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Hassop, sheltered under Longstone Edge, charming with its cluster of pretty houses, its great house,and a fine Roman Catholic church.
For centuries the home of the Eyres, it has seen the waxing and waning of the splendour of this family, once with 20 manors in the country and 20,000 acres in Derbyshire. They built the Hall, set in a noble park with a fine lake, in the late 17th century.
A mighty chestnut and a giant beech are among the splendid trees guarding the gates to the drive enclosed by an ivy-covered wall and a high yew hedge.
The Eyres garrisoned their house for Charles I, fighting the Parliamentarians at its gates. One of them won distinction at the seige of Newark, and later had to pay £21,000 to redeem his estates. One married Lady Mary Radcliffe, whose father and his brother (the Earl of Derwentwater) were also friends of the Stuarts, both being captured at Preston (Lancashire) in 1715, when the earl was beheaded.
Charles Radcliffe excaped from Newgate, only to be taken off the Dogger Bank in 1745, when he too was beheaded. It was through Mary Radcliffe that the Eyres were for 40 years Earls of Newburgh, and one of them built the Roman Catholic church, in a classical style like a little temple, just after Waterloo.
On the Italian baroque altarpiece is a fine painting of the Crucifixion by Lodovico Carracci.
Hassop Hall is now a fine hotel and the Catholic Church featured in an episode of the popular TV programme 'Peak Practice'.
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