Landscape
The white fossil filled limestone rock, which emerged from the oceans of the past, now protrudes naked and skywards in many places telling a story of many thousands years gone in a moment of time. Lying atop and in between these exposures is a thin and fragile layer of foreign soil, blown in and deposited as a delicate sheet across the plateau, a remnant from the last ice age. The geological timescale portrayed in this White Peak landscape is enormous.
Man has exerted his influence here from very early days. It isn't hard to visualize him peering out of caves over a green and tree filled horizon filled with threat and bountiful harvest, days when tigers, wolves and bear abounded aside reindeer and ore ox. This is in contrast with the formal grandeur of Ilam Hall and its carefully designed landscape making the most of the truly picturesque surroundings.
The dynamism is immense as man today occupies his time fighting against natural processes, which want to turn the landscape back into one clothed in trees. This sense of stewardship stems from the very fact that man's involvement has created a verdant diverse but fragile oasis of life.
Ilam meaning 'at the Hills' nestles in the Derbyshire/Staffordshire Hills. Its ancient picturesque qualities have inspired many artists, writers (Byron, Johnston etc) and tourists of the 18th and 19th centuries, as it continues to inspire visitors today.
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Man's influence on the landscape
Man has carved the surface of this landscape into a form which we see today. The summer scented herb filled dalesides with their myriad of butterflies are a legacy passed down to us from the past when hard work and toil by early man supplanted by monks tending the monastic farming granges with sheep and cattle, they themselves now replaced by the current generation of farmers and land managers created these open dalesides and plateau land.
The significance of man's involvement in creating what we see today is exemplified in the many thousands of white limestone walls, which cross this land creating an immense patchwork with each patch being entirely individual and composed of its own suite of special interests. Indeed there are only a few places remaining in the White Peak where one can still walk mainly uninterrupted by walls for example on Wetton Hills and Thorpe Pastures, landscapes which must typify the fragments of a landscape once unadorned with walls or boundaries.
©NTPL / Joe Cornish
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Farmsteads
Today small farmsteads still exist and some hold on to traditional farming techniques handed down through past generations of families. Indeed it is predominantly on these many smallholdings where the significant biological interests lie. Over the centuries many farmers made a living by combining farming activity with mining.
The many spoil heaps and open shafts seen as surface features are evidence of a past and prosperous mining industry where underground activity sought lead and copper ore from mineral veins such as those at Ecton Hill owned by the Duke of Devonshire which in the early 1800's was the mainstay of the UK's copper production. Today this mine lies derelict containing a remarkable museum of mining history and development through all ages.
Communication between isolated farmsteads and village communities was maintained through the many myriad of trackways criss-crossing the dalesides where once ore and food laden mules and ox trod supplying farmsteads, monastic granges and monasteries such as that at Ilam. Many of these precious footprints still exist.
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Visitors
Today many millions of visitors from far and wide visit this area of the White Peak travelling through well known attractions such as Dovedale with its many imposing and startling rock formations such as Ilam Rock, Dovedale Church, Tissington Spires and Doveholes. A feeling of untamed wilderness on a quiet winter day is still achievable, very different from the cosmopolitan feel of the Stepping Stones on a sunny weekend in August when the area is awash with the colour and noise of thousands of people.
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Manifold
The Dove's sister valley the Manifold portrays a gentler side having a more sinuous open nature enclosed by rounded domed hillsides such as Ossams and Wetton Hills, yet still contains dramatic rock features such as Thors Cave and Beeston Tor. Indeed there exists in this valley a nationally recognised wealth of once inhabited caves, both by man and animal, still containing archaeological and geological sediments and deposits charting their history of development and use, a scarce and finite national resource.
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