• Castleton - Enclosed land near a castle.

Castleton nestles snugly in the heart of Peakland, in the gentle loveliness of the Hope Valley and looking up to wild and romantic scenes. It is an old (very old) place where rocks are riddled with wonderful caves and the earth with old mines. It knew the men of pre-history who left their fortress on the top of its highest hill. It knew the Romans, who worked its mines. It saw the splendour of the proud Peverils (or Peverels) who had these lands from the Norman Conqueror among their vast estates.

Time has left us something of these proud folk, in the castle they built at the top of a precipice,and the church down in the valley is perhaps even older.

Crowning the top of Castle Hill is Peveril Castle - sometimes known as the Castle of the Peak, like a tireless watcher over the valley, one of the most interesting survivals of a Norman fortress, almost invulnerable except on one side where a winding path climbs to the summit. It frowns above a precipice dropping down to the grim and narrow Cave Dale and towers above the entrance to the Peak Cavern in the sheer face of the rock.

The castle wall which still remains, with ruins of a gateway, is the work of William Peveril of the Conqueror's day, but the keep, whose roofless shell still stands, was re-built in 1176. Its walls are eight feet thick and nearly sixty feet high, enclosing about four hundred square feet.

Sir Walter Scott made the castle famous by his Peveril of the Peak but the book has little foundation in historic fact. At the foot of the hill is the charming village to which the castle gave a name, stone-built, all twists and turns, with a little three corner green.

Close by is the church, in a churchyard of trim lawn and sycamores. Through all its many changes it has kept one thing perhaps of the days before William Peveril; it is the handsome chancel arch with chevrons. The 15th century tower has long been associated with the festivities of the Garlanding Ceremony,when the whole village does honour to the old custom observed in the evening of Oak Apple Day (May 29th).

The merrymaking begins with a procession of dancers and musicians in attendance on a king and queen in fine array. The king wears a massive bell-shaped garland and at sunset rides to the tower, where the garland is hoisted by a rope to one of the eight pinnacles and left until the flowers wither.

The church has an old font, 17th and 18th century box-pews with the names and initials of those who once sat in them, and a small 15th century oil painting of the Adoration of the Magi, attributed to Jan Van Eyck.

In the vestry beside the chancel is a library of hundreds of books left in 1817 by a vicar, among them a Cranmer's Bible of 1539 and a Breeches Bible of 1611.

John Mawe, a mineralogist who was buried in London in 1829, has here a marble tablet according to his wishes. It was at Castleton that he acquired his love of geology, and for many years he came here every autumn. He toured England and Scotland in search of mineral specimens for the King of Spain; he was in Cadiz when war broke out between the two countries and was even arrested as a spy (without foundation we might add). He visited the diamond mines of Brazil and wrote many books about rocks and precious stones.

If we would fathom the secrets of the hills and of the earth there are wonderful caves to explore at Castleton. The magnificent natural entrance arch of the Great Peak Cavern, once known as the Devil's Hole, rises for nearly 60 feet in the wooded face of the cliff on which the castle stands, opening into the yawning mouth of the cave 114 feet wide, where a ropemaker still plies his craft, as has been done for the past 400 years. From the entrance, winding passages lead to chamber after chamber, galleries and halls, for a mile into the heart of the hill,while all the time the sound of hidden waters add weirdness to the place. Almost at the mouth of the cavern the Peakshole Water bursts into life from the rock and hastens through the village to join the Noe beyond Hope church.

This remarkable cavern was described as one of the Seven Wonders of the Peak in a Latin poem by Thomas Hobbes. At one place the roof shelves down to nearly the floor, though blasting of the rock has given more space here than of old. At one time visitors to the cavern had to lie flat in a punt which the guide pushed along the surface of a stream. Byron came in those days with Mary Chaworth and wrote of his strange adventure.

The Speedwell Cavern, farther up the valley, is made partly by nature and partly by man, and is reached by a disued mine-shaft abandoned after a vain search for lead. A long flight of steps and a voyage down a subterranean canal ends where the sound of waters becomes a roar as they fall with eddy and whirl into the abyss of the Bottomless Pit, is of immeasurable depth, and the great cavern rises above to an immense height into the heart of the mountain. Visitors to this cavern will be met by a guide and escorted on a fascinating ride through the workings of an eighteenth century lead mine, which has been carved out of solid rock by men over 200 years ago....at that time only using primitive tools.

The Blue John Mine is famous for a spar coloured like amethyst and topaz, a lovely product of the limestone which is made into ornaments and jewellery. Here visitors have a feat of spectacular beauty, where spacious vaulted chambers, reached by labyrinths of passages, reveal magnificent scenes of glistening fairylike formations of stalactites and stalagmites.

The Romans probably worked this mine...two vases found at Pompeii are said to have been made from its spar...treasures from the heart of an English mountain buried for 18 centuries under the ashes of an Italian volcano.

In the Treak Cliff Cavern, another series of caves with 'blue john' discovered only in 1926, on the other side of the same hill, the stalactites and stalagmites are even more beautiful.

One of the glories of Castleton is the magnificent scene from its heights...from its own Castle Hill, from Mam Tor, another of the Seven Wonders of the Peak, nearly 1700 feet above sea-level and crowned with an Iron Age camp (its curious crumbling of shale has given the hill the name of Shivering Mountain),and the sudden vision of the Hope Valley as we come from the steep, wild, romantic gorge of the Winnats, whose very name (Wind Gates) is eloquent of the fury of the winds that haunt this winding mile.

At the head of the Winnats is the cavern of Windy Knoll, where have been found the bones of the rhinoceros, the bear and the wolf. It is not too surprising that Castleton is known as 'The Gen of the Peaks', without which a journey to the Peak District National Park would be complete...and in fact it has a gem all of its own, for as will be seen from the surrounding area, this is the only place in the world where the mineral Blue John can be found. This translucent semi previous stone banded in blue, red, purple and yellow has been prized for ornaments and jewellery since Roman times. Blue John pieces can be found all over the world including the White House and the Vatican...though visitors do not have to go that far, as a wide variety of Blue John gifts can be purchased through various outlets in the village.

Losehill Hall is the Peak's National Parks residential study centre, and for more than 20 years has been running special interest holidays and weekend breaks. Losehill Hall is situated on the edge of the village and courses here are designed to that participants spend as much time as possible out in its magnificent landscape. The hall is a modernised Victorian mansion with purpose built lecture rooms.

Castleton is an ideal centre from which to explore the High Peak area. The town has excellent bed and breakfast together with inn and hotel accommodation.