High above the conjoined communities of Wirksworth, Bolehill and Middleton stands the painstaking restored winding engine house at Middleton Top.
It is coming up for its two hundred birthday, having first opened in 1829, hauling wagons up the Middleton incline plane. The uppermost flight of a complex system running from the Cromford Canal at High Peak Junction in the River Derwent Valley up to the limestone quarries above the village of Middleton.
The incline plane was a vital cog in the mechanism of the Cromford and High Peak Railway. A fascinating railway line, operational between 1831 and 1967, primarily serving the limestone quarries of the western white peak. A construction which both looked forward to the age of mainline railway operation and back to the era of canals and industrial tramways.
The Cromford and High Peak Railway was the solution to the conundrum of how best to access the rich limestone deposits of the southern Peak District with the limited carrying technology of the late 18th and early 19th Centuries. The geology and topography of the region meant that a canal, the era’s most reliable bulk carrying solution was out of the question. So commercial consensus steadily converged in the mid-1820s around the creation of a tramway, more than 30 miles long, linking the base of the Peak Forest Canal at Whaley Bridge, with the Cromford Canal’s terminus in the Derwent Valley.
Work began on the tramway in 1825. At the time railways were an emergent technology, steam trains being very much in their infancy, although they were already widespread throughout the North East coalfield. The plan devised by the tramway engineers was for a line running across the Peak District plateau, cutting through the rock in places, crossing valleys and dales by means of dam like stone viaducts in others. Access to the network at either end was by a network of inclined planes hauled by stationary steam engines. Middleton Top was the pinnacle of this system.
The development of the line progressed throughout the second half of the 1820s, finally being completed in 1831, when the first through trains ran on the line. When the line was approved by Parliament in 1825 the option of working the route with steam locomotives was mentioned in the private act which authorised it. Which is interesting, because it shows that the route’s promoters were interested in the new technology, despite the fact that it was still in its infancy. Though this said up until 1860 sections of the route remained worked by teams of horses pulling carts along the rails rather than steam engines.
This said, the line that they built, with its cuttings and embankments, tight bends and short tunnels, not to mention the lock like system of inclined planes, is in many ways rather more like a canal than a typical main line railway. Even some of the bridges and railway buildings look like they belong alongside a canal. This meant that throughout its life the Cromford and High Peak Railway as it came to be known, was always somewhat isolated from the bulk of the UK’s railway network and a bit of an oddity.
Regardless, the system of inclined planes, of which Middleton Top was a critical part, remained operational until 1963. Outliving the Cromford Canal which was essentially moribund by the time of the Second World War by approximately a generation. In 1963 the inclined planes ceased operating with much of the equipment and the trackway removed shortly afterwards. The remainder of the Cromford and High Peak Railway, traffic of all kinds having dwindled along it, shut in 1967, apart from a small stub serving quarries around Earl Sterndale just south of Buxton which remains open to this day.
The 1960s and 1970s were the heyday of volunteer activism to save and conserve obsolete elements of the UK’s industrial heritage. The Cromford and High Peak Railway, and indeed the Cromford and Peak Forest Canals at either end, were early beneficiaries of this interest, alongside many other aspects of the southern Peak District’s early industrial heritage like Arkwright’s Mill, Crich Tramway Museum and the Cromford Canal.
After the track and much of the other railway gear had been lifted, Derbyshire County Council and the Peak District National Park purchased the trackbed of the former Cromford and High Peak Railway, including the incline planes. They converted it into a mixed use path for cyclists, equestrians and walkers, stretching for 17 miles across the white peak.
Volunteers and Derbyshire County Council restored the engine house at Middleton Top, so it stands to this day, probably looking smarter than it ever did during its working life. The beam engine inside it which once hauled carts up the incline remains operational – though the mechanism of the incline plane itself is long gone, and is fired up from time-to-time throughout the year, for visitors to appreciate. It is the oldest of its kind in the world, and probably one of the longest serving, the first version having been installed in 1829 and served until 1963.
Next to the Middleton Top engine house stands a cycle hire centre where Derbyshire County Council operates a day hire scheme for bikes of all kinds for use on the former railway line: branded the High Peak Trail. Middleton Top engine house also marks the starting point for the Pennine Bridleway, a cycling and equestrian counterpart to the Pennine Way, albeit starting significantly further south, and finishing on the edge of the North Pennines rather than running up into Northumberland. This arguably makes Middleton Top the portal to the north.
Beneath Middleton Top runs the Steeple Grange Light Railway. An 18 inch gauge heritage line celebrating industrial light engines from the past and their wagons. Beyond that lies Middleton, very much a quarrying village, and below that Bolehill and Wirksworth, a little town of around 5,000 people famous for its artistic bent and historic position as the Peak District’s lead mining capital. It hosts an arts festival over two weekends in September each year.