|
At nearly 1000 feet above sea-level in a land of stone-walled fields, Litton has old limestone dwellings on a road graced by little greens. On one of these are the square steps of an ancient cross with a modern pillar, and at one end of the village is a small church with just a nave and chancel. The village has little else, but its name has travelled far, for it was the home of the ancestors of the Earl of Lytton.
A farmhouse stands on the site of their old home, which was in Charles I’s day the birthplace of William Bagshawe, the Apostle of the Peak, the great Nonconformist who is buried at Chapel-en-le Frith.
The rocky ravine of Ltton Dale leads down from the village to Tideswell Dale, which ends at Millers Dale, a lovely stretch of the Wye embosomed in sheer cliffs and hanging woods. Here is Litton Mill, gladdened today with flowered cottages and gardens, but with memories of the bad old days of more than a century ago when terrible cruelty to the pauper apprentices sent many of them to an early grave in Tideswell churchyard.
Cressbrook Mill, farther down the river, belonged to William Newton, the Minstrel of the Peak, and conditions there under this carpenter-poet were much better.
|
