Bakewell~Capital of the Park
Forever associated with the culinary disaster which turned into a delicacy. Bakewell has much more to offer than its puddings (wrongly known as `tarts’).With a population of about 4,000 it is the largest town and the commercial and administrative `capital’ of the National Park. Occupying a strategic crossing of the River Wye, it has been a place of importance at least since Saxon times when Edward the Elder commanded a fortress to be built in the vicinity. Many Saxon stones, and two decorated crosses, are preserved at the parish church.
The town’s name is thought to refer to the warm, iron-bearing springs which once made the place a minor spa, and which may have attracted the Romans.
Castle Hill, which overlooks the five-arched medieval bridge over the Wye, was probably a twelfth-century addition, but on the hills above, the earthworks of Ball Cross have indicated and Iron Age date.
Today, Bakewell is a busy, bustling place with a Monday market which has existed for over six centuries. It is still a market in the original, agricultural sense, used by Peakland farmers from all over the district to buy and sell their beasts. The street market, overlooked by the gabled gritstone presence of the seventeenth-century Market Hall (now a National Park and Tourist Information Centre), is a popular meeting-place of town and country.
Behind the much-restored parish church on the hill, the Old House Museum is a lovingly restored town house of the sixteenth century, which gives an indication of how Bakewellians lived then.
Every August, the water-meadows by the Wye are taken over by the Bakewell Agricultural Show, where the best of Peakland livestock is on display.
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