Indholdsfortegnelse for December 2024 - January 2025 i Discover Britain

This issue, our travel special takes us to the heart of England and a beautiful county brimming with chocolate-box villages, grand houses, and wide, open spaces: Derbyshire. On page 26, Jeremy Flint takes his camera behind the scenes at one of Britain’s most remarkable medieval properties, Haddon Hall, and the resulting photos are enough to make your jaw drop. It’s little wonder it’s been frequently chosen as a Tudor film location. Meanwhile, on page 14, Vicky Smith, who grew up locally, takes us on a tour of four of her favourite Peak District towns and villages, from Bakewell to Edensor – home to the magnificent Chatsworth House. Vicky’s selection isn’t the only Fab Four to feature this issue, as on page 56 I come over all fangirl (see above) as…

Unfolding across six English counties, but mainly in Derbyshire, the Peak District is Britain’s oldest national park and my undisputed favourite. I grew up nearby, so it’s become fondly familiar, but there’s more to my reasoning than local bias – not least that it’s spectacularly diverse. From brooding moorlands and Dark Peak’s gritstone edges to White Peak’s glassy streams and plunging limestone dales, the scenery is constantly in flux. Elsewhere, you’ll find wildflower meadows, gentle hills crisscrossed with dry stone walls and yawning caverns veined with purply Blue John fluorite. Enjoy outdoor activities? You can try rock climbing, rambling, even paragliding… and they’re just for starters. For the less adventurous among us, more sedate attractions abound too, from industrial heritage and Bronze Age monuments to almost 3,000 listed buildings, but…

Derbyshire’s picturesque landscapes conceal a rich industrial past that has shaped the county’s history, economy, and communities for centuries. While the rolling hills and dales of the Peak District may elicit your first thoughts about the county, it’s the underground wealth of minerals that truly tells the story of Derbyshire’s industrial heritage. Long before coal became king, Derbyshire was renowned for its lead mining industry. Dating back to Roman times, lead mining in the Peak District was a significant economic driver for the region. The industry reached its peak in the 17th and 18th centuries, with areas like Wirksworth, Matlock, and Castleton becoming important centres of lead production. Derbyshire’s legacy of lead mining can still be seen in the landscape today, with features like mine shafts, spoil heaps, and unique…

I grew up in a Beatles’-mad household. Their music regularly blared through the speakers and we spoke about John, Paul, Ringo, and George like they were friends. We knew the words to all their songs (and sang them all the time) and in many ways, it felt like we knew them too. I’ve always thought that was a large part of The Beatles’ enduring appeal – the fact they really weren’t much different from the rest of us. They all went to state schools, lived in quite ordinary houses, and were jobbing musicians for a bit – they just happened to go on to have enormous global success, the likes of which we had never seen before. For no sooner had the quartet started wearing suits and styling their hair…

Crossword no 243 Solutions in next issue Across 1 Scenic village, the ‘jewel of the Cotswolds’ (8)5 Admiral Sir Edward ____ , a hero of the Napoleonic Wars (6)10 Market town in the Test Valley, Hampshire (7)11 St ____ , Scotland’s first university (7)12 Carnivorous aquatic mammal related to the weasel (5)14 Queen ____ , wife of Edward Vll (9)16 Informally, to steal fruit from an orchard (6)18 Large, open four-wheeled carriage drawn by two horses (8)20 Resort on the English Riviera (8)21 River flowing from Ipswich to Felixstowe (6)24 Waterfall near Ullswater (4,5)25 ____ Brush, iconic glove puppet (5)26 Hans ____ , court painter to Henry Vlll (7)28 Mechanical piano played using perforated paper (7)30 Mix of beer and lemonade (6)31 Cathedral city on the River Wye (8) Down 1 The Brecon ____, a national park in Wales…

Set on the banks of the River Derwent in the heart of the East Midlands, Derby is the closest city to the Peak District. Often referred to as the ‘Gateway to the Peak District’, many travellers rush by or through the city in their eagerness to start hiking and biking in the popular national park’s green hills and valleys. However, Derby is a city worthy of more time. It’s a compact and pleasantly walkable city, especially in and around the lovely Cathedral Quarter, where colourful bunting flutters above the streets and a St George’s Cross waves from the top of the 65-metre-tall tower of the central landmark Derby Cathedral, which can be seen from points around the city. Elsewhere, you can stroll along the River Derwent or wander down backstreets…

