Hayfield

Acclaimed Kitchens and Walkers' Pubs

The Pack Horse sits at 3–5 Market Street and serves modern seasonal British food. It appears in the Michelin Guide, Good Food Guide and Top 50 Gastropubs, giving Hayfield a standout village kitchen.

The Sportsman Inn on Kinder Road is a walkers' inn with rooms and a terraced beer garden near the Pennine Way trailhead. It serves homemade food, including steak, beer-battered fresh haddock and chips and Sunday roasts, alongside traditional cask ales, rotating guests and a wide whisky range. Well-behaved dogs on leads are welcome in the bar.

Village Shops and Stone Streets

Hayfield once had seventeen pubs, dozens of small shops and a gas works. The village has a handful of shops, including a chemist, post office, grocers, and a popular art gallery and gift shop.

Hayfield's stone-built centre sits beside the River Sett and cricket ground, with streets leading towards the foot of Kinder Scout.

Arthur Lowe and Paths to the Moor

Hayfield Cricket Club plays beside the River Sett. When the club needed £5,000 to buy its ground, Arthur Lowe helped raise it. Lowe, who played Captain Mainwaring in Dad's Army, was born in the village in 1915, and a blue plaque marks the spot.

Walking draws most visitors. Kinder Scout rises straight from the village, and the classic ascent runs about nine miles past Bowden Bridge and Kinder Reservoir to the 2,088ft plateau and Kinder Downfall. The flatter Sett Valley Trail follows a two-and-a-half-mile former railway line to New Mills. Walkers and buggies can use the full trail; cyclists and horse-riders can use it east of St George’s Road, New Mills. Lantern Pike is a steadier climb with wide views over Kinder, with rocky and muddy ground in places.

The Mass Trespass and Older Hayfield

On 24 April 1932, hundreds set off from Bowden Bridge Quarry, led by twenty-year-old Benny Rothman, to assert the right to roam. The Kinder Scout Mass Trespass helped lead to the 1949 National Parks legislation and the Pennine Way. An 8-mile circular now starts at Bowden Bridge car park and follows the walkers’ route. Rothman returned at seventy to unveil the plaque.

The village is older than any of this. Domesday recorded it as "Hedfeld," a clearing in forest on a packhorse route between Cheshire and Yorkshire. St Matthew's was rebuilt in 1817–1818 on foundations from 1386; its tower was built in 1793, and the crypt contains bases and part-columns from the earlier church.

Connections, Reservoir and Well Dressing

New Mills is about three miles away, with High Peak 61 buses stopping at the bus station in the trail car park. Kinder Reservoir was completed in 1912, helping to tame the flooding that used to plague the village. Annual well dressing remains a village tradition.