A University of York research project looking at pilgrimages defines the concept as ‘a wide-ranging topic touching on many aspects of human existence, signifying not only a physical journey to a special place, but also an inner spiritual journey.’
It notes ‘Pilgrimage is important in history, literature, art, architecture and social anthropology, as well as religion and spirituality.’
July is very much the time for pilgrimages in Derbyshire, with three events held. All form lesser-known dates on the county’s calendar of annual traditions and are otherwise unconnected.
On the first Sunday of July, in a stone barn at the remote Alport Castles Farm off the A57 Snake Pass road, an obscure ceremony is held - the Love Feast.
Whilst this may suggest some kind of 1960s communal free love style experience, the actuality is far different, consisting of a simple Methodist service held within the barn.
Attendees sit on rustic wooden benches, sing unaccompanied hymns and offer testimonies. A two-handled ‘loving cup’ containing spring water is passed around alongside a communal fruit cake.
When I was granted permission to attend and document The Love Feast in 2019 the majority had arrived by car, although at least one had come on foot, walking over moorland paths from the residential Quaker community at Bamford.
Another two worshippers came from Rugby, Warwickshire, although they were on holiday in the Peak District at the time.
The Skelton family are the owners of Alport Castles Farm and thus current custodians of the tradition.
Judy Skelton has admirably embraced this role, amassing a wealth of reminiscences and wonderful photographic material which she has shared online at woodlandschapel.wordpress.com. Some was also exhibited in a display about the Love Feast at The Angler’s Rest, Bamford, in 2018.
Another interesting claim to fame for Alport Castles Farm is that it was the birthplace of Suffragette, social justice campaigner and magistrate Hannah Mitchell (née Webster) (1872 – 1956).
One of six children, Mitchell did not get on with her mother - a bad-tempered woman who sometimes forced her children to sleep in the barn - and left home at 14 after an argument to live with her brother in Glossop.
In her autobiography The Hard Way Up Mitchell recalled the annual influx of visitors for The Love Feast when she was growing up on the farm.
‘This event was much thought of in the neighbourhood and indeed in many places much further afield. […] On Sunday morning we rose early, for by nine o’clock the worshippers began to arrive, mostly on foot, as the big coaches from the distant towns had to be left at the end of the narrow lane. Groups of twenty or thirty arriving in this isolated spot seemed a multitude to us, who rarely saw a stranger from one year’s end to another’.
The first Sunday of July is also the date for the Sherwood Foresters annual pilgrimage to Crich Stand (also known as ‘Stand Sunday’), an opportunity for members of the regiment both old and new to meet and pay respects to comrades killed in battle.
After the First World War the regiment desired a suitable memorial to commemorate the considerable number of their members who had perished in the conflict.
It was General Sir Horace Lockwood Smith-Dorrien who struck on the idea of a structure which would be visible from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, from whence the regiment’s membership was drawn.
Crich Hill was subsequently selected. One who relished this view was D H Lawrence, who wrote from Italy in 1926 to friend Rolf Gardiner, ‘go to Eastwood, where I was born, and lived for my first 21 years. Go to Walker St - and stand in front of the third house - and look across at Crich on the left […] – I lived in that house from the age of 6 to 18, and I know that view better than any in the world.’
The character Paul Morel leads a rambling party to ‘the famous Crich Stand that [he] could see from his garden at home’ in Lawrence’s heavily autobiographical novel Sons and Lovers.
There had been a series of landmarks on the prominent crest of the hill; the first believed to have been a wooden one constructed to mark King George III’s accession to the throne in 1760.
It was replaced in 1788 by a conical limestone tower with viewing balcony, but had fallen into disrepair by 1843.
It was followed by a gritstone tower but was subject to damage from repeated landslides in the nearby quarry and lightning strikes, and this iteration (the one Lawrence remembered from childhood) was replaced by the current Crich Stand, opened on August 6 1923. The annual regimental pilgrimages have taken place annually since.
An important presence on the day is the regimental mascot, a Swaledale ram presented by the Duke of Devonshire from his flock at Chatsworth.
Since 2007, the Sherwood Foresters have been part of the wider Mercian Regiment, and Crich Stand has been re-dedicated as a memorial to fallen members in conflicts which have taken place since the First World War.
The third July Derbyshire pilgrimage is held to commemorate the Padley Martyrs. Their story takes place in the febrile atmosphere of late 16th century Britain where, against the threat of a Spanish Catholic-led invasion of the country, it was treasonous to have been trained as a Catholic priest abroad.
At this time Padley Manor, near Grindleford, was home of the Fitzherberts, a devout Catholic family who refused to attend Church of England services.
It was knowledge of this defiance that led in 1588 to the hall being raided, with two itinerant foreign-trained Catholic priests discovered hiding within the walls - Nicholas Garlick (born c1555 at Dinting near Glossop and formerly a schoolmaster at Tideswell) and Robert Ludlum (born c1551 at either Whirlow on the outskirts of Sheffield, or Radbourne near Derby).
The priests were tried at Derby on July 23 1588, found guilty of treason, and hung, drawn and quartered the following day on St Mary’s Bridge.
Padley Manor was seized by the Crown but subsequently returned to the Fitzherbert family. However, because of debts accrued it was sold and from the mid-17th century began to fall into a ruinous state.
The building now known as Padley Chapel was formerly the gatehouse to the hall, which survived into the 20th century intact, used as a barn to keep cattle in.
In 1931 it was purchased by Charles Payne of the Diocese of Nottingham and converted into a chapel, with stained glass windows depicting the martyred priests installed.
Since 1898 the Padley Pilgrimage has been held on the Sunday nearest to July 12 (the date in 1588 when the priests were discovered) to remember the priests and the fates they encountered because of their religious beliefs.
Participants meet at Grindleford Railway Station before a short walk to the former site of Padley Hall, parking themselves amongst the foundation stones of the ruined building and listening to an open-air sermon.
In Derbyshire, two new pilgrimage routes have been created in recent years, which can be undertaken all year round.
In 2015 Eyam church devised the Peak Pilgrimage which begins in Ilam and wends its way through the White Peak countryside, culminating 39 miles on at Eyam.
This initiative was followed in 2021 by the Hope Pilgrimage (billed as ‘slightly shorter and much hillier than its older sister’).
Would-be pilgrims can buy copies of guidebooks for both routes from peakpilgrimage.org.uk and get them stamped with a special stamp at each church along the routes.