Stanage Edge, near Hathersage No Pride and Prejudice tour of Derbyshire would be complete without a visit to Stanage Edge, affectionately known as ‘Lizzie’s Rock’ after Keira Knightley’s film-defining moment in the 2005 adaptation of the Austen novel. Just north of the village of Hathersage, this spectacular rock formation offers fabulous views of the Dark Peak Moorlands and the Hope Valley and is popular with casual walkers, and serious rock climbers alike; it runs for almost four miles from north to south, and its highest point, High Neb, stands at 458 metres tall. Oozing history, the area has evidence of human occupation since the Mesolithic era. A Bronze Age burial cairn can be seen near Dennis Knoll and millstones from the 18th and 19th centuries litter the landscape. The rocks…

We were founded with a vision to create a series of visitor attractions that will provide a catalyst for regeneration. Ultimately, the aim was to make Bishop Auckland a better place to live, work and visit. We have a number of attractions around the town, which all centre around Auckland Palace. I’m Head of Curatorial at the Auckland Project, which means I work together with my team across all of our museum and gallery sites. Auckland Palace has been the residence of the Prince Bishops of Durham for almost 1000 years, and the Bishop of Durham continues to work from this building, so it is still a living and working palace. Alongside the palace, we have Auckland Gardens and the Deer Park, and the Faith Museum, which opened in autumn…

Walking among the haunting stone skeletons of abbeys like Fountains in Yorkshire or Tintern in the Wye Valley of Monmouthshire, it is mind-numbing to contemplate the enormity of the Dissolution of the Monasteries that forced their closure. In the spring of 1536, there were some 800 working monasteries, nunneries and friaries dotted around England and Wales. By spring 1540 they had all been dissolved. One of the most revolutionary events of English history, the Dissolution is depicted as a smash-and-grab perpetrated by King Henry VIII, using the religious upheavals of the Reformation as an excuse to plunder the monasteries in a frenzy of cultural vandalism. But was it all madness and mayhem? Or had it really been planned with cynical precision? The Reformation in 16th-century Europe targeted alleged corruption, ‘superstitious’…

Memories of home Thank you for your beautiful magazine. I was born in England and my grandchildren now live in Jersey. The magazine, particularly this edition [our Channel Islands special in Issue 241, below – Ed.] always brings such comfort and happiness. Elizabeth, Australia Sharing the local love When we posted a photo of the Seven Sisters on our Facebook page and asked if any of you had visited before, not only did lots of you get back to say yes you had, but it appears lots of you live nearby, you lucky souls… Chez Adcock “I was there visiting the Coastguard cottages a couple of weeks ago, learnt the history, enjoyed an art and crafts style exhibition of local artists selling their items, and came back with some awesome…

Crowning a limestone bank in the heart of the Peak District, Haddon Hall rises magnificently over a wooded valley, rolling hills and the River Wye, just south of Bakewell. Dating from the 11th century, this exceptional Grade I-listed building, forfeited by a favourite of William the Conqueror, has been home to just three families since: the Avenells, who lived here from the early 1100s to the 1170s; the Vernons, who married into the Avenell family; and the Manners, who took over in 1567, with Lord and Lady Edward Manners the current owners. With 900 years of history and some fantastically preserved medieval and Tudor architecture, Haddon Hall is one of the oldest and most beautiful houses in the country – historian Simon Jenkins even went so far as to call…

COLUMN Lord Monboddo, an 18th-century judge, supposedly believed men were born with tails but that midwives concealed the anomaly by cutting them off at birth. Darwin’s cousin Sir Francis Galton devised a curious map showing where Britain’s most beautiful inhabitants lived, as well as the ugly ones. And as recently as the 1970s, the 8th Earl of Clancarty used his leverage in the House of Lords to try to prove that aliens didn’t arrive in UFOs but via tunnels through the centre of the earth leading from the North and South Poles. Ostentatious or absurdly secretive, inventive, reclusive or just plain bonkers, there’s something irresistible about eccentrics and rarely more so than when there’s a connection to our great country houses. Eccentricity is by no means restricted to the upper…

Britain is a superstitious nation, no doubt about it. What Briton hasn’t at some point verbalised a wish about some impending good luck and suffixed it with the words ‘touch wood’ or ‘fingers crossed’? Superstitions are so woven into our culture that we hardly know we’re doing it – just a few days ago a friend sniggered at me when I broke away from our conversation to bid a lone magpie a good morning (not doing so is considered bad luck). Of course, it’s no new thing – many of our superstitions in Britain predate the arrival of Christianity and are considered Pagan traditions, while during the Middle Ages, people lived in near constant fear of witches, ghosts and the devil himself. And while many superstitions relate to specific industries…