Hartington is a village in the centre of the White Peak area of the Derbyshire Peak District, England, lying on the River Dove which is the Staffordshire border. According to the 2001

census A census (from Latin ''censere'', 'to assess') is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording, and calculating population information about the members of a given Statistical population, population, usually displayed in the form of stati ...

, the parish of Hartington Town Quarter, which also includes Pilsbury, had a population of 345 reducing to 332 at the 2011 Census. Formerly known for

cheese Cheese is a type of dairy product produced in a range of flavors, textures, and forms by coagulation of the milk protein casein. It comprises proteins and fat from milk (usually the milk of cows, buffalo, goats or sheep). During prod ...

-making and the mining of ironstone,

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

and

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

, the village is now popular with tourists.

Architecture

Notable buildings in the village include the market hall (formerly the site of a market), the 13th-century parish church of Saint Giles, and the 17th-century Hartington Hall. The prominent Bank House in the centre of the village was built by the former village mill owner, and in the past was used as the village bank. A half-mile (800 m) to the south of the village, on the river Dove, is the fishing house of the famous angler Charles Cotton. In the north of the village is Pilsbury Castle, an 11th-century motte-and-bailey castle, that survives only as an earthwork. Near Hartington is the finest

neolithic The Neolithic or New Stone Age (from Ancient Greek, Greek 'new' and 'stone') is an archaeological period, the final division of the Stone Age in Mesopotamia, Asia, Europe and Africa (c. 10,000 BCE to c. 2,000 BCE). It saw the Neolithic Revo ...

stone circle in the Peak District, Arbor Low. There are numerous ancient

tumuli A tumulus (: tumuli) is a mound of Soil, earth and Rock (geology), stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, mounds, howes, or in Siberia and Central Asia as ''kurgans'', and may be found through ...

and

cairn A cairn is a human-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the (plural ). Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehistory, t ...

s in the landscape around Hartington, probably dating from the

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

. Hartington Mill, now a private house, stands by the River Dove. This was the local water mill for grinding corn.

Attractions

The village has a youth hostel at Hartington Hall, which serves two major National Cycle Network routes: the Tissington Trail and the High Peak Trail, which meet at nearby Parsley Hay. These trails pass just under one mile (1500 m) to the east of the village; they offer of off-road cycling and walking along old railway trackbeds through the Peak District National Park. Hartington signal box, on the site of the former Hartington railway station and nearly two miles (3 km) from the village, has been renovated and converted into a visitor centre; there is also a car park on site. A little south of the village, overlooking the Dove, stands Wolfscote Hill (388 m at ) which is a good viewpoint; it is now in the care of the National Trust. Three miles (5 km) to the south-west of the village lies the small settlement of Hulme End; this marks the northern starting point of the Manifold Way, an tarmacked walking and cycling route that follows the route of the former Leek and Manifold Valley Light Railway.

History

According to the English Place-Name Society the name of the village derives from the

Old English Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...

for either 'Stags' hill' or 'hill connected with Heorta'. Hartington was mentioned in the

Domesday Book Domesday Book ( ; the Middle English spelling of "Doomsday Book") is a manuscript record of the Great Survey of much of England and parts of Wales completed in 1086 at the behest of William the Conqueror. The manuscript was originally known by ...

as belonging to Henry de Ferrers and being worth forty shillings.''Domesday Book: A Complete Translation''. London: Penguin, 2003. p.745 The parish was originally quite large, and part of the

hundred 100 or one hundred (Roman numerals, Roman numeral: C) is the natural number following 99 (number), 99 and preceding 101 (number), 101. In mathematics 100 is the square of 10 (number), 10 (in scientific notation it is written as 102). The standar ...

of Wirksworth. Hartington had four townships, known as the Town Quarter, Nether Quarter, and Middle Quarter, and Upper Quarter, which are now all separate parishes. These became separate civil parishes in their own right in 1866.Vision of Britain site
/ref> They are marked on

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

maps. Surnames that originate from this area include Heathcote.

Railway

Hartington railway station, on the Cromford and High Peak Railway, was opened in 1899; it was sited on the part of the line that ran from Buxton to Ashbourne. Regular passenger services ceased in 1954, due to low passenger numbers, and the line through Hartington was lifted in 1964. Much of the line has since been converted to a shared-use path called the Tissington Trail. Hartington signal box has been retained and is now used as an information centre.

Cheese

The creamery in the village, often called the cheese factory, was founded by the Duke of Devonshire in the 1870s; it was one of the three sources of Stilton, and also produced its own unique Dovedale cheese and others such as Buxton Blue cheese. The factory was closed in 2009 after being sold by Dairy Crest to the Long Clawson Dairy Company, but the cheese shop associated with the factory re-opened under private ownership,This Is Business Staffordshire Nov 2009
/ref> and a new, smaller, creamery was opened by two former employees in 2014.

Notable residents

* Marie Litton, English actress and theatre manager, was born here in 1847 * James F. Redfern, sculptor, was born here in 1838 * Steve Sutton, former Nottingham Forest F.C. goalkeeper, was born here in 1961 * John Oliver, British-Canadian politician and premier of British Columbia, was born here in 1856.

References

External links

Hartington village website
{{authority control Villages in Derbyshire Towns and villages of the Peak District Derbyshire Dales