DISCOVER DERBYSHIRE

AND THE

PEAK DISTRICT

 HIGH PEAK JUNCTION

 THE FEATURE

High Peak Junction Visitor Centre is an excellent place to start or finish a walk along the Cromford Canal or High Peak Trail. There is a wide selection of books and maps available, as well as an interesting railway video to watch. Light refreshments can be purchased and there are picnic tables outside.

The best way to explore High Peak Junction itself is by hiring an audio guide from the Visitor Centre. Normally open weekends only during the winter and everyday in the summer, further details may be obtained by telephoning 01629 822831/823204. 

The High Peak Junction Workshops date from the earliest days of the railway, being built between 1826 and 1830. They remain virtually unchanged since their railway days, with tools, railway artefacts, joiner's bench, forge and bellows. The cast-iron, fish-bellied rails on either side of the inspection pit could be the oldest length of railway line in the world still in its original position. A leaflet has been produced to enable visitors to identify the large array of memorabilia on display.

Completed in 1794, the Cromford Canal stretched 14.5 miles to Langley Mill, where it joined the Erewash Canal. With a tunnel and two aqueducts, the canal was built to carry limestone from quarries at Crich to the iron foundry at Butterley. It was extended to serve Richard Arkwright's Cromford Mills, and it became very busy and profitable as a result. There was, though, the need to find a much shorter route to link the East Midlands with Manchester. The original intention had been to construct a canal to connect William Jessop's Cromford Canal with Benjamin Outram's Peak Forest Canal. Difficulties, however, in ensuring an adequate water supply on the limestone moors led to the scheme being dropped.

Proposals were then put forward and accepted to build a railway, which was built on a similar alignment to the abandoned canal project. This involved steep inclines, up and down which wagons were hauled on cables by steam-driven winding engines.

The construction of the Cromford and High Peak Railway line was considered to be an engineering masterpiece which attracted railway enthusiasts, not only from this country but all over the world. It linked High Peak Junction at two hundred and seven-seven feet above sea level with Whaley Bridge at five hundred and seventeen feet. In the middle it rose to over a thousand feet at Ladmanlow. Stretching for thirty-three miles in length, the line was fully opened in 1831, when it was used to transport minerals, corn, coal and other commodities from one canal to the other.

Initially, horses were relied on to pull the trucks along the flatter parts of the route, but steam began to replace them in 1833 when the first locomotive came on the scene. However, it was some thirty years before horses were entirely replaced by locomotive power. The line continued to play an integral part in linking the canal system until 1853, when it was connected to the rapidly expanding railway network and became a branch line serving local needs. 

Following the closure of the Cromford and High Peak Railway, it was purchased jointly by Derbyshire County Council and the Peak Park Planning Board and in partnership with the Countryside Commission converted into the High Peak Trail. At the bottom end of the trail is a catch pit, built following an accident in 1888, in which two wagons jumped across both the canal and the Midland Railway! The last accident occurred in the 1950s and the wreckage is still in the pit.   

On the opposite side of the canal from the visitor centre, a short distance to the south, is Leawood Pumphouse. It was built in 1849, following water shortages, to pump water from the river to the canal. It has been extensively restored by volunteers and is capable of lifting approximately five tons of water each minute, up to a height of 30 feet. Open to the public on 'steaming days' during the summer.

Cromford Canal supports an abundance of wildlife and because of its value as a natural habitat, it has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. The southern end, from Whatstandwell to Ambergate, is managed as a Statutory Local Nature Reserve by the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust.

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