Distance: 8.9 miles

Difficulty of the terrain: hard

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

Circular walk from Matlock Railway Station to Winster, home of Winster Market House an early National Trust acquisition, high up on the Peak District limestone plateau.

The Story

Route Notes

Getting Back

Before the Stately Homes

Nested at the top of a wide dale which winds its way up from the River Derwent at Matlock, Winster is amongst the Peak District’s grandest looking villages. 

Its historic core comprises large numbers of tall, solid stone buildings, a reminder of Winster’s distant past as a lead mining centre. In this way it resembles Wirksworth, Eyam and Castleton, but is somewhat smaller and less well known than any of these peers.

The village is roughly halfway between Matlock and Derby, sitting around 250 metres above sea level, high up on the White Peak District’s limestone plateau. In the 2020s the village only has one shop which since 2005 has been run by the community, as well as a pub called The Old Bowling Green. 

Winster also has another amenity of note, its old market house. Winster Market House sits part way along the main road through the village. It is a squat building to the side of the road, on the left if you approach from Matlock, the right if you approach from further into the Peak District.

This distinctive structure consisting of redbricks on a limestone base is unusual in the eastern Midlands. Rather it recalls the kind of Early Modern market halls, typically primarily made from wood found in southern and western parts of the region like those in Bridgnorth, Shrewsbury, Much Wenlock, Ledbury and Evesham.

Winster Market House was commissioned by the lord of the manor who controlled the village in 1570, making it of comparable vintage to similar structures in other parts of the village. It was completed in the following years and was a place from which agricultural produce from the surrounding area was marketed and traded for around 300 years.

At some point in the early 19th Century the base of the building, which had been open to allow for passers by to see where trading was taking place, was filled in, probably as a means of trying to attract potential tenants for the structure as a shop or storehouse. An indicating that the sale of agricultural produce in Winster from the Market House was waning.

Then in the 1870s the combined effects of the tendency towards the centralisation of exchange and distribution and a prolonged economic downturn in British agriculture meant that use of the building tailed off. After this Winster Market House stood on the village’s high street largely unused and decaying for around a generation.

During these years the Market House, which had always been in various forms of private ownership, rather than communal property, passed into the hands of Joseph Greatorex the then landlord of the Bowling Green pub. 

In 1906 Joseph Greatorex agreed to sell the dilapidated structure to a conservation charity formed a little over a decade earlier in 1895 called the National Trust. They paid him fifty pounds for the structure. Not a huge amount of money for high street property even amidst the conditions of rural economic depression which prevailed at the time. Though it was nowhere near as cheaply acquired as Alfriston Clergy House in East Sussex, the National Trust’s first ever historic building obtained for ten pounds in 1896.

Winster Market House was amongst the first sites to be acquired for the National Trust in the Midlands. Today the charity is primarily known for its stately homes, parkland and gardens. But saving these kinds of structures was never its founders chief intention, rather they were interested in beautiful spaces, and more quotidian structures associated with people’s day-to-day lives in the past, like Winster Market House. 

In recent years the National Trust having veered towards country houses during the 20th Century has made notable strides towards once again focusing upon conserving sites with nature significance and important to understanding the everyday past. However, it is sites like Winster Market House, amongst the first that the National Trust ever acquired in the Midlands which show that these strands of work has always been the core of the organisation’s purpose, and are undoubtedly its most important.

Route Notes

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

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This circular walk from Matlock to Winster, home of Winster Market House, one of the National Trust’s earliest acquisitions, begins from Matlock Railway Station.

Upon exiting Matlock Railway Station head up onto a footbridge leading towards Matlock’s big Sainsbury’s. 

At the end of the footbridge turn left, walking along a terrace, and then head right across a bridge carrying a lane over the Matlock to Ambergate branch line. From the bridge there is an excellent view south east towards the hilltop upon which Riber Castle, built by Matlock Bath businessman and hype guy John Smedley in the mid-19th Century looms over the town. It was recently restored as flats after decades of dereliction.

On the far side of the bridge you pick up the Limestone Way, a long distance footpath from Rocester to Castleton, taking in some of the best geological, historical and natural features in the Peak District’s limestone south.

Follow the Limestone Way uphill out of Matlock Dale, there are spectacular views back across the valley towards the town.

You continue up the steep hillside, to the left you see the top of the jagged limestone High Tor cliff next to Matlock Bath rising high above the River Derwent gorge.

Carry on uphill the views behind you into Matlock Dale expand, and the eastern flank of the Peak District appears to the right.

Presently you reach a network of lanes which carries you across the top of the central Peak District’s limestone plateau. As you walk you cross the boundary into the Peak District National Park. Generally the drivers I encountered while walking the lanes were careful around walkers, but take care on this stretch.

After some distance you pick up the Limestone Way once more, heading across sheep pastures towards the edge of the dale where Winster lies.

As you head towards the edge of the dale there are spectacular views into the heart of the Peak District.

Then you descend to the left in a steady straight line down towards the old stone houses of Winster.

Upon reaching the villages you pass through some townlands and allotments, past a community managed public toilet, and The Old Bowling Green pub to meet the main road.

Here immediately on your right stands the limestone and old redbrick Winster Market House constructed in the late 16th Century. It has been in the ownership and care of the National Trust since 1906 making it one of the longest standing properties in the Midlands in their care. 

Winster as a whole is a great example of a preserved – once bustling – lead mining village, with many large, solid, interestingly old limestone buildings, besides the Market House, which repay some exploration.

There are buses six times a day (at the time of writing in February 2025) between Winster and Matlock and Bakewell Monday – Saturday, so it is possible to finish the walk in the village.

Following the road out of the village to the right, heading past the Market House, carefully negotiate a tricky stretch of road before following a footpath waymark on the left, out into a field.

Head down towards the bottom of the dale, following the path through a sheep pasture beside a brook. 

Soon the path runs into woodland, and becomes very muddy and churned up underfoot, due to how wet the valley floor is beside the brook.

At a junction where a modern metallic factory chimney looms on the horizon in front of you, turn right and follow a footpath up a steep green lane through woodland.

At the top you descend past what looks like a nuclear bunker transformed into a holiday home, down to the little village of Wensley perched high above Matlock.

Going around the village a path leads you down through pasture in what is – perhaps confusingly for anybody who knows the Yorkshire Dales or cheese – called Wensley Dale.

You head straight down the dale past jagged limestone formations until you reach open fields running down to the River Derwent.

Approaching a lane you turn left, then upon exiting onto the footpath turn right to pick up a path towards the River Derwent.

Upon reaching the River Derwent, the major tributary of the Trent in this part of Derbyshire, turn right and follow the path back into central Matlock.

Along the way you pass the modern ruins of a quarry and pass beneath a viaduct carrying the Peak Rail heritage line across the Derwent.

Presently the path emerges opposite Matlock Railway Station right in the heart of the town.

This is where the walk ends.

Getting Back

Matlock (at the time of writing in February 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.