Great Longstone
| Great Longstone | |
| Derbyshire | |
|---|---|
 Main Street, Great Longstone | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SK190717 |
| Location: | 53°14’33"N, 1°42’3"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 843 (2011) |
| Post town: | Bakewell |
| Postcode: | DE45 |
| Dialling code: | 01629 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Derbyshire Dales |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
High Peak |
Great Longstone is a village in Derbyshire, in the Peak District to the north of Bakewell and east of Monsal Dale. Beside it, running off to the west, is its tiny sister village, Little Longstone.
The population of Great Longstone, counted together with Hassop and Rowland, at the 2011 Census was 843.
Parish church
The parish church in the village is St Giles' Church, which dates from the 13th century.
A mediæval standing cross stands in the churchyard, and the head of a cross is built into the wall of the vestry.[1]
History
Great Longstone appears as Longsdune in the Domesday Book of 1086. It is recorded as belonging to Henry de Ferrers and being worth thirty shillings.
The manors of Great and Little Longstone passed through many hands over the years. Walter Blount, Lord Mountjoy, was Lord of the Manor on his death in 1474, when the lordship passed to Robert Shakerley and his wife Margaret, daughter and heiress of Roger Levett.[2] The two families' arms adorn the church of St Giles. In subsequent years, Shakerley descendants sold the manor to Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury, the famous lady known as Bess of Hardwick.
The manor house, Longstone Hall, has its origins in the fourteenth century, but the current house was rebuilt in the mid-18th century. That century was one of prosperity, with lead-mining and shoemaking.
About the village
There are two public houses in the main village: The Crispin Inn, named after St Crispin, the patron saint of shoemakers, and The White Lion.
A market cross stands on the village green.
Little Longstone, further west, has a 17th-century manor house and still has its village stocks.
To the north is Longstone Edge, a limestone ridge some 1,300 feet in height, on an upfolding of the Derbyshire limestone known as the Longstone Anticline. It has been, and is, intensively quarried for galena, fluorspar, barytes and, more controversially, limestone. Since Longstone Edge is a noted beauty spot and is within the Peak District National Park there is strong local pressure for quarrying to stop altogether. Some of the quarrying is strictly controlled by the Peak District National Park Authority, which has been conducting a lengthy legal battle to try to stop other quarries that are operating outside the authority's guidelines. Further north is the White Cliff, where the exposed limestone contains fossilised corals.
There are four Sites of Special Scientific Interest wholly or partly in the parish: the largest is Longstone Moor, rising to approximately 1,296 feet above sea level to the north-west of Longstone Edge. The moor is described by Natural England as "the largest example of limestone heathland in the Peak District National Park" and "the best of only a very few remaining areas of this unusual type of vegetation". It is considered to be of "particular importance" for its lichens, including Centraria islandica, rare in the Peak District and in lowland Britain in general.[3]
Within the confines of the moor are three scheduled monuments, namely the remains of Cackle Mackle Lead Mine[4] and two bowl barrows.[5][6]
In the far west of the parish, Cressbrook Dale is also a esignated 'site of special scientific interest'.[7]
In the north-east, the southern bank of Coombs Dale falls within the parish boundary; among its notable species are woolly thistle]] Cirsium eriophorum, rare in Derbyshire, limestone fern Gymnocarpium robertianum and the rare fingered sedge Carex digitata.[8]
There was a railway station in the village, built by the Midland Railway in 1863 when it extended the Manchester, Buxton, Matlock and Midlands Junction Railway towards Buxton. Originally known as "Longstone", in 1913 it was renamed "Great Longstone for Ashford" (Ashford-in-the-Water). It closed in 1962, but the building, designed to match the nearby Thornbridge Hall, survives as a domestic residence, and the trackbed through the station is part of the eight and a half mile Monsal Trail, a walking path and cycleway.
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Great Longstone) |
- "Stop destroying my Peak District", Roy Hattersley, The Observer, 27 March 2005
- Great Longstone Village
References
- ↑ Neville T. Sharpe, Crosses of the Peak District (Landmark Collectors Library, 2002)
- ↑ General history: Gentry families of uncertain surviva: Magna Britannia, Vol. 5, 1817
- ↑ SSSI listing and designation for Longstone Moor
- ↑ National Heritage List 1017754: Cackle Mackle and Stadford Hollow lead mines on Longstone Moor (Scheduled ancient monument entry)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1010801: Bowl barrow on Longstone Moor (Scheduled ancient monument entry)
- ↑ National Heritage List 1008770: Bowl barrow on Longstone Moor (Scheduled ancient monument entry)
- ↑ SSSI listing and designation for Cressbrook Dale
- ↑ SSSI listing and designation for Coombs Dale
