Barlow looks across a green valley to the slopes of Monk Wood, and has a little aisleless church both old and new. It has been here over eight centuries and has Norman work in the lofty doorway within the porch, sheltering an old oak door, and in a deeply splayed window in the north wall of the nave.
A rare possession is the tiny Norman piscina found last century and now built into an east wall. The 14th century builders made the porch, near which is an outside stairway which once led to a gallery over the little chapel, and in fact two of their windows still remain. The 19th century chancel was intended to be in keeping with the ancient church.
Buried here is Robert Barlow, who died in 1532 not long after he married Bess of Hardwick when he was very young and she was only 14. He was the first of her four husbands and left her large estates.
A Well Dressing Festival is held at Barlow every year in August, and the ceremony here is said to be over 200 years old. In fact Barlow has probably dressed its main well longer than any other well outside the limestone area.
As at Tissington, the well provided water through the 1615 drought, and one theory is that the dressings began as a thanks-offering. Others think the custom may be as old as the annual feast celebrating St Lawrence's Day (the patronal festival of the village church) has been observed since at least Elizabeth I reign, as the earliest church register of 1572 testifies.
