There’s a dog-eared feel to Stanton Moor, but in a good way. It’s a much loved scrap of high country between Bakewell and Matlock, sacred ground in the neolithic and bronze ages, its geomantic potency derived from long views and its proximity to the confluence of the rivers Derwent and Wye. And it’s fairly sacred even now, after a fashion.
The moor is seamed with ancient structures, stone circles, ring cairns, burial sites and dwellings, so much so that Augustus Pitt Rivers, Britain’s first inspector of ancient monuments, included Stanton with the first 28 sites to be legally protected, in 1882. Most famous of all are the Nine Ladies, stones no more than a metre high sitting in a circle on the moor – a monument constructed about 4,000 years ago.
Even though, over the centuries, new additions, afforestation and quarrying have obscured or disturbed the ground, many visitors are eager to reach back and connect with the distant past. A youngish oak tree stands nearby, its branches, high and low, threaded with tokens and offerings, twig frames woven with brightly coloured wool and ribbon, wooden hearts and pieces of tinsel. Modern pagans, some earnest, others less so, are regular visitors, particularly at the time of the solstice.
Thirty metres or so from the Nine Ladies I stop by what is now called the King Stone, most likely the remnant of a ring cairn, a rough piece of gritstone set in the ground barely knee high. Carved into the rock are two symbols, a cross and a zero, and above them the words “Bill Stumps”.
Admirers of Charles Dickens will recognise Stumps as the roguish antiquarian who cons Mr Pickwick. No one knows for sure who defaced this stone, annoying Pitt Rivers in the process, but some fingers of suspicion point at Edward Simpson, a real conman, also known as Flint Jack and Fossil Willy, a purveyor of fake antiquities, who stayed quite often nearby. The past is not just a foreign country, but a land of opportunity too.
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