Distance: 13.1 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: medium

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

This circular walk to the Nine Ladies Stone Circle on Stanton Moor just inside the Peak District National Park starts from Matlock Railway Station, and roughly follows the course of the River Derwent as far as Rowsley.

The Story

Route Notes

Getting Back

Ten Ladies Stone Circle?

It was the drought conditions in the summer of 1976 which led to the name of Derbyshire’s Nine Ladies Stone Circle becoming a misnomer. That year the dry conditions led the ground to crack up, revealing the top of a tenth stone, which some freelance antiquarians whose identities remain unknown, then entirely unearthed in a moonlight operation the next year.

The story traditional associated with the stone circle which sits just inside the Peak District National Park, on Stanton Moor high up on the white peak escarpment, above the valley of the River Derwent at Darley Dale, is that its stones are the petrified remains of nine women punished with transfiguration and death for dancing on a Sunday.

This legend is fairly typical for a stone circle in the UK. Variants of it have become attached to many of them over the centuries since Christianity arrived in the UK. However, Nine Ladies, the most substantial of a wide array of prehistoric monuments on Stanton Moor, long predates the life of Jesus Christ. It is thought to have been constructed during the Western European Bronze Age, between 3300 and 900 BCE, its significance for the circles creators and their society is now unknowable, but it is thought plausible that it had some kind of religious or funerary purpose.

Stone circles are relatively unusual in eastern Britain, especially in the English Midlands. This is probably due to a relative lack of readily accessible stone rather than significant social, religious, and ritual differences between the western and eastern halves of the British Isles. There is some evidence for less durable wooden henges in the east of the archipelago. The Peak District, perhaps due to its exposed limestone dales and gritstone edges, which prehistoric peoples could easily quarry, are the exception to the rule, and Nine Ladies, while small, is amongst the most impressive examples.  

The stone circle was first widely recognised as a point of interest in the 18th Century when it was described by the antiquarian Hayman Rooke as “a druidical temple”. He was writing in the 1780s, and the stone circle became a point of fascination, no doubt thanks to it being readily accessible from towns like Matlock, throughout the 18th and 19th Centuries. Indeed towards the end of the Victorian era a wall was erected to enclose the stones. This endured until 1985 when its crumbling remains were removed, leaving the stones to stand unimpeded amid the trees and grasses of Stanton Moor. 

A little to the west of the Nine Ladies Stone Circle stands the so-called King Stone. This rock which stands alone has the impression of being deliberately placed in relation to the circle. However, the connection is utterly obscure, with some scholars speculating that it is contemporary with the stone circle and others that it is a more modern addition to the ensemble. Both Nine Ladies and the King Stone are merely two of the sets of megaliths on Stanton Moor. Numerous, likely naturally occurring, rocky outcrops protrude from the hillside, and there are three smaller stone circles in addition to Nine Ladies. There are also 70 barrows of differing sizes on the site, many of which were excavated between the 1920s and 1950s. Indications of the area’s apparent significance as a ritual and funerary site during prehistory.

These days Nine Ladies is overseen by English Heritage. The site is sometimes used by contemporary pagans for ceremonies and gatherings. Local pagans were pivotal to a successful campaign in the 1990s and 2000s against the reopening of long derelict sandstone quarries in the vicinity of the stone circle. Now the wider Stanton Moor area is being conserved and improved as a habitat for nature by the Peak District National Park Authority and others.

Route Notes

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

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This circle walk to the Nine Ladies Stone Circle on Stanton Moor in the Peak District National Park begins from Matlock Railway Station.

Upon exiting the station cross the main road in front of you, and then turn left, to pick up the River Derwent footpath.

Follow the tree lined path – which comprises part of the Derwent Valley Heritage Way – out of the town centre.

Presently you pass a disused quarry on your left, and follow the path as it runs across open meadows a little way from the Derwent.

Soon you emerge onto a road running through the lower part of the Little hamlet of Oaker, and turn right, following the road as it runs through woodland and then out into open fields.

The road runs into the heart of the small village of Darley Bridge, which stands on the far side of the Derwent from the little town of Darley Dale.

Upon reaching the centre of Darley Bridge turn left, heading up the main road towards Wensley and Winster which lie inside the Peak District National Park.

Soon you turn off the main road to the right, before taking the left hand fork, just before you reach Ecobat’s large smelting plant.

The tarmac runs out at a junction on the edge of woodland, and you follow a wide, well worn, bridleway up into the trees.

Soon the track levels out near the point where you enter the Peak District National Park, and you walk along through the trees.

Just before you reach Birchover Lane, turn right and follow a footpath, uphill and then across a couple of fields, approaching a campsite.

Enter the campsite, passing a modernist brick bungalow, and follow a path running uphill past the tent pitches.

At the top of the path you emerge onto a lane, with the entrance to Stanton Moor a little way down the hill to the right, on your left.

Head up onto Stanton Moor and follow the wide, well worn, path across it.

Soon you enter trees, and then emerge into the clearing where the Nine Ladies Stones stand to your left.

Having visited the stones continue a little further down the path, before turning off, and making your way through the trees, slightly downhill to where a footpath runs out to a lane which winds back down towards the Derwent Valley.

Upon reaching the lane head right following it downhill.

Soon on your left there is a footpath leading off the road, which you follow.

After crossing a few fields a large house, and its outlying buildings, which in many cases have now been turned into houses too, appears in front of you.

Enter this little settlement and walk straight across it by means of a driveway that divides the large house from the other buildings.

This leads into woodland, where a tarmac driveway takes you downhill through the trees.

At the bottom of the hill upon leaving the woodland, follow the tarmac drive for some distance until you reach the edge of the village of Rowsley.

Once in Rowsley you cross the River Wyre near where it converges with the River Derwent and soon reach the main road.

Head right upon reaching the main road, passing one of the village’s two pubs, and then crossing the big old stone bridge across the Derwent, leaving the Peak District National Park.

Follow the main road – the A6 – past the Peak Shopping Village back towards Matlock for some distance.

From here if you do not fancy walking back to Matlock you can catch one of the frequent buses which run along the A6 south towards Matlock, Belper and Derby and north towards Bakewell and Buxton.

Presently on the right there is a turning into an industrial estate where you can pick up the Derwent Valley Heritage Way where it runs through woodland.

Soon you emerge into the car park beside the northern terminus of the Peak Rail heritage line. On the left of the car park there is a cycle route which you follow past the steelworks near the centre for Darley Dale.

Past the steelworks there is a footpath across the Peak Rail line and a field, to where you region the Derwent Valley Heritage Way.

Upon rejoining the trail turn left and start following the course of the river east back towards Matlock.

You pass through the little hamlet of Churchtown, and approach Darley Bridge once more.

In the centre of Darley Bridge next to the pub you arrive back at where you originally diverted from the Derwent Valley Heritage Way to head up into the hills.

From here you can retrace your steps back to the centre of Matlock.

Upon arriving back at the town centre and railway station this is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Matlock (at the time of writing in June 2025) is served by hourly trains to Nottingham via the Derwent Valley line, Belper, Derby, Long Eaton and smaller stations in between. Matlock is a major centre for bus travel in mid-Derbyshire with services to outlying towns and villages as well as major centres including Buxton, Chesterfield, Derby, Sheffield and Bakewell throughout the day.