Driving along the A6, it’s not immediately obvious that the Peak
District might well be England’s most important national park. In fact,
it’s easy to forget you’re in a park at all - there are plenty of
pretty towns and old farms lining the river valleys, and old mills and
stone-walled inns worthy of an urbanite’s cosiest drinking dream - but
the dramatic, bleakly beautiful heights of the southern Pennines are
most often obscured by steep dales or low mists.
The Peak (as locals call it) is about leisure as much as landscape. The
555 square-mile national park is a lung for the people of Manchester,
Derby, Nottingham, Sheffield and Stoke. The first national park, it was
created in 1951 precisely to put a green belt between these sprawling
conurbations. It’s visited by some 22m people each year (only Japan’s
Mount Fuji’s national park tops it). And, if it lacks Cumbria’s
photogenic lakes, the Peak’s landscape of gritstone outcrops, limestone
crags, heather and peat moorland - Daniel Defoe called it “a waste and
howling wilderness” - has a rugged, romantic appeal.
Among the Peak’s many secrets are vestiges of the bronze age: cairns,
burial mounds, stone circles and hillforts. Outstanding among these is
the Nine Ladies stone circle at Stanton Lees, between Bakewell and
Matlock. Between 3,000 and 4,000 years old, these nine stumpy stones,
probably built for rituals honouring the sun and moon, stand in a small
circle like old teeth, surrounded by silver birch, ash and beech trees
and, beyond these, a beautiful stretch of moorland dotted with further
Neolithic remnants and ruins.
No wonder then that any attempt to make any inroads into this
landscape that are not destined for boot-clad backpackers is resisted
so fiercely by locals and tourists alike. Just beneath the Nine Ladies
site is where Stancliffe Stone wants to quarry 3.2m tons of millstone
grit for the building trade. While the development rights to this
dormant quarry - on land owned by Lord Edward Manners, who lives in
Haddon Hall, just a few minutes’ drive from the site - are legally
binding, villagers, townsmen and scores of eco-minded travellers have
come together to protect the ancient heritage and the tourism that is
the region’s lifeblood.
Walking up to the site from the village of Rowsley (also owned by Lord
Manners), I spoke to two of the protesters, Becky Walsh and David
Connolly, who were out on a ramble between sessions of constructing
ramparts to prevent the quarrying firm’s diggers from approaching the
rock face. “It’s just big money trying, as always, to get what it can
out of the land,” claims Becky. “But we’ve been here for about four
years now and we know how precious it is to locals. It’s so peaceful -
and if this goes ahead, there will be a massive hole just 100m away. As
well as the stones, there are burial mounds here and lots of ruins that
have never been investigated. These draw pagans who come to perform
handfasting (pagan marriages) or to practise wicca mediation, and
whirling dervishes use the site, too.”
Like many other circles, there is a rich pagan-cum-druidic
folklore that extends way beyond the tentative specualtions of history
books. One story is that the Nine Ladies were formed by people being
turned to stone for dancing on the Sabbath - the “King Stone”, on a
bank just a few yards away, was said to have been their fiddler. It is
also said that when the moon is full, the stones move around in a
ritual dance.
While we are talking, behind me, a young man starts to spin slowly in
the centre of the circle - not quite my idea of a dervish, but his eyes
are closed and his concetration absolute. He claims “most of the
villagers are right behind the protesters, because they don’t want a
four-ton truck loaded with gravel passing their little cottages at 6am,
do they?”
Beyond the gentle stir of the wind in the leafless trees, you
can hear the beeps and churning from Dale View quarry, less than a mile
away. If digging was allowed any closer, the serentity and spiritual
value of the Nine Ladies would be completely destroyed.
But it’s not all about pagans who cherish the site for sacral purposes.
During the next afternoon, scores of couples, strolling families and
locals walking their dogs pass by as they hike over the moors. There’s
even a group of six or seven Sheffield youths having an impromptu
picnic, despite the fact that the grass is damp and there’s a bitter
nip in the February air.
Another walker, Jenny Blain, joins us on the grass at the centre of the
circle, and tells me she is researching “how people relate to
landscapes” at Sheffield Hallam University. She emphasises the academic
value of the site: “This is important to archeologists with an interest
in prehistory, who study the cairns and kist graves. Then there are
archeologists of the early modern period, as well as scientists who
come to study the bats here - there are two protected species.”
Jenny points out that “the special feel of the Nine Ladies comes from
that fact that they are part of a bigger landscape. This means so much
to so many people - and locals join in at festivals like Imbolc (ewe’s
milk, for when sheep lactate in spring).”
The Peak District, like other national parks, came about when the
gentry and working class ramblers united to stem industrial expansion;
as that lobby has dwindled, new alliances are needed.
Lonely as it is on the hilltops and among the burial mounds, the Nine
Ladies are close to dozens of villages. Old pubs and B&Bs - from
farms to hotel-style townhouses. After a day of cold, clean air and
Woden-knows-what spiritual blessings from the Nine Ladies, I am in my
bed - in a converted barn -by 9pm.
The Peak District serves more than just the north-west, though - it is
central enough for Londoners to get to the Nine Ladies easily, too. I
travelled from south-east London to 2500BC in just three and a half
hours.
The following morning, before making the return journey, I drive up to
Stanton Moor to see the Nine Ladies one more time. The daffodils are
still there and, for the first time this weekend, there’s no one else
around. After a quick look about me, I stride to the centre and stand
in the empty space - and even gyrate slowly to see if any thing
happens. My sullied modern sou is not transfigured, but the circle is
profoundly calming and, thanks to Bronze Age man’s meterological
intuition, protected from the harsh elements of the Peak winter.
After a quick stroll over the moor, frightenting partridges and
watching the sun struggle to break through the clouds, I turn round
and, cross the hill above the disused quarry. I head back down the side
where the protesters are sleeping in their makeshift tree houses and
where, just a mile or so down the valley, Lord Edward Manners is no
doubt tucking into his breakfast of kippers and cold meats.
A vicious February northeasterly is now blasting and I leave the bare,
exposed beauty of Neolithic England for the refuge of the car.
First published as 'Oops, there goes another bit of Britain' in the Guardian newspaper on 28 February 2004.