The fish and chip shop is an octagonal stone building put up in 1840 as a toll house, and it is the only Grade II listed chip shop in the country. The stonemason, William Morton, built it octagonal on purpose, to echo the shape of the church up the road. It cost £144. A chip shop moved in in 1926, and it has been frying ever since — Herbert Ford, then Elenor Hall until 1970, then Barry Ridgeway, who cooked in ground-nut oil, and since 2010 Wayne and Rachel Jagger, who won a Best Fish and Chip Shop award in 2014. It is a tiny place, much loved by walkers coming off the dale.
The village sits at the foot of Middleton Dale, a limestone gorge on the A623, with cliffs rising straight up above the houses. One building, Lovers Leap, is built onto the rock itself. It takes its name from Hannah Baddeley, who in 1762 threw herself off the cliff after being jilted and was saved when her petticoats caught in the brambles. She survived with cuts and bruises and died two years later of natural causes, still unmarried.
The Moon Inn is the last pub left. It's a freehouse with rooms, run now by the former landlord's three grown-up children after he passed away. The menu is homemade pub classics, pizzas, chargrilled steaks, burgers, pies and seafood, with Sunday roasts from local ingredients and a specials board that changes. Reviewers keep mentioning the steak and onion rolls. There are gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan options, an ever-changing choice of real ales, and a large enclosed beer garden. Dogs are welcome and turn up often. One TripAdvisor headline calls it the best pub in the Peak District.
Down in the Old Corn Mill, William Lennon & Co has been making heavy leather boots since 1904. It's a fourth-generation family firm and the only heavy-duty leather boot maker left in England. The village once had four boot factories; by the heritage society's account, Lennon's "can truly be said to be the 'sole' survivors of this village tradition."
St Martin's Church has a 15th-century tower and an octagonal nave, rebuilt in 1759 by James Paine after a fire two years earlier. All the pews face the centre. Pevsner called it "a rarity, if not a visually very satisfying one," and grumbled that the lantern roof sits almost as high as the tower. The original church is said to have been built by Joan Eyre to mark her husband's safe return from Agincourt.
For walking, the Coombs Dale circular runs about 4.75 miles out to Black Harry Gate, once the patch of a highwayman, and back by lanes and field paths through a quiet limestone dale. Eyam, the plague village that quarantined itself in 1665, is a mile away; during the outbreak Stoney Middleton left food for its neighbours.
Grindleford station is three miles off on the Hope Valley line, with the number 65 bus covering the gap in about seventeen minutes. Bakewell is a quarter of an hour by car.
Every summer the village dresses its well with flowers and leaves, a thanksgiving for the warm spring, as it has done since before anyone was counting.
