The weathervane on the church spire is a locust. It is there because the church is dedicated to St John the Baptist, who survived on locusts and honey, and someone decided the detail was worth honouring in gritstone. Harry Swindell, a local farmer-poet, wrote of it: "No matter which way he points, / We know he must be right."
That spire belongs to the Church of St John the Baptist, and at roughly 1,200 feet it is the highest spired church in Derbyshire, sometimes billed as the highest in England. The Elizabethan porch is reputedly built from re-used coffin lids. Inside is the Chelmorton Tapestry, an eight-year embroidery project that runs the village's story from prehistory to now.
Opposite the church, at the top of the village, is the Church Inn. It claims to be the highest pub in Derbyshire, and it started life as the Blacksmith's Arms before being renamed in 1884. Justin and Julie Satur run it. There are five cask ales, roaring fires in winter, a pub quiz most Mondays, and a south-facing garden that catches the sun.
The kitchen does home-cooked English, Continental and "World" dishes, plus fish, vegetarian options and salads, with daily specials and puddings. Food runs midday to half-two and six to half-eight through the week, and midday to nine at weekends. It is CAMRA-listed and well regarded for feeding walkers at fair prices. The pub is also said to be haunted by a blacksmith's daughter and granddaughter, which is a lot of blacksmith for one building.
There is no shop. The village store, the post office, the school and the Primitive Methodist chapel have all closed. What remains is one street with farms strung along it, and thirteen long walled strip fields fanning out from that street — a near-unaltered fossil of the medieval open-field system, preserved mostly because the land was too poor to be worth reorganising.
Running down the same street is Illy Willy Water, a stream rising from a spring at the foot of Chelmorton Low. It emerges just above the church, runs down through the village, and disappears into a swallet hole at Town End known locally as Chelmorton Docks. It once fed a line of seven stone troughs. Two survive.
The walking is the reason to be here. The Deep Dale circular, about 4.3 miles, takes the Midshires Way north-west from the Church Inn into a dry limestone dale of rocky staircases, scree and swallet holes. Shorter field paths cross to Flagg, and the village's walled tracks link to the flat, traffic-free Monsal Trail. Up on Taddington Moor sits the Five Wells chambered tomb, a Neolithic cairn reputed to be the highest megalithic tomb in Britain; the antiquarian Thomas Bateman dug into it in 1846 and found the remains of at least twelve people.
You will want a car. Buxton and its spa-town comforts are about four and a half miles off; Bakewell is eight. The buses are the kind best described as limited.
Even the telephone box is built of stone.
