an idea of the type of rural roads you’re driving on.

Derby, on the other hand, is half the distance (20 miles) and only 15 minutes from Ashbourne.

The city doesn't have a great deal to recommend it, if I’m honest, but in the Eighties, when visiting my parents, I would spend many a Saturday afternoon at the Baseball Ground watching Derby County.

The old wooden stands were extremely close to the pitch which was infamous in the Seventies for being little more than a mud bath in winter.

In the Eighties the grass was definitely greener but what I remember most was the atmosphere, which was brilliant, even in the old second and third divisions.

There was a family atmosphere too, which was unusual, with very little threat of violence (unless Leeds were the visitors!).

When I started watching Derby the ground was surrounded by narrow streets with two-up two-down Victorian terraced housing. Many of the original inhabitants would have worked at the Rolls Royce factory, a few hundred yards away.

Today the Baseball Ground no longer exists. In 1995 the club moved to a new stadium, Pride Park, and the old ground was subsequently demolished. Most of the Victorian terraced housing has gone too. The last time I looked it was an industrial estate.

But back to Thorpe and the Derbyshire Dales, which are part of the Peak District.

According to the 2011 census Thorpe had a population of 183. Ten years later (2021 census) this had dwindled to 139.

Surrounded by farms, the village has a small Norman church and an even smaller village hall, but the sub post office is long gone.

My parents’ house, built from local stone, was one of four houses built on farmland in the early Seventies creating a small cul-de-sac. To the best of my knowledge, they were the last houses to be built in the village.

A regular walk took us to one end of the village and down a narrow track to the bottom of a valley where an old stone bridge crosses the Dove before climbing up the other side.

This is the old coaching road that would have been used by stagecoaches in the 18th century, and walking along it you really do feel a sense of history. I imagine the views of the hills and valley are much as they were 300 years ago.

Thirty minutes from Thorpe, heading north, is the spa town of Buxton. The A515 from Ashbourne to Buxton is said to follow the course of an old Roman road.

It’s an enjoyable drive (although I remember one hair-raising journey at night in thick fog) and if your destination is Stockport or Manchester I would recommend a detour via the scenic A5004 that eventually joins the A6 via Whaley Bridge.

Chatsworth House, 20 miles and 40 minutes away, is possibly my favourite stately home. I regret however that we have never been to the famous Christmas market. (This year, perhaps, with an overnight stay at the Beeley Inn or Cavendish Hotel on the Chatsworth estate.)

Another stately home worth visiting is Haddon Hall near Bakewell.

And then there's Hassop Hall, also near Bakewell. Built in the 17th century as a country house, it was converted into a hotel in 1975 but was sold in 2019 and is now a private house again.

In 2010 we celebrated my father's 80th birthday at Hassop Hall, staying overnight.

Reviews damned the hotel with faint praise. According to one, the ‘stuffy Edwardian country house menus seldom troubled the food guides’ but my parents liked it (and my mother was a cordon bleu cook!).

We liked it too. The food wasn't outstanding, it's true, but the service, and old-fashioned surroundings, evoked a certain nostalgia.

My father died four years later, in 2014, but my mother stayed in Thorpe until it became clear that living in such a rural location, with the nearest shops several miles away, was neither advisable nor feasible.

She sold the house and moved to Chester in January 2020, two months before the first Covid lockdown. Had she not done so, goodness knows how she would have managed on her own.

To this day my mother has never had wifi. She got her first smartphone a few months ago but uses it only to make the occasional phone call. She has never had a computer of any sort which means she has never ordered a single thing online.

Anyway, I took the photos below on my final visit to Thorpe, on the same day she left.

She’s 94 now and living, independently, within walking distance of the centre of Chester. My sister lives a few miles away and I visit whenever I can.

I do miss the Derbyshire Dales, though.

PS. A distant relative, Ernest Townsend, who painted the portrait of Winston Churchill that hangs (or used to hang) in the National Liberal Club in London, was born and lived in Derby. That, I think, is my only family connection with Derbyshire.

Instead a significant part of the family came from Sheffield, including my father who was born in India but grew up in the city before moving away after he went to university.

Ironically it was in Sheffield that he had his heart transplant at the age of 67 because the Northern General was not only one of the few hospitals that specialised in such operations, it was also the nearest to where he lived.

Sheffield, of course, is in South Yorkshire not Derbyshire but the two counties share a border so it’s not a million miles away.

Also, and this perhaps explains my affection for the county that pre-dates my parents moving there, but one of my favourite series of books as a child was the Jennings’ novels written by Anthony Buckeridge.

If you’re familiar with the books (25 were written over 44 years), the eponymous hero’s best ‘chum’ was a boy called … Darbishire. Fancy that!

Below: Thorpe in Derbyshire. Population (2021 census): 183