Alport

Where the Rivers Meet

Two rivers meet at Alport. The Lathkill comes down its dale from the north and the Bradford runs in from Youlgreave, and they join in the middle of the hamlet before flowing east towards the Wye and the Derwent. Both are limestone-clear — you can count the stones on the bottom — and the sound of them is the loudest thing here.

The Bradford is little over four miles long. The Haddon Estate owns and manages it, as it owns most of Alport, which has belonged to the Duke of Rutland for generations.

Bridges and Dale Walks

Cross the Bradford at Mill Bridge on Cliff Lane. The Grade II-listed stone bridge began as a narrow packhorse crossing and was later raised to carry the road. Alport Mill stands just beyond it.

The walking is the reason to be here. From the doorstep you can follow the Bradford upstream to Youlgreave or the Lathkill north to Conksbury, both gentle riverside meadow walks. For something longer, the Bradford Dale and Lathkill Dale circular runs between five and nearly nine miles depending on how you cut it, over paved lanes and rougher riverside paths that turn muddy when wet. One writer called it among the finest in the Peak National Park. Up the Lathkill towards Monyash is a five-mile route into a steep-sided limestone valley, and along the way the rivers hold brown trout, white-clawed crayfish, dippers and kingfishers. Bradford Dale also grows Jacob's Ladder, a rare wild plant.

Life Beyond the Hamlet

There is no pub. There was one — the Three Rivers Inn, Alport's only pub, which closed in 1924 and was demolished in 1937 to widen the road that now climbs towards the A6 and Buxton. Nothing has replaced it. Youlgreave, about a mile west, has shops and other village amenities.

The Industrial Valley

The quiet is deceptive. Alport was once an industrial centre with a lead-smelting mill, a paper mill, and sheds for weaving, dyeing and bleaching wool. The Alport smelt mill worked in the mid 19th century, and part of its chimney and flue system still stands on the wooded hillside. To drain the mines, the Hillcarr Sough was driven — four and a half miles of tunnel finished in 1787, reputed the largest ever dug in the country. Much of the industry has gone or survives only as ruins.

The stone corn mill by the river dates from the 18th century, though a mill site has been documented here since the 12th century. The building is now private and can be viewed from the adjacent bridge. It appeared in the 1970 film of D.H. Lawrence's *The Virgin and the Gypsy*.

A Hidden Gem

The Victorian travel writer James Croston called Alport, with its neighbours, one of the "hidden gems in the crown of a regal landscape." Monks Hall, the oldest house in the hamlet, still stands where a stream cascades down to the Bradford, which is where it has always gone.