Picture the Past: Peak District

Author: Neil Bettridge

Picture the Past: Peak District

The Derbyshire Peak District, Britain's first national park, has long been admired for the stunning beauty and variety of its landscapes. Some have found it too harsh an environment for comfort, “a howling wilderness” according to Daniel Defoe, yet later generations of town dwellers came to revel in that sense of remoteness from civilisation.
But the Peak District is far more than a natural wonder. In this book we see it as home, community and workplace, sharing moments in the lives that have been lived here over the years rather than focussing on the landscape itself. We peep into home and family life, see the children, some on their best behaviour for the camera and some definitely not! We glimpse the lives of these small village communities and their market towns of Ashbourne, Bakewell, Buxton and the Matlocks. What we see is both ordinary and extraordinary. Historic customs like well dressing and street football have survived from times gone by alongside the more mainstream clubs and societies, sporting events and leisure moments that make up the social fabric of our communities.
There are magnificent stately homes, spa towns with elegant architecture, famously pretty villages, visited for centuries by well-dressed tourists. It is easy to forget that this has always been a place of work, where hill farmers and quarry workers wrest a living from the inhospitable land, mill workers spin and weave textiles in water-powered mills, and a whole range of shopkeepers and tradespeople supply the needs of locals and tourists alike. We see them travelling around the area in a wide variety of transport over the years and always battling with the notorious Peak District weather.
Here is a collection of individual moments, frozen in time, giving a unique and very personal insight into the heart of this most characterful area of Britain.