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Taddington
As one of England's highest villages at over 1100 feet and just 3 miles away from Chelmorton, Derbyshire's highest village which lies to the south west across Taddington Moor, Taddington offers visitors a range of spectacular views. Taddington sits high on the central limestone plateau of the White Peak and is easily accessible by the A6 between Ashford-in-the-Water and Buxton. As one of a cluster of similar villages within a five mile radius which includes Sheldon, Flagg, Blackwell and Chelmorton, Taddington's landscape is characterised by rocky limestone outcrops and is surrounded by wild and windswept moorland. Blackwell and Priestcliffe are two hamlets of a dozen houses each, sited between Taddington and the River Wye. Most of the dwellings are active farms.
Along with hill farming, quarrying was the main source of the economy of Taddington for hundreds of years, with limestone rock or the minerals that it contained being mined. Evidence of early lead-mining lies all around, especially in the numerous hillocks of overgrown spoil-heaps which scar the landscape up around Humphrey Gate Quarry and over Taddington Moor toward the lead-rich veins of Monyash.
"One of the prettiest and best proportioned churches of the Peak" can be found in Taddington, known as the Parish Church of St. Michael & All Angels. The churchyard entrance is through a magnificent lych-gate, a gift to the church from Samuel Bramwell in 1910, and the churchyard is one of the best kept in the county. The Queens Arms is the social centre of the village and the sole survivor of several pubs and stands next to the rather sobering Primitive Methodist Chapel of 1903 at the top of Chapel Lane. The oldest dwelling is probably Taddington Hall, standing with it's gable end to the street and it's Georgian front hidden behind trees at the bottom end of Main Street near Town End.
Tourists are well catered for in the region, with a B & B and a range of eateries open to all. Despite this, the village has changed little over the years but the relative peace and quiet of it's singular isolation owes much to the re-siting of the main A6 trunk road which, before it was by-passed over half a century ago, ran directly through Taddington forming part of it's long sloping main street.
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