Distance: 2 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

Walk from Creswell in north eastern Derbyshire to the nearby Creswell Crags. An impressive little limestone ravine known for its prehistoric remains that tell the story of the Ice Age.

The Story

Route Notes

Getting Back

An Easterly Derbyshire Limestone Gorge

In Derbyshire limestone gorges are generally associated with the Peak District in the west of the county. However, one of the most significant from a paleo archaeological perspective, and arguably generally interesting, lies just outside Creswell in the far east of the county, practically on the boundary with Nottinghamshire.  

Creswell Crags, while not especially deep or especially long as gorges go, is a dramatic place. Two long lines of craggy limestone cliffs rising along the several hundred metre long ravine that the otherwise nondescript Millward Brook flows through. 

Prior to the development of Creswell as a pit village in the 1890s and 1900s when the coal mining industry reached north east Derbyshire and north west Nottinghamshire, Creswell Crags was in quite an isolated location. However, by that time its rich trove of finds revealing people and animals from prehistoric finds was already known about by antiquarians.

More careful investigation by modern scientists and archeologists in the latter part of the 20th Century and more recently has uncovered much of the story of Creswell Crags during prehistory.

Finds ranging from carved stones and bones, to human remains, and even cave art (the most northerly ever discovered in Europe and thought to date back circa 12,800 years) have been found in the limestone caves and caverns that pockmark the Crags. These features have picturesque names like: Mother Grundy’s Parlour, Robin Hood Cave and Pinhole Cavern. The finds, human and animal remains, and modern dating methods suggest that Neanderthals lived at Creswell Crags 50,000-60,000 years ago. With modern humans first taking up residence 32,000 years ago during a relative thaw in the Ice Age, returning permanently around 14,000 years ago. Finds from these eras include carefully worked flint tools like hand axes, as well as carved bone fragments and the remnants of ochre likely used for artmaking.  

Later, around 6,000 years ago, after agriculture had been adopted in the north Midlands, and people no longer typically used caves for shelter, the caverns and crevices at Creswell Crags were will in use as burial places for the ancient people who inhabited what is now the area between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

There are also numerous animal remains found in and around the caverns, many dating back long before humans, in some cases over 1 million years. Remains of species long extinct in the British Isles, or indeed anywhere in the world, include wooly mammoth teeth, the skeleton of an infant hyena, and the partial remains of bears, deer and wild horses.  

These days Creswell Crags is a popular daytripping destination. A recently constructed pavilion with a large cafe and gift shop, has brought together finds from the site in one holistic exhibition, the items having previously been scattered across 37 different British museum collections. The pavilion is where tours of the caves in the gorge depart from, enabling visitors to access sites which are usually gated and inaccessible. The rest of the site can be walked around, accessed via some level well maintained paths, giving it the feel of a public park, one enjoyed by people from Creswell and further afield alike.

The Walk

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

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This walk from Creswell to Creswell Crags begins from Creswell Railway Station.

Upon exiting the station down the access road turn left and head to the bottom of Creswell high street. Along the way you pass this former coal mining village’s impressive, now disused, brick art deco cinema, a row of impressive red brick shops from around the turn of the 20th Century, and the town’s Anglican church set back amidst a graveyard. Creswell in its current form came into being in the 1890s and 1900s when a colliery was first sunk there by the Bolsover Colliery Company, a firm which while amongst the largest in the country at the time, had the Duke of Portland who owned the land on which the mines were dug as a major shareholder.

At the bottom of the high street turn right and walk out through Creswell’s suburbs.

Off to the left pick up a bridleway which runs past a riding school housed in an old farm complex.

Beyond the riding school the bridleway turns into a greenway running uphill in woodland.

Follow the track around as it runs through woodland at the top of a low ridge, working its way around the edge of a major sandstone quarry. A vast processing plant can be glimpsed through the trees, as can the coal measures exposed by the quarrying activity.

Soon you cross a road, and carry on along the bridleway on the far side, this leads you to the tree lined car park of Creswell Crags.

Once in the car park turn right, taking care to avoid the cars coming and going.

Soon you reach the pavilion where the cafe, gift shop and exhibition space is situated.

From here it is a short walk down a sloping path or the pavilion terrace to reach Creswell Crags.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

It is relatively straightforward to retrace your steps to Creswell, with its railway station on the Nottingham to Worksop Railway Line, and an hourly service to each throughout the day (apart from on Sundays at the time of writing in March 2025). An alternative route back to the village is to walk down the Crags, and then follow a path, which turns into a road, that leads back to the centre of the village. Creswell also has a regular bus service (hourly from 09:00 in the morning until circa 22:00 at the time of writing) between Worksop and Chesterfield which are both major bus hubs and have mainline railway stations. Walking to the A60 on the edge of the Welbeck Abbey estate, enables you to catch the two hourly 209 (on Mondays – Saturdays at the time of writing, no Sunday service) which runs between Edwinstowe and Worksop.