"The Via Gellia [runs] ... along the beautiful ravine opening out on the west of the road between Bonsall and Cromford. ... The coppice on the north side of the stream through which the Via Gellia runs is known as Bonsall Wood ; that on the other side is Middleton Wood"^[1].

Here are six postcards of the Via Gellia. The top photograph shows Bonsall Wood on the left and Middleton Wood on the right, with the main road from Cromford in the valley bottom and the road to the village of Middleton by Wirksworth climbing up the hillside.

The photographs for the other cards were all taken from the Middleton road, looking downhill towards the split, but four way, road junction at Rider Point. Five roads or tracks used to meet at this junction and it is known as Five Lanes End. The main road from Cromford to Grange Mill and Newhaven continues to follow the valley bottom, disappearing off round the corner behind the hillside of Hopton Wood. To the right of the curve in the road is Ible Wood. The road to Hopton goes off to the left and the one to Middleton comes towards the camera, passing Middleton Wood. This junction and most of the roads were constructed very early in the nineteenth century; only the section down to Cromford existed before then. In 1803 "The Derby Mercury" published a notice of an application for an Act to