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| A detail of the Whitworth Institute |
After spending an inordinate amount of effort in planning my day out to the Peak District, with the intention of visiting Rowtor Rocks, Stanton Moor and Stanton-in-Peak, I alighted from The Little Sixes bus from Bakewell at the Whitworth Institute bus stop in Darley Dale.
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| Some of the listed buildings in Darley Dale |
With approximately 40 minutes before I had to catch the No. 172 bus to Birchover, I immediately set about my task of finding some of the listed structures that had come up on a British Listed Buildings Photo Challenge for Darley Dale.
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| An interwar former bank building |
Although not a listed building, I immediately noticed a former bank – now the Joni cafe - on the junction of the A6 and Chesterfield Road, which was built during the later interwar period and first appears on the 1945 edition of the Ordnance Survey map. The Neoclassical style of the pediment is quite unusual, but I was more interested in the reddened sandstone used to build it.
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| Quarries around Darley Dale |
As the Building Stones of England Database map explorer shows, very many quarries along the Derwent Valley worked the Ashover Grit, including the renowned uniformly buff coloured Stancliffe Darley Dale stone, the buff to often pink mottled sandstone from Stanton Moor and the distinctly reddened Birchover stone. The Wattscliffe stone from Elton has a lilac tinge and further south at Cromford, most of the houses flanking the B5306 – built by Richard Arkwright for his workers at Cromford Mill - are built out of reddened Ashover Grit.
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| Birchover quarry |
When visiting the Sheffield Board Schools, I encountered a reddish sandstone used for dressings at the Pomona Street, Western Road and Ranmoor schools, which the Victorian Society book - Building Schools for Sheffield 1870-1914 - describes as Matlock stone, but provides no details.
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| An old lodge that served Darley Hall |
Crossing Chesterfield Road, a buff gritstone built lodge sits at the entrance the drive to the Grade II Listed Darley Hall, which is now a care home and whose grounds, apart from the garden area surrounding the house, have now been covered in houses.
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| A celebration of the passing of the Olympic Torch |
Continuing north along the A6, I came across a milestone, dated 2012, which is one of 11 stones made by the local stonemason Andy Oldfield to commemorate the London 2012 Olympic Games. These stones were placed in each of the villages or towns that the Olympic Torch passed through on the way to the Olympic Park in the east end of London, which is a distance of 154 miles.
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| A commemorative stone outside the Co-Op supermarket |
On the opposite side of the A6, outside the Co-Op supermarket, another commemorative stone is set on a small green that includes an old cast iron lamp post that is surrounded by a circular bench. The 2000 date suggests that it was originally placed here as a Millennium Project, but an inscription also records the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II.
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| Views of the Whitworth Hotel |
The first building on my Photo Challenge was the late Victorian Whitworth Hotel, which is built in gritstone ashlar with prominent mullioned windows on its front elevation and is connected with the adjoining Whitworth Institute (1890) – built by the widow of the Manchester industrialist Sir Joseph Whitworth, who lived in Stancliffe Hall.
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| Views of the Whitworth Institute |
The Mechanics’ Institute movement was conceived at the end of the 18th century as a means of improving the literacy and numeracy of working people and providing them with some basic technical education and Historic England considers this to be one of the most impressive late C19 institutes, with an indoor swimming pool and a billiard room in addition to the usual library, reading room and lecture hall.
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| A view of the front elevation |
It was designed by the Manchester architects James William Beaumont and Richard Fletcher Beaumont, in what Pevsner describes as a ‘free Tudor’ style, using Stancliffe Darley Dale stone for the fabric and Westmorland green slate for the roof.
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| Darley Dale war memorial |
There simply wasn’t enough time to look at these buildings closely and I proceeded to take a very quick look at Whitworth Park, with its war memorial in the form of a Celtic cross and the monument to Sir Joseph Whitworth (1894), which is also built with Darley Dale stone.
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| The Whitworth Monument |
On each side of the base are bronze plaques that depict Sir Joseph and Lady Whitworth and also record some of his achievements of Sir Joseph in mechanical engineering and other fields, which includes the standardisation of screw threads and the development of the Whitworth rifle.
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| Bronze plaques on the Whitworth Monument |
I then quickly headed down Station Road until I reached Darley Station Houses (c.1849), a pair of semi-detached houses with round arched ground floor windows, which were built by Joseph Paxton at the same time as the opening of the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midland Junction Railway, which ended at Rowsley - where Paxton had built Midland Cottages in an identical style and also the old railway station.
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| Darley Station Houses |
The rail service on this line closed in 1967, as part of the severe cuts that followed the Beeching Report, but reopened in 1991 as part of the heritage steam services by Peak Rail, which runs from Rowsley to Matlock.
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| The building on the south platform at Darley Dale railway station |
The Historic England description of Darley Dale station (c.1849) on the south side of the line, which was on my Photo Challenge, makes no mention of its architect, but Pevsner suggests that the station building on the north side (c.1860) is possibly the work of Edward Walters.
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| The building on the north platform at Darley Dale railway station |
Retracing my steps along Station Road, the original cast iron mile post on the A6 was the last listed structure on my Photo Challenge and, having taken a single photo of this, I crossed over the road and only had to wait a few minutes before my bus arrived to take me to Birchover.
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| The mile post in Darley Dale |
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