Hassop

The station's second life

Hassop Station stopped taking passengers in 1964, which is normally the end of the story for a village railway. Here the 1863 station building was restored instead, and now it holds an award-winning café, an independent bookshop and a gift shop, with the platform opening straight onto the Monsal Trail. On Friday and Saturday evenings, and through the school holidays, a pizza truck fires up outside and makes wood-fired pizzas by hand. The café runs breakfast through to dinner, sources locally where it can, and keeps proper vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free options rather than a token line at the bottom of the menu. It's open nine to five most days, later at weekends.

The station is really the centre of things now. There's a children's play area, a large cycle-hire fleet — adult and junior bikes, baby seats, trailers, e-bikes, plus servicing and repairs — and the Monsal Trail itself, 8.5 miles of flat, traffic-free former railway through limestone dales and lit tunnels. Walk or cycle it three or four miles and you reach the Headstone Viaduct and Monsal Head; Bakewell is about four miles the other way. It is, without much argument, a good week's base for a family with small children.

Derbyshire at the Old Eyre Arms

The village pub is the Old Eyre Arms, out on the B6001. It began as a farmstead in 1632 and had become a public house by 1753, taking its name from the Eyre family of Hassop Hall. The kitchen leans hard into Derbyshire produce: rabbit pie, venison, chicken Hartington stuffed with Stilton, Derbyshire oatcake wraps, roast topside for Sunday lunch, and a homemade Bakewell pudding to finish. There's also braised beef cheek suet pudding, duck with savoy cabbage and dauphine potatoes, and potted mackerel with celeriac remoulade. It rates 4.2 on Tripadvisor and sits 25th of 78 restaurants around Bakewell; reviewers call the food far superior to other pubs in the area, and a little pricey. Both things are usually true at once.

A Greek temple in sandstone

The church is the surprise. All Saints is Roman Catholic, Grade I listed, built in 1816–17 by Joseph Ireland for Francis Eyre, and it has the appearance of a Greek temple — sandstone, a Tuscan Doric portico, modelled in spirit on Inigo Jones's St Paul's in Covent Garden. Pevsner describes the Baroque altar and reredos as "rather wild." Few of Ireland's Catholic churches survive, which makes this one worth the look inside.

The Eyres and Hassop Hall

The Eyres arrived in 1498 and stayed, recusant Catholics through the centuries when that was a difficult thing to be. They garrisoned Hassop Hall for the king in the Civil War, and after the Parliamentarians won, Rowland Eyre had to pay £21,000 to get the sequestered estate back. The Hall, Grade II* listed, was a hotel from 1975 until 2019 and is now a private house again.

Lead mines and Highland cattle

Hassop grew up around lead mines with names like The Brightside, Backdale, Harry Bruce, Waterhole and Whitecoe, worked until the mid-nineteenth century. The mines are long gone. What you'll actually meet on the Baslow circular is the Highland cattle grazing Hassop Common — walkers are advised to keep their distance, and the cattle seem content to let them.