CASTLETON & PEVERIL CASTLE

 My husband's family originate in the Castleton/Hope/Edale area, so a visit to Castleton held specific interest for me, and sure enough, in the local museum in the Heritage Centre, I found a photograph of one of his distant relations, who still farm in the area.

From the North-East, you can, if you're brave enough, approach the town via the awesome Winnats Pass. This is a mile-long 'hole in the ground' which easily rivals the Cheddar Gorge in its' spectacle. The road is narrow, and drops down a 1 in 5 incline for its entire length. It is so bad, they attempted to bypass it with a new road, but due to its proximity to Mam Tor, the 'shivering mountain', the new road kept slipping and in the 1970s was abandoned to its fate.

The town itself is overlooked by the impressive ruin of Peveril Castle, which is said to stand over one of the gateways to the underworld (the Peak Cavern, which at one time sheltered an underground village). Shortly after 1066, William The Conqueror started building castles all over the country and the one at Castleton was given to his illegitimate son, William Peveril in 1086, and so became Peveril Castle. The keep was added later, in 1176. It never saw battle and was occupied as a dwelling until 1480. The village grew up under the protection of the castle.

There was possibly an Anglo Saxon settlement on the east side of the village near Hope as there is an embankment running through the village, and s shaped strip fields on the east side, known as furlongs. The village developed under the protection of the garrison and grew and prospered from this period. The population was made up of farmers, retailers, men at arms and others. The village was on the main packhorse routes and an important stopover in coaching days in later centuries. It was also an important lead mining and market village. The oldest part of the village is by the river, Peakshole Water near Cavern Walk. Along Back Street can be seen several folds where houses were built around 3 sides of the courtyard, which had a narrow opening onto the street, where animals were penned at night.