Winnats Pass (or Winnats, as shown on some

Ordnance Survey Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1745. There was a ...

maps) is a hill pass and

limestone Limestone ( calcium carbonate ) is a type of carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of . Limestone forms whe ...

gorge in the

Peak District The Peak District is an upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It includes the Dark Peak, where moorla ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

, England. The name is a corruption of 'wind gates' due to the swirling winds through the pass. It lies west of the village of Castleton, in the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

's High Peak Estate and the High Peak borough of Derbyshire. The road winds through a cleft, surrounded by high limestone ridges. At the foot of the pass is the entrance to Speedwell Cavern, a karst cave accessed through a flooded lead mine, and which is a popular tourist attraction. In the 1930s Winnats Pass was the location used for annual access rallies in support of greater access to the moorlands or the Peak District, around the time of the

Mass Trespass of Kinder Scout The mass trespass of Kinder Scout was a trespass by members of the Young Communist League, the youth branch of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB), at Kinder Scout in the Peak District, Derbyshire, England, on 24 April 1932, to highligh ...

. At their peak these were attended by up to 10,000 people. The permanent closure of the main

A625 road The A625 is a rural road which runs through north Derbyshire and the Peak District. Route First named Ecclesall Road, it begins at the Moore Street roundabout in Sheffield and runs southwesterly towards Hathersage after a change in name to Hat ...

Mam Tor Mam Tor is a hill near Castleton in the High Peak of Derbyshire, England. Its name means "mother hill", so called because frequent landslips on its eastern face have resulted in a multitude of "mini-hills" beneath it. These landslips, which ...

in 1979 due to subsidence has resulted in Winnats Pass being heavily used by road traffic. However, the narrowness of the road and its maximum gradient of over 28% (1 in ) has caused it to be closed to buses, coaches and vehicles over 7.5 tonnes in weight. The road regularly features in the Tour of the Peak cycle race each autumn.

Geological formation

The gorge of Winnats Pass was once thought to have originated as a giant collapsed

cave A cave or cavern is a natural void in the ground, specifically a space large enough for a human to enter. Caves often form by the weathering of rock and often extend deep underground. The word ''cave'' can refer to smaller openings such as sea ...

rn; however, this idea has since been superseded. Winnats Pass can be seen to cut steeply down through

Lower Carboniferous Lower may refer to: *Lower (surname) *Lower Township, New Jersey *Lower Receiver (firearms) *Lower Wick Gloucestershire, England See also *Nizhny Nizhny (russian: Ни́жний; masculine), Nizhnyaya (; feminine), or Nizhneye (russian: Ни́� ...

limestone rocks. These were formed approximately 340 million years ago as a reef fringing a shallow lagoon, with deeper water beyond. The presence of a small outcrop of fossiliferous rock (known as 'beach beds') at the base of Winnats Pass, close to Speedwell Cavern, suggests that a contemporary underwater cleft or canyon once existed within the active reef which caused the build up of shelly and

crinoid Crinoids are marine animals that make up the class Crinoidea. Crinoids that are attached to the sea bottom by a stalk in their adult form are commonly called sea lilies, while the unstalked forms are called feather stars or comatulids, which are ...

al remains at its base. All these sediments were subsequently buried together under

Namurian The Namurian is a stage in the regional stratigraphy of northwest Europe with an age between roughly 326 and 313 Ma (million years ago). It is a subdivision of the Carboniferous system or period and the regional Silesian series. The Namurian ...

sandstones and shales in the subsequent

Upper Carboniferous Upper may refer to: * Shoe upper or ''vamp'', the part of a shoe on the top of the foot * Stimulant, drugs which induce temporary improvements in either mental or physical function or both * ''Upper'', the original film title for the 2013 found f ...

period. They were subsequently uplifted, but were only re-exposed by

periglacial Periglaciation (adjective: "periglacial", also referring to places at the edges of glacial areas) describes geomorphic processes that result from seasonal thawing of snow in areas of permafrost, the runoff from which refreezes in ice wedges and o ...

erosion towards the end of the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was finally confirmed in ...

. Melting water would have flowed along any lines of weakness within the reef limestone, such as those created by the presence of the original underwater cleft in the reef, carving out the gorge seen today.

Local biology

'' Hieracium naviense'' is a species of

hawkweed ''Hieracium'' (), known by the common name hawkweed and classically as (from ancient Greek ιεράξ, 'hawk'), is a genus of flowering plant in the family Asteraceae, and closely related to dandelion ('' Taraxacum''), chicory (''Cichorium'') ...

whose only world location is found at Winnats Pass. It is a native perennial plant, first discovered growing on limestone outcrops in 1966. According to the '' Flora of Derbyshire'', it has been refound there on a number of occasions since, most recently in 2013.

Local history

A local legend is that the pass is haunted by a young couple Alan and Clara who eloped in 1758, only to be robbed and murdered by miners as they headed through Winnats Pass, on their way to

Peak Forest Peak Forest is a small village and civil parish on the main road the ( A623) from Chapel-en-le-Frith to Chesterfield in Derbyshire. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 335. The village grew from the earlier settlement of ...

Chapel. The miners hid their bodies in a mine shaft where they were discovered 10 years later.

References

External links

Article with map and photos

* Landforms of Derbyshire Mountain passes of England National Trust properties in Derbyshire Peak District Scenic routes in the United Kingdom Transport in Derbyshire Canyons and gorges of England {{Derbyshire-geo-stub