Distance: 9 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: hard

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Walk from Grindleford Railway Station to Millthorpe, once home to Edwards Carpenter “the gay godfather of the British left” via Froggatt, Curbar and Baslow Edges.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

“The gay godfather of the British left”

There was little in the writer Edward Carpenter’s early life to suggest that he would spend much of his adulthood in the north eastern fringes of the English Midlands.

Born into a genteel family in Hove in 1844, he trod the expected path from private school, the Cambridge, to a position as a curate in the Church of England, even being offered a job as a young man, tutoring the future King George V.

Then aged 30 in 1874 he abandoned all of that. Requesting release from his commitment to the Church of England Edward Carpenter took up a position as an extramural university teacher in Leeds. Though he soon also left this job too.

From there he migrated south to Sheffield, finding similar employment there, before quitting formal employment in 1882 having come into a substantial inheritance. It was at this point that he moved to Millthorpe, a little way south of Sheffield, in Derbyshire on the edge of the Peak District. He would largely remain there until his final years in the 1920s when he returned to southern England.

In some regards Edward Carpenter’s progress from the established career track for an intellectually inclined genteel man, into the life of a bohemian writer living off the beaten track in a rural hamlet, may seem like a not entirely unusual type of upper middle class behaviour.

And of course in some ways it was, however, Edward Carpenter was far from typical for his age. He was a committed socialist, advocate for trade unions, and for a time associated with the Social Democratic Federation the first serious attempt to create a major Marxist socialist political party in Britain. He was also an early conservationist, concerned about how humans could better live in harmony with their environment, practising vegetarianism and campaigning against vivisection. He was also gay, openly gay, proudly gay, at a time when romantic and sexual attraction between people of the same gender was being pathologised by the medical establishment and the emergent discipline of psychiatry. And whilst politicians actively legislated to broaden and tighten up the legal regime existing to punish men who strayed beyond the bounds of hetrosexuality.

In Millthorpe Edward Carpenter was able to live openly, apparently readily accepted by his neighbours and untroubled by the law, with his long-term partner George Merrill, and amongst other same sex attracted men who would visit and stay with them. Literary scholars have shown that Carpenter and Merrill’s relationship inspired Maurice E.M. Forster’s novel about gay life decades before decriminalisation which remained unpublished until 1971. Purportedly Forster showed the manuscript for the book to another Midlands novelist D.H. Lawrence whose Lady Chatterley’s Lover has certain thematic resonances with the work.

Experts on Carpenter’s life and work have argued (plausibly in my view) that compared to the English south where prosecutions under “sodomy” laws were not uncommon in the 19th and early 20th Centuries, that an attitude towards personal conduct and choice stemming from non-conformist Christianity prevailed in northern regions. This meant that whilst conservative in outlook everyday people in Derbyshire, including police officers and magistrates, generally adopted a live and let live to matters of sexuality meaning that prosecutions of same sex attracted men were rare. Something which allowed Edward Carpenter to live more freely on the edge of the Peak District than he may have been able to in his southern homeland.

It was in Millthorpe that he wrote some of his most famous works including: Civilisation: It’s Cause and It’s Cure, Towards Democracy and Non-Governmental Society. He was also a prolific poet, critic and editor, producing work on Walt Whitman, an American of an earlier generation but in many regards a rather similar figure. As well as works on Homogenic Love and Its Place in a Free Society, The Intermediate Sex: A Study of Some Transitional Types of Men and Women and Intermediate Types Among Primitive Folk: A Study in Social Evolution which were clearly stated arguments for the rights and dignity of those who today would be members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Nor was Edward Carpenter an isolated crank writing these texts in the middle of nowhere. Rather the list of people he corresponded with and the campaigns and publications he engaged with, wrote for and supported indicates that he was a well connected and respected figure on the British left. In 1924 on the occasion of his eightieth birthday Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald, the first ever British Labour Prime Minister, and a long standing friend of Edward Carpenter and George Merrill, co-ordinated the signing of a birthday album for him containing the signatures of every cabinet member. It is fascinating, and pleasingly complicating in terms of how we view the past, to see someone who openly and unabashedly gay being recognised and honoured by national political leaders in this way one hundred years ago.

This said after Edward Carpenter died aged 84 in 1929 his work soon went out of print and was largely forgotten. His name and ideas were revived in the 1970s and 1980s, including by Jeffrey Weeks and Sheila Rowbotham, who appreciated and communicated Carpenter’s importance as an early unapologetic campaigner for the rights and dignity of those who are same sex attracted. Beyond that his legacy is important as a key figure in the development of Britain’s ecological, animal rights and non-authoritarian socialist movements. In the words of Fiona MacCarthy today Edward Carpenter is rightly celebrated as “the gay godfather of the British [liberarian] left”

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

This walk to Millthorpe starts at Grindleford Railway Station (on the Sheffield to Manchester Piccadilly line across the Peak District). It then heads up onto the path running along Froggatt Edge, before turning and heading across moorland and woodland to Millthorpe.

At Grindleford Railway Station exit the station onto the road in front of the Totley Tunnel.

Here turn right and walk past the Grindleford Station Cafe.

Just after passing the cafe there is a footpath sign pointing off to the left. Head up the path this points too, which climbs steeply uphill.

Presently you come out beside a main road.

Here turn left and cross over the road a little way down.

There is another footpath here, also leading steeply uphill into woodland which you climb.

