Distance: 3 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 Edensor, the most well known of the 19th Century “model villages” serving the Chatsworth House and Parkland estate.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Peak Aristocratic Move

As is often the way with villages located on the fringes on aristocratic parkland, Edesnor is not where it started.

Between the 18th and 19th Centuries as the Chatsworth House estate’s famous parkland was shaped amidst the Peak District’s wild landscape, so by degrees the village of Edensor vanished, being located up the hill, behind a convenient limestone hillock out of sight of the great house and its baronial residents.

Today’s village is very attractive with a decidedly toytown air to it. Inhabited by around `150 people living in grand 19th Century villas and sturdy cottages it remains an integral part of the Devonshire family’s Derbyshire estate.

Rising above the village is the hulking Victorian bulk of St. Peter’s Church. It was rebuilt in the mid-19th Century, Edensor having been served by a church since the 1100s.

In its prime Edensor had a population of nearly 600, almost all estate workers, and was served by a post office and an inn for travellers along what is now the B6012. In an early example of conservationism the inn had been saved from the original Edensor village and relocated to save it from being demolished.

The nearby villages of Beeley and Pilsley are also Chatsworth Estate village and are constructed in a similar fashion.

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 a 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.

Presently you come to the village green. Here you can carry on for about another kilometre to get to Chatsworth House, or call it a day.

Getting Back

In February 2023 when I walked the route there were several very frequent bus services serving the area around Edensor. With hourly buses 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