25 Facts About Peak District

Peak District is an upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines.

The historic Peak District extends beyond the National Park, which excludes major towns, quarries and industrial areas.

The western margins of the Dark Peak District are in the South West Peak District NCA, where farmland and pastured valleys are found with gritstone edges and moorland.

Outside the park, the wider Peak District often includes the area approximately between Disley and Sterndale Moor, encompassing Buxton and the Peak Dale corridor.

Western Peak District is drained by the Etherow, the Goyt and the Tame, all tributaries of the River Mersey.

Related searches

The Dark Peak District tends to receive more rainfall than the White Peak District, as it is higher.

Peak District is formed almost wholly of sedimentary rocks of the Carboniferous period.

The limestone plateaus of the White Peak District are more intensively farmed, with mainly dairy usage of improved pastures.

White Peak District habitats include calcareous grassland, ash woodlands and rock outcrops for lime-loving species.

Lead rakes, the spoil heaps of ancient mining activity, form another distinctive White Peak District habitat, supporting a range of rare metallophyte plants, including spring sandwort, alpine pennycress and mountain pansy .

The populations of twite and golden plover are the southernmost confirmed breeding populations in England, and the Peak District Moors Special Protection Area is a European designation for its populations of merlin, golden plover and short-eared owl.

The Peak District lacks the concentrations of breeding waders found further north in the Pennines, though the moors and their fringes accommodate breeding curlew and lapwing, and less noticeable wading birds such as dunlin and snipe.

Upland reservoirs in the Dark Peak District are generally oligotrophic and attract few birds, but lower-lying reservoirs on the southern fringes such as Carsington Water and Ogston Reservoir regularly attract rare migrants and wintering rarities such as various waders, wildfowl, gulls and terns.

Fossil records show that the Peak District was once inhabited by an eclectic mix of species, many of them no longer found in Britain, such as alpine swift, demoiselle crane and long-legged buzzard.

Peak District has been inhabited from the earliest periods of human activity, as shown by finds of Mesolithic flint artefacts and palaeo-environmental evidence from caves in Dovedale and elsewhere.

Theories on how the name Peak District derived cite the Pecsaetan or peaklanders, an Anglo-Saxon tribe inhabiting the central and northern parts of the area from the 6th century CE, when it belonged to the Anglian kingdom of Mercia.

The Peak District was the ideal location, with its rivers and humid atmosphere.

De Mirabilibus Pecci or The Seven Wonders of the Peak District by Thomas Hobbes was an early touring description published in 1636.

The Peak District Boundary Walk is a circular 190-mile walking trail around the national park.

Grasslands of the White Peak District plateau have been improved for intensive farm and food production.

Peveril of the Peak District by Sir Walter Scott is a historical novel set at Peveril Castle, Castleton, in the reign of Charles II.

William Wordsworth was a frequent visitor to Matlock; the Peak District inspired several of his poems, including an 1830 sonnet to Chatsworth House.

Peak District copied cloth samples from his pattern book for her characters.

Eyam inspired Children of Winter by children's novelist Berlie Doherty, who has set several other works in the Peak District, including Deep Secret, based on the drowning of the villages of Derwent and Ashopton by the Ladybower Reservoir, and Blue John, inspired by the cavern at Castleton.

The television medical drama Peak District Practice set in the fictional village of Cardale was filmed in Crich, Matlock and other Peak District locations.

Related searches