The year 1698 saw the discovery of the first of three warm springs just to the south of the town of Matlock in Derbyshire. Local entrepreneurs quickly took to building a bath around it but access to the site was difficult until the end of the first quarter of the eighteenth century. By then improvements had been made, two more springs had been found, buildings had arisen, and most importantly, a road to Matlock and a bridge over the nearby River Derwent made reaching the spot and using its facilities more convenient. The thermal springs were first marketed for their curative powers before shifting its focus to a hydrotherapeutic spa town, and it attracted visitors such as Queen Victoria (well, Princess Victoria, as she hadn’t been crowned at that time) and Lord Byron.
None of that is why we visited Matlock Bath in 2012.
For many years, when there hasn’t been a pandemic preventing it, and when we’ve had the annual leave to play with, and when we’ve had the inclination to use that leave in visiting somewhere in the United Kingdom, we’ve taken a trip up north to watch Wakefield play rugby. For reasons I won’t go into. 2012 was one of the those years, but the drive up is a long one so we often look for something along the route to break up the journey, and thus, a trip to Matlock Bath.
Matlock Bath isn’t very large, and when we diverted off the M1 to head in its direction it was only initially because we thought it might be nice to have a drive around parts of the Peak District to eat up some time. We had been looking to avoid arriving in the vicinity of Wakefield at rush hour as much as possible plus we thought the views would be lovely. They were, and there was snow on the ground in many places, but it didn’t kill as much time as we’d guessed so a sign for Matlock Bath triggered a very short conversation along the lines of:
“We could stop there, maybe get a drink.”
“Sure”
This post about Matlock Bath, therefore, doesn’t include any of its attractions – there’s a theme park (for children so they wouldn’t have let us in anyway), some museums, an aquarium, and something called The Heights of Abraham – because we didn’t have quite that amount of time to spare and no background information on us to make us consider finding that amount of time. We merely made do with a walk along the main street and a bite to eat and something to drink in a café.
Those Heights of Abraham I mentioned do actually sound interesting and our sort of thing so were we to head back this way we’d potentially hit Matlock Bath just to see them alone. We’d spotted the cable cars that act as one way to reach the Victorian tourist spot on our walk through town. Caves, mine tours, and stunning views down into the valley and along the length of the River Derwent await visitors, apparently.
So, not a long visit to Matlock Bath, mostly because it was unplanned, but it’s a village we’d consider making a specific stop for if we were in the area again, especially with some nice weather to accompany it. It’s a very picturesque location with some delightful building development on one side of the river valley; it has a few attractions that would interest us on a return trip, plenty of entertainment for families, and bikers seem really keen on it for some reason too.
Nice to read a post about Matlock Bath. We’ve just visited for the first time three months ago and thought it was a fun little ‘seaside town’ (they seem to style themselves a bit as that, I thought, despite their long distance from the sea hahaha). We didn’t go to the Heights of Abraham either and planning to do so next time around.