Trev's travails: Ilam on the stream

Our walk today could easily be summed up in the words of that famous song once so eloquently sung by Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers :

Ilam on the stream
That is where we are
No one in-between
How can we be wrong
Walk away with me
To another world
And we rely on each other ah-ah
From one walker to another ah-ah

You can probably guess that I've been at a music festival all weekend - but I made a quick dash back from Chester to be with the guys for the regular Tuesday walk - ably led this week by Simon.

Our starting point was Ilam Park

Ilam is best probably known as the location of the neo-Gothic Ilam Hall, a stately home built in the 1820s, and now a youth hostel owned by the National Trust. It is set in large parklands that are open to visitors.

While most of the buildings in the village are from the past two centuries, Ilam dates from Saxon times or earlier. A hall has been in Ilam since John Port had the first one built in 1546. Both William Congreve and Dr Samuel Johnson stayed at the hall when it was owned by the Port family. Congreve wrote his first play, The Old Bachelor here and Paradise valley inspired Johnson to write his novel Rasselas.

In 1820 the estate was bought by Jesse Watts-Russell, a wealthy industrialist. It was Watts-Russell who was responsible for the Swiss look of Ilam; he found that the valley and surrounding hills reminded him of the Alps, and consequently had some new cottages built in the Swiss style and rehoused most of the villagers (who were living in estate-owned houses anyway). He also built the school in 1857 and funded it, at a time when schooling was not compulsory.

His son, John Charles Watts-Russell, moved to New Zealand and built another Ilam Hall. The farm/homestead that he created later grew and became the Ilam area of Christchurch. The site of the homestead was one of the main social centres of early Christchurch society. The present homestead was built in 1914 after fire destroyed the first two buildings.

The Conservative politician Robert William Hanbury (1845-1903), lived and was buried here. In 1934 Sir Robert McDougal bought the hall and gave it to the National Trust to become a Youth Hostel

The River Manifold flows underground from Wetton Mill some 5 or 6 miles up Manifold Valley, and rises again at Ilam in the grounds of the Hall. At some times of the year, the river bed is completely dry apart from the occasional pool. The River Hamps is a tributary of the Manifold which also flows underground leaving a dry river bed. At Ilam Hall, the Manifold rises a few yards downstream from a local spring.

Our route took us along the picturesque Paradise Walk alongside the River Manifold

Then up to Castern Hall, a privately owned 18th century country house and home of the Hurt family. It is a Grade II listed building.

The grange at Castern was owned by Burton Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. It was acquired by Roger Hurt, youngest son of Nicholas Hurt of Ashbourne who settled there in the mid 16th century. A later Nicholas Hurt (1649-1711) married the heiress of Alderwasley and in due course Alderwasley Hall became the family's principal residence.

Castern Hall was greatly enlarged and remodelled in about 1740 by Nicholas Hurt (High Sheriff of Derbyshire in 1756). The present three storey, five bayed entrance front in Georgian style dates from this time. In the 18th and 19th centuries the house was often let out to tenant farmers. In about 1930 the Alderwasley estate was sold and Castern again became the family's principal residence.

Spectacular views over the Manifold Valley

Simon told us some of the history of the Manifold Valley. It was once home to the Leek & Manifold Valley Light Railway: Authorised in 1898, and built in 1902, the (L&MVLR) was the narrow gauge section (2ft 6in) of the Leek Light Railways. The railway ran for 30 years, from Hulme End to Waterhouses and closed in 1934.

Its engineer was Everard Calthrop, a leading advocate of narrow gauge railways and builder of the Barsi Light Railway in India. A private concern, it was run by the North Staffordshire Railway on a percentage basis, but it later came under the control of the London, Midland and Scottish Railway in 1923.

The locos were designed to have cow catchers, but these were never fitted. The passenger coaches of comprised two first class and two brake composite 3rd's and were painted primrose yellow with chocolate lining, although this later became standard LMS maroon on amalgamation.

The locos (E.R. Calthrop, No1 & J.B. Earle, No2) began life in all over Chocolate, lined gold & black, which later became Maroon with straw lining, then finally in LMS days, just plain loco black.

There was little other rolling stock on the line, one box van for carrying goods in, 2 open wagons which could be covered over, these doubling for passenger carrying in summer months, and 5 of Mr. Calthrop's special invention "transporter wagons". These consisted of 4 short wheel based and 1 long wheel based vehicles, whereby normal gauge wagons could be carried over the narrow gauge sections. Awnings were provided for extra passenger carrying capacity in Whit week in 1905 where 5000 passengers were carried. The main use of these transporter wagons was for the conveyance of standard gauge milk wagons to Ecton Dairy, and coal wagons to various stations along the route.

Trains ran at a maximum speed of 15 miles per hour and most halts were run on a request basis. More than this, the train would also often stop to pick up passengers at other places on the line side footpath, if requested. Timetables mostly show single journey times of 50 minutes (with some showing an hour).

Most outbound freight consisted of milk, in both churns and bulk tankers, and the products of the dairy goods factory at Ecton. In all, some 300 milk churns were handled daily at Waterhouses, and from 1919 a daily milk train ran from Waterhouses to London specifically for this traffic. Latterly milk tanks were used, carried on the transporter wagons. Passenger traffic was minimal - the settlements were mostly some distance from the line - except on Bank Holidays when all the line's rolling stock was used to run frequent services to handle the crowds.

See http://www.kachuzyn.fsnet.co.uk/ for further details of this railway

The Staffordshire County Council reconditioned the trackway into an eight mile footpath which opened in July 1937, making the Manifold Valley easily accessible for walkers and cyclists.

We descended to what Simon told us was "Weag's Bridge" - even though the sign says "Weak Bridge". He was indeed totally correct. Weag's Bridge is Grade II listed bridge. It was built in early 19^th century with a single semi-circular arch spanning the River Manifold and a plain parapet rising to a point above the head of the arch.

The dry Manifold river bed - the water is in fact several feet underground at this stage

Stuart has recently signed a lucrative deal to promote awareness of car crime - photo opportunities will be coming his way in the coming months

After a fairly leisurely amble alongside the River Hamps, we were faced with a steep ascent to get us out of the valley. The route was all the more difficult because of recent rain which had made the steep path very muddy.