Distance: 3.6 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

Short walk across the Peak District countryside from the market town of Bakewell to Chatsworth House and parkland – the inspiration for Mr. Darcy’s country home Pemberley?

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Mr. Darcy’s Country Pile?

Was English literature’s most famous bachelor Mr. Darcy a Midlander?

Most likely yes, at least if the literary sleuths, who identify the Duke of Devonshire’s family seat Chatsworth House, as the model for his stately home Pemberley, are correct.

The estate’s aristocratic connections go back to the era when the Peak District was a patchwork of little Norse and Anglo Saxon fiefdoms. However, it was in the 15th Century that a manor house was first erected, on the slopes of the hill above the River Derwent where today’s Chatsworth House stands.

It became part of the Devonshire’s patrimony in 1549, when Sir William Cavendish, one of the husbands of Bess of Hardwick (better associated with Hardwick Hall, 20 – 30 miles to Chatsworth’s east) bought the estate. It was Bess who began building the first stages of the current mansion in 1553.

In 1570 Mary Queen of Scots – during her long incarceration in various castles and manor houses throughout the eastern Midlands – was held under house arrest there. Testimony to the property’s importance to the wealthy and politically important Cavendish family’s project of projecting their influence.

Several generations later an elderly Thomas Hobbes lived out his final years in Cavendish family stately homes in Derbyshire, including Chatsworth, where he spent 5 years. Later drafts and other documents associated with his work The Levithan were found there.

Much of the Cavendish family’s wealth came from their influence over Derbyshire’s incredibly profitable lead and other metal mining and refining industries. Research conducted a few years ago into the metals content of glacial ice in the Swiss Alps indicates that levels of airborne lead pollution of European in the 12th and 13th Centuries were comparable to during the Industrial Revolution, something which points to the sheer scale of the mining and refining operation that was being undertaken in Derbyshire during that period. Something which did not diminish in later centuries.

It was the wealth created through the toil of thousands and thousands of miners and other workers across the Peak District which created the wealth which constructed Chatsworth House as well as the vast parkland that surrounds it.

The creation of the parkland amidst the wild Peak District landscape is another major achievement by the generations of workers who laboured to create and maintain it.

Throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries the Dukes of Devonshire (as the Cavendish family had become) ceaselessly spent the wealth extracted from their Midlands holdings and investments elsewhere upon modelling and remodelling Chatsworth House and its grounds into the vista which can be visited today.

They also tended to other holdings, including the Kinder Scout Plateau, which they enclosed as a grouse shooting moor in the 1840s. It was here that one of the most famous protests in the history of the British right to roam movement – the Kinder Scout Mass Trespass – occurred in April 1932. The creation of the Peak District National Park in 1951 improved access to the plateau, and in the 1980s the Devonshire family gave Kinder Scout to the National Trust who maintain it, and open access on the moor that is one of the Midlands highest peaks to this day.

Chatsworth House remains the Devonshire’s main Derbyshire residence to this day. Much of the parkland is criss-crossed by footpaths and can be enjoyed by walkers and other daytrippers. The gardens and parts of the house itself can be accessed in exchange for the price of admission. It is a popular day-out for people from across the Midlands region, adjacent parts of Northern England like Sheffield, and those from further afield. Whether their tastes are Regency romantic novels, Early Modern political philosophy or they just want to take in the vast house and expansive parkland set amidst the wild splendour of a Derbyshire Dale.

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 begins from the roundabout in Bakewell town centre, near where the bus stops are, which the Rutland Arms Hotel sits on.

Here turn right and follow the road heading north out of the town centre.

After a short distance you come to a side road on your left running off past The Red Lion pub.

Turn left here and begin walking down the side road.

Presently this leads out onto a wider road lined with a range of chain shops and restaurants. 

Here turn left walking towards the side of the River Wye.

At the bottom of the road take a slight left and head through a pedestrian access point in front of you onto the path running beside the River Wye.

Here to your right there is a footbridge, amongst the most heavily padlocked I have ever seen, which you cross.

Continue along a footpath running along the bottom of a car park on the far side of the bridge.

Presently there is another footpath running off to your right, around the edge of Bakewell livestock market, which you follow.

