Great Longstone

Where water meets the ridge

On the main street there is a restored vintage petrol pump that no longer sells petrol. A little further along stand a pair of conjoined stone water troughs, fed by springs that emerge where limestone meets shale. That junction is the reason the village exists at all — the water surfaces here and nowhere obvious nearby, so people settled where the water was.

Great Longstone sits beneath Longstone Edge, a limestone ridge that rises to about 1,300 feet. The village has two pubs, a shop, a church, and a market cross, which for a place of 843 people is a decent haul.

Two inns, two village stories

The Crispin is named after St Crispin, the patron saint of shoemakers, a nod to an 18th-century shoemaking trade that has otherwise left no trace. It's a Robinsons house on Main Street with roaring open fires and a seasonal menu that changes often — homemade pies, fish pie, dressed crab, lamb shank, steaks from the local butcher, and fish and chips with mushy peas. It's closed on Mondays, bank holidays excepted. There's a beer garden round a sunny corner.

The White Lion, a few doors down, is a 17th-century coaching inn run by Libby and Greg Robinson since 2009. The menu changes monthly and includes their "famous Beef Pie" and pizzas from a proper pizza oven. Dogs get blankets and biscuits. Children get a "Little Lions" menu with a free scoop of ice cream, and there's a park at the top of the car park to work it off.

Provisions and a carved working past

The village shop is Sally Brown's. After sending customers a questionnaire, she now stocks bread, scones, pork pies, pasties, oatcakes, cooked meats and traditional sweets — the list you get when you ask people what they actually want.

St Giles' Church has a 13th-century core and a medieval oak roof carved with lead miners and milk-maids, which is to say the building keeps a record of the two things people here used to do. Richard Norman Shaw restored it in 1873, designing the stained glass himself. There's a chantry chapel built for the Eyre family, who were Roman Catholics, and a medieval cross in the churchyard.

Old rails and onward roads

The walking is the main event. Monsal Head is about five minutes away, with a drop over the Wye valley and its viaduct. The Monsal Trail runs close by — 8.5 traffic-free miles along a former railway trackbed toward Bakewell and Chee Dale. The old station closed in 1962 and is now someone's house. Longstone Edge itself is the largest limestone heathland in the Peak District, scattered with Bronze Age barrows and the ruins of lead mines with names like Cackle Mackle. Little Longstone, Rowland, Hassop and Ashford-in-the-Water are all within a walk.

Bakewell is three miles off, under ten minutes by car. There's no station, so you'll want the car, though buses do run.

Cricket and wells in summer

Cricket has been played on the Recreation Ground since 1874, without a break except for the war years. In mid-July the village dresses its wells, the school's one sitting on the green facing Main Street, where anyone passing can see it.