After a short distance you come to a narrow wooded clough carpeted with exposed and fallen stones which you clamber up.

At the top of this escarpment turn right, crossing over a small brook and head along a path leading further into woodland.

Soon you reach another, wider path.

Here, turn right and begin walking downhill.

Presently you see the back of a house straight ahead of you and pass through a wooden gate leading onto a wider wider track.

Soon you reach another wooden gate which you walk through which leads down a short, steep slope to a road.

Once on the road turn left, and almost immediately you see a track off to the left which leads back up into the woodland.

Back into the woodland follow a path off to the left which leads through the trees.

After some distance it joins another path. At this point keep walking straight ahead.

You reach a wooden fence, next to a stone wall, where a car park is visible in the distance through the trees. At the wooden gate keep walking straight along the path.

At the car park the path you have been walking along joins another wider path. Here turn right.

This leads out into a landscape of predominantly younger trees, with the path heading steadily down into a pretty steep, rocky, gorge.

Here you cross a stream, then head up the steep bank on the other side onto a road.

Turn right and walk along the road a very short distance. On the left hand side there is a white wooden gate leading onto a track. Cross over head through the gate and begin walking along the track beyond.

This leads up onto a track which runs near a wooded edge on the right, with moorland off to the left.

Keep walking along this track for some distance. The edge you are walking along is made from gritstone making it amongst the southernmost parts of the limestone White Peak. From time-to-time as you walk you get glimpses across towards the Hope and Edale valleys right at the centre of the Peak District, and the gristone plateaus rising up beyond the Great Ridge beyond them.

Presently the path you are walking along emerges onto a more exposed part of Froggatt Edge.

Here you can see across the valley down into the White Peak, and down on the little village of Froggatt itself.

Continue walking along Froggatt Edge for quite some distance, passing gritstone rock formations along the way.

It is also worth looking back here and there at the impressive sweep of moorland and gritstone edge behind you.

Eventually beneath you appear the villages of Curbar, Calver, Stoney Middleton and in the far distance Eyam. This section is called Curbar Edge.

After a long, unbroken, walk along the edge you eventually come to a wooden gate.

On the far side of the gate continue along the path until you reach a road.

Once at the road, slightly to the left there is a track heading upwards towards a gate leading back onto another footpath.

From here the footpath runs straight across the moorland next to Baslow Edge.

To your right you see the prominent Eagle Stone rising up.

Just after passing the Eagle Stone you reach a footpath junction (which had a small herd of very shaggy brown cows sitting on it when I walked the route.

Here, turn left.

Follow the well worn path for some distance, passing a weathered stone cross.

Soon you reach a drystone wall, which you follow for a fair way.

In the distance you see a main road running across the moorland.

Approaching the road there is a footgate off on the right which leads out onto the road side.

Once on the road turn right and walk a short distance heading towards a crossroads.

Upon reaching the crossroads turn left, and begin walking up the main A621 Sheffield Road. This leads across the moors from Baslow, just above the Chatsworth House estate (the seat of the Devonshire family who once owned Kinder Scout), and then down into Sheffield on the far side.

Follow the A621 a short distance. There is a handy, but very narrow pavement along the grass verge beside it.

Whilst walking along the road you cross over the Blake Brook. This unremarkably stream is the boundary between the Derbyshire Dale District and the North East Derbyshire District.

Shortly after crossing the Blake Brook you reach a junction.

Here leave the A621, turning off the right and walking along a smaller road.

Walk along this road for some distance, it runs across the edge of Ramsley Moor, passing a reservoir.

Soon you reach another point at which the road branches.

Here to the left there is a wooden gate.

Head through this gate and proceed along the path on the other side.

The path, which is very well worn, runs across the moorland. Some saplings have been planted as part of a scheme to partially reforest the area.

Keep on walking straight along the path. Soon it runs into woodland.

Passing through a wooden gate the path runs steadily downhill through the trees.

After some way you come to a wooden gate leading out onto an unpaved lane.

Here turn right and head along the lane, passing a farmyard to your right.

Presently, just after the farmyard you come to a footpath on your left.

Turn down the footpath and walk along it for some distance.

Eventually you reach a gate leading out onto a field.

Head across the stone stile next to the gate.

Once in the field, keep following the path straight ahead.

After some distance you come to a wooden bridge over a stream, then head across another patch of meadow, and through a gate.

Here you climb a stile set into a wall and clamber out onto a country road. This marks the boundary of the Peak District National Park. Once on the road turn right.

Soon you reach a junction, then shortly after another, keep on walking straight ahead.

Having walked a little further, a scattering of houses appear on each side of the road.

Then, shortly after a pavement begins you reach the sign for Millthorpe.

Continue walking into the village.

Having passed a pub called The Royal Oak, the road you are walking along joins another.

Here turn right. Soon you see the village hall in front of you on the right. Just before you reach it there is a bus stop, with another one further down. This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Millthorpe (as of October 2022) is served by the frequent 16 bus between Chesterfield and Dronfield. Running into the evening it is more or less hourly. From Dronfield and Chesterfield it is possible to get buses to other locations of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire. Both towns are also served by trains, north towards Sheffield and the rest of Yorkshire, and south towards Derby and Nottingham. Chesterfield is also served by a few trains each day which run to Birmingham and further south west. Sheffield, Derby and Nottingham are served by frequent trains to many parts of the Midlands.