Ashford-in-the-Water

The bridge and the river loop

Sheepwash Bridge is a low packhorse bridge with three shallow arches and a walled stone pen attached to one side. The pen is a sheepwash: lambs were held on one bank while the ewes swam across, then the ewes were pushed under to clean their fleece before shearing. It is 17th-century, listed Grade II* and a Scheduled Monument, and VisitEngland named it the best spot in the country to play Poohsticks. It is also, according to VisitEngland and Countryfile, said to be the most photographed bridge in England. Stand on it for a minute and you'll see why people stop — and you'll probably see the trout, which grow large in the Wye around here.

The river is the point of the place. The village sits in a loop of the Wye about two miles north-west of Bakewell, which is where the "in-the-Water" comes from — it was added in the late 17th century for the way the meanders wrap around it. The rest of the name is older and more literal: the ford where the ash trees grow.

Two inns on Church Street

Church Street has both pubs. The Ashford Arms is a 17th-century building, once owned by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, which closed in 2020 and reopened in March 2024 after a £1.6m refurbishment under Rob Hattersley's Longbow group. It serves breakfast, lunch, dinner, Sunday roast and afternoon tea, and says 90% of the menu can be made gluten-free. It has nine bedrooms and was named among TripAdvisor's top 1% of restaurants worldwide in 2025. Well-behaved dogs get the bar, the beer garden and a water bowl, though not the rooms.

A few doors along is the Bull's Head, a 17th-century coaching inn and a Robinsons house, so the cask ales are theirs. Classic pub food, and a fixture in Countryfile's write-up of the village.

Garlands and black marble

Holy Trinity has a west tower from around 1205 and a Norman tympanum over the south door carved with a wild boar. Its unusual possession is a set of maidens' garlands — "virgin crants," the funeral wreaths Shakespeare names in Hamlet. Each is a wooden frame hung with white paper rosettes and a glove or handkerchief bearing the dead girl's name and age. Seven once hung here; four survive under perspex, the oldest for Anne Howard, who died in 1747 aged twenty-one.

The village had a signature industry once: Ashford Black Marble, a dark limestone cut, polished and inlaid into ornaments. The works ran until 1905, and the main site now lies buried under the A6, which mercifully bypasses the village.

Walking beyond the village

For walking, the circular up to Monsal Head and over the viaduct is about six miles, dropping back through woodland beside the Wye. The Bakewell round is a similar distance. There's no station; buses run the A6 corridor between Bakewell and Buxton, and Bakewell itself is two miles for the pudding and the market.

Petals, cricket and a riverside memorial

Near Trinity Sunday the village dresses six wells with boards of petals and leaves. On the green by the old bridge is the cricket ground, and a stone reading "M Hyde 1664" — a Vicar of Bakewell thrown from his horse and drowned in the river below.