Keep following this path around the perimeter of the market for some distance.

Eventually you emerge onto a suburban road with a detached yellow stone house in front of you.

Once on this road turn right and walk along the pavement through the suburban area for a short distance.

Soon on the left hand side of the road there is a footpath sign pointing off up a tarmac path.

Keep on following this path uphill, passing through several gateways along the way. After a little way it stops being tarmac.

Partway up the hill you cross over the Monsal Trail, once the course of the Derby to Manchester via Bakewell and Buxton railway, now a popular cycle path.

Having crossed the Monsal Trail, keep on walking straight ahead.

Then emerging from a fence lined path follow a well worn and well marked path running to the right, heading in the direction of woodland.

Continue along the path into the trees. 

Keep following the path as it steadily runs uphill through the woodland.

Presently you come to a fork in the path.

Here carry on straight keeping to your left scrambling up a bank through the trees.

You reach another path running through the woodland. Turn right and follow it for a short distance,

Soon there is another steep path up a bank off to your left. Turn left and begin climbing it,

Nearing the top of the bank you see a drystone wall and open fields above you. Here take a left turn and follow the path leading to a wooden gate set in the wall.

Once out in the field follow the traces of a footpath across the pasture making for a small cluster of trees in the distance.

Passing the trees you approach a fenceline. Here there is a way through.

Having entered the next large meadow there is a pond on your left.

Here turn left making for a spot just above the pond where there is another way across a fence.

On the far side of this fence turn right and follow the well trodden path running close to the fenceline as it slopes gently downhill for quite some distance.

Presently after a fair way you come to a gate on a farm track which you pass through.

Once on the other side of the gate, continue walking straight ahead following the farm track. By this point you are over the halfway mark between Bakewell and Chatsworth House.

The track approaches the farmyard. Before you reach it there is a waymark pointing towards a gate leading into woodland.

Turn left and follow the path towards the gate, which you pass through to enter the woodland.

On the far side there is a track lined with a drystone wall running quite steeply downhill. The presence of light blue signs is an indicator that you are now on the Chatsworth Estate.

At the bottom of the track there is the option to either clamber up steps across the wall or walk through a gate.

Regardless of which you pick you get your first glimpse of Chatsworth House beneath you on the far side.

Here follow the well worn path across the meadow like parkland downhill.

Presently you reach a small cluster of trees, where the path takes a slight right.

Then you continue walking straight in the direction of the little village of Edensor, which was constructed by the Devonshire’s for estate workers in the 18th and 19th Century. It remains owned by the Chatsworth Estate Trust to this day. An earlier village also called Edensor, stood closer to Chatsworth House and was demolished in stages between the 18th and early 19th Centuries as part of landscaping and road widening schemes, as was the aristocratic fashion of the era.

Approaching Edensor, you come to a gate.

This leads down a steep and uneven set of steps to the main road through the village.

Once on the road turn right and begin following it past the houses and the church to the village green.

At the village green turn left and follow the road towards the main gate out of the village.

Here head through the footgate and out onto the side of the B6012 which runs above the central section of the Chatsworth estate.

On the far side of the road there is a footpath leading into the heart of the parkland.

Cross the road and head down this path.

The path winds its way across the parkland leading you down to the driveway where there is a bridge across the River Derwent.

Head across the River Derwent via this bridge.

Then up a path to your right towards the main public entrance to the house.

It is here in front of the entrance to Chatsworth House that this walk ends.

Getting Back

Chatsworth House as a major tourist attraction is well served by buses. In February 2023 when I walked the route there was a very frequent service back towards Bakewell as well as towards Sheffield, with services also running to Macclesfield via Buxton across the Peak, as well as east to Chesterfield and south to Matlock several times a day. Bakewell has good onward connections to Matlock, Derby and Buxton all of which have railway stations. Buses from Bakewell also call at destinations across the Peak District, as well as towns and villages just outside the National Park like Cromford, Wirksworth and Ashbourne. Sheffield as a major city is also well connected, as is Chesterfield given its status as Derbyshire’s largest town. All in all, Chatsworth House is incredibly well connected as rural tourist attractions go.