Day 14. Wirksworth to Duffield. 

It’s Market Day in Wirksworth and very busy, so I just set off without my usual morning coffee. I have to climb up to Alport Height somehow. There are numerous small lanes and field paths to choose from. The scattered houses of Gorsey Bank are my first objective.

I pass a small Catholic church on the way, and then Providence Mill. Wirksworth mills were renowned in the 19th and early 20th century for specialised tape manufacture. John Bowmer began tape making in 1883 at Providence Mill, later known as Gorsey Bank Mill. They produced narrow red tape to bind legal documents. (That’s where the term ‘red tape’ comes from.) The firm was later to take pride in the fact that it had manufactured the fuse-binding tape for every Mills Bomb used in the First World War. The mill is now an exclusive-looking private residence.

At the end of the metalled road, a wide byway, Prathall Lane, continues to climb. There is a wayside water trough, so this must have been a route regularly used by horses.

There are views back to the limestone quarry overshadowing Wirksworth and more rural scenes to the west. The summit of Alport Height with its antennae appears, so I just follow the little lanes in the right direction.

A path leads to the parking area next to the antennae. There is a toposcope, but to be honest, although the views are far-reaching, they lack interest, and the masts obscure half of it. The trig point is at 314 m (1,030 ft).

If this ‘port’ was on a long-lost trackway, could this be a marker stone? How do you date stones anyhow?

I don’t hang around on what is a bleak spot in the wind. My attempt at a shortcut back to the road is thwarted by a motocross track with noisy bikes churning up the sand. But what is this? Not noticed on the way up, but a rocky pinnacle in a small abandoned quarry. The Alport Stone. Chipped holds on one side tempt you onwards, but how do you get back down?

I have found some old photos of early ascents.

I make good progress by sticking to the quiet lanes, the type with grass down the middle.

The Midshires Way is encountered again, where it climbs onto a small ridge. Longwalls Lane must be an ancient track with signs of cobbles and worn down to the bedrock in places.

At its end, as I drop down to Blackbrook  (who, according to all the signs, doesn’t want any more houses, like similar villages being swamped with developments), there ahead of me is The Chevin, a gritstone ridge above Belper leading me straight to Duffield. How much more appealing than Alport Height? In Blackbrook, I cross a ford and climb through trees to a cluster of houses at Farnah Green, where by the roadside is a 19th-century milestone. Derby 7  Wirksworth 6. And then I’m onto the ancient track across the Chevin, possibly the Portway, and maybe used by the Romans to reach their Lutadarum, a grand way to finish my walk today. Cobbled most of the way with views down into the Derwent Valley and Belper. I walk along with a local couple, and he explains the history of the area to me. I would have been puzzled by this isolated wall structure, seen by the wayside without his knowledge.

From the listed buildings site – Former firing range. Circa 1800. The range is comprised of a tall, tapering target wall, aligned north-east to south-west, approximately 25 metres long and 5 metres high. The wall is built of coursed squared gritstone, with a heavy flat gritstone coping. To the southeast of the wall are a group of five regularly- spaced rectangular coursed stone firing butts or platforms, the first being approx 150 metres from the wall, and spaced every 25 metres thereafter.

The firing range was built for the local militia, the Belper Volunteer Battalion, raised by the Strutt family who established the textile factory communities at Belper and Milford. Lt. Cl. Joseph Strutt was the battalion commander. The range was used during the Napoleonic Wars, and again in 1860, during the Boer War and the First World War. The firing range is important evidence of the part played by local militias in the national defence strategy of the early C19, and is a rare survival of the period. 

Quite unique.

I left the couple and made my way down through the extensive and hilly golf course past the clubhouse onto the main road in Duffield.

I had not gone far when I noticed this sign by some steps.

Duffield Castle is a remnant of the estate of the de Ferrers family, who originally owned the village; however, they lost their local possessions to the king in 1266, and their castle, if it ever was finished, was demolished. All that is visible is the mound with traces of foundations and a well. As the sign says, use your imagination.

The train takes me back to Matlock.

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