The Queen Anne Inn has held a licence for over three hundred years, and the names of every landlord across that span are known. It dates from 1621, has log burners in stone fireplaces, and runs a short home-cooked menu: Thai fishcake or duck pancakes with hoisin to start, then beef rendang, steak and ale pie, or a brie and beetroot tart. The breakfast gets particular praise. One reviewer called it "a pub with well kept beer and good food both at sensible prices with often interesting specials on the board," which is about as much as you can ask of a village pub. The current landlord is Glyn; Angela has welcomed guests here for years.
There is a beer garden, an ever-changing range of cask ales, and dogs are the sort of clientele the place is used to. This is walkers' country, and the Queen Anne knows it.
A mile above the village, up at Bretton, is the Barrel Inn, which claims to be the highest pub in Derbyshire. It was built in 1597 and sits around 1,300 feet up at the head of Bretton Clough — stone-flag floors, oak beams, nail-studded doors, and a beer garden famed for its views across the White Peak. The kitchen does steak and ale pie, pan-fried liver and onions, cod loin, and a forager's pie for the vegetarians. It stands on a medieval bridle path that once carried Cheshire salt to Sheffield.
Beyond the two pubs, the village keeps things minimal. There are no shops to speak of — provisions come from Tideswell, Bradwell or Eyam, a few miles off in each direction. What Great Hucklow has instead is footpaths, and a great many of them.
The walk to Eyam is an easy two and a half miles through rolling dales to the famous Plague Village, with its museum and 12th-century church. For something harder, the Abney Moor and Bretton Clough circular climbs onto gritstone moor scarred by ancient landslides, then drops steeply into the clough. The path up Hucklow Edge is worth it for the contrast: one reviewer records "fine views both left (gritstone Bretton Clough and Stanage Edge) and right (limestone Foolow, Wardlow and Longstone Edge)." The village sits on the seam between the Dark Peak and the White, and you can see both from the ridge.
Above the village, on the Camphill plateau, is a gliding club. The Derbyshire and Lancashire Gliding Club offers trial flights from a hilltop airfield that hosted the World Gliding Championships in 1954; its height-gain record stands near 19,000 feet.
The name means Hucca's burial mound, and people have lived here since the Iron Age hillfort at Burr Tor. For seven centuries this was lead-mining country — one shaft nearby runs over 600 feet deep. In 1927 a local playwright, L. du Garde Peach, founded the Great Hucklow Village Players, who converted a disused lead-mining cupola into a 250-seat theatre and drew audiences from across the country. Peach cast strictly on merit and left the actors' names off the programmes.
The village is twinned with Parisot, in south-west France, which is a long way to go for a settlement whose core holds around a hundred people.
