TIDESWELL: ST JOHN THE BAPTIST – the magnificent carving of the chancel stalls in the late 19th century was the work of Suffolk craftsmen from Bury St Edmunds
TIDESWELL † St John the Baptist
6m/10km E. of Buxton
OS SK152757 GPS 53.2787N, 1.7726W
‘The Cathedral of the Peak’, sheltered in a hollow on the bleak moors, is a grand and inspiring church of the 14th century. The Perpendicular tower has character, with immense turrets and pinnacles, and the fine chancel compares with Ashbourne, Norbury and Sandiacre. The Perpendicular style allowed for large windows and light to flood in – at its very best with an autumnal or late winter sun. A fine stone screen stands behind the altar, with canopied niches, and, at the W. end of the chancel, is a mighty arch into the nave and a great panelled window; interesting tombs and brasses vie with 19th-century Suffolk joinery and delightful 20th-century bench-ends by local carvers Advent and Hunstone.
TISSINGTON † St Mary
4m/6km N. of Ashbourne
OS SK176522 GPS 53.0674N, 1.7381W
A Jacobean manor house, grey stone cottages, triangular green and five wells (dressed with flower mosaics on Ascension Day), form a perfect feudal village setting for the church, which, with a sturdy Norman tower, stands on a bank in the midst. The interior had too much restoration in 1854. There is an extravagant 1643 Fitzherbert monument with ladies in Jacobean dress that cuts off part of the chancel arch – no doubt here about what was considered the more important. There is also a two-decker pulpit and a Norman font with incised creatures.
TRUSLEY † All Saints
6m/10km W. of Derby
OS SK253355 GPS 52.9166N, 1.6243W
Approached along a grassy path, the small Georgian brick church of 1713, together with the old hall and manor house, forms one side of this small village. The interior is delightfully all of a piece with communion rails, three-decker pulpit, box pews and font.
WESTON-ON-TRENT † St Mary
6m/10km S.E. of Derby
OS SK397275 GPS 52.8444N, 1.4110W
Alone among trees by the river, St Mary’s is small and mostly 13th-century. The nave and aisles are wide rather than long with very tall, slim pillars, unexpectedly dignified and impressive. An embattled and buttressed tower supports a recessed spire. Inside is a Jacobean pulpit and fragments of a monument to Richard Sale in the gruesome taste of the early 17th century – a skeleton with hour-glass, pick and shovel. The 18th-century timber-framed porch adds a domestic touch.
WHITWELL † St Lawrence
4m/6km S.W. of Worksop
OS SK526768 GPS 53.2858N, 1.2121W
Pleasantly placed by open farmland on the edge of a once pretty village, now surrounded by a landscape shaped by coal mining. The core of the church – W. tower, S. doorway, nave and clerestory – is Norman. The interior is a delight, light and cheerful with whitewashed walls and an absence of stained glass. The chancel arch is round, but with keeled shafts, preparing one for the Decorated chancel with rich sedilia; the transepts are Decorated too. Altogether it is a rewarding building, full of texture and interest, set in an attractive graveyard and fortunately not spoiled by too much tidying up.
WIRKSWORTH † St Mary
4m/6km S. of Matlock
OS SK287539 GPS 53.0819N, 1.5723W
A grey market town with a maze of steep, winding streets and ‘ginnels’ (passageways), and set below some cruel quarries, Wirksworth clawed its way back from dusty semi-dereliction to being a fine town with a thriving cultural life. The town’s large cruciform church, dating from the 13th century, was much added to and restored by George Gilbert Scott in 1876. It is at the hub of the town, set in a graveyard enclosed by railings and surrounded by a ring of houses, rather like a miniature cathedral close. The interior is impressive, with lovely vistas. An exceptionally interesting 9th-century or even earlier coffin lid sculpted with scenes from the gospels is displayed on the N. wall of the nave. On the W. wall is a carved figure of a leadminer with pick and kibble. There are two fonts – one Norman, one 17th-century – brasses and good monuments.
YOULGREAVE † All Saints
3m/4km S. of Bakewell
OS SK212643 GPS 53.1760N, 1.6842W
The massive, stately Perpendicular tower stands four-square to the winds of the Peak. Inside is a wide Norman nave, a particularly impressive S. arcade and fine Norman carving. The font of c. 1200 has a separate holy-water stoup supported by a salamander. There are two delightful alabaster monuments; a miniature tomb chest to Sir Thomas Cokayne, d. 1488, with effigy only 3½ feet long, and a panel of great charm to Robert Gylbert, d. 1492, who stands with his wife and 17 children and the Virgin and Child in their midst. The fine E. window is by Burne-Jones. Opposite the S. door is an early carved pilgrim figure, set into the wall.
BRENTOR: ST MICHAEL – a spectacular setting on the fringes of Dartmoor, with views over Devon and west to Cornwall
The popular idea of this large south-western county is not far from the right one. The steeply banked lane, stuffed with fern and foxglove and honeysuckle, winds down through oaks which interlace their lichened branches to an old stone bridge over a stream which babbles against boulders. Soon we come to the barton or farm, pink-washed and snug, cob-walled and thickly thatched among its steep little fields of red earth. On the hill-slope higher up is the village. Here are thatched walls too, and cob cottages with rounded corners and bulging hearths and hollyhocks and fuchsias in the garden. Out of the sycamores near the hill-top peep the tall pinnacles of a thin church tower.
Inside the church, low 15th-century arcades of clustered columns support a barrel-shaped wooden roof whose timbers are carved. And right across the east end, for we do not expect to see a chancel arch in Devon, will be a wooden screen with carved base and painted saints on its panels, and through the wooden tracery above the panels we can see the altar. Above the tracery is a beam carved with grapes and vine leaves from which wooden vaults over-arch to support a loft which has painted panels. Above this once stood the rood, looking down the chancel into the nave. And out into the scented warmth of the churchyard we will go, back to the village for Devonshire tea, with strawberries and cream, where people will call us ‘my dear’.
Such places may indeed be found inland in south Devon. This part of the county has luscious vegetation; flowers seem bigger and brighter than in the rest of England, and the sheltered estuaries on the south coast are almost tropical. But the uplands of west Devon are bare and flattened, to quote the historian Sir John Fortescue, ‘between the hammer of west wind and the anvil of the yellow clay’. Even so the stony valley villages have the sheltered look