The Butts is a disused quarry popular with motocross enthusiasts, but on this crisp midweek morning any raucous noise was coming from birds hard at work among the hawthorns. Nearby, a gang of long-tailed tits, with their greaser quiffs, raked through a sycamore. A lone bullfinch perched at the end of a branch, the unexpected splash of vermilion offset by its sulky call.
The country hereabouts is thick with abandoned workings and mines, which have healed into a patchwork of feral niches where all kinds of wildlife can thrive. That would, I imagine, please Ashover’s most famous former resident, Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), who included Overton Hall in his estates.
Dubbed the “Botanic Macaroni” for his dandyish ways, Banks’s industry – exploring with Captain Cook, skippering the Royal Society – didn’t end during the few weeks he spent here at the end of each summer. Having inherited lead mines from his uncle, he commissioned John Farey to make a geological survey of his estate, a milestone in economic geology.
The estate, around 400 hectares (1,000 acres) contained valuable minerals like fluorspar and barytes, which were carried away on a light railway the Clay Cross Company built after it bought the property in 1918.
Overton Hall served briefly as a splendid youth hostel but is now split into private residences, modestly screened by evergreens. The railway closed soon after Butts Quarry.
It’s possible to circumambulate the house, and I noticed one residence had been named Botany Cottage. Was this a reference to Banks’s passion for plants? Or a nod to his eagerly adopted idea for sending convicts to Botany Bay?
Along the public right of way east of Overton, bamboo was muscling through the fence, and further back the bright colours of exotic species lit up the garden. Did Banks dream of Australia as summer turned to autumn? Then I plunged into Cockerspring Wood and a single raven flew from the crown of a beech towards the Amber valley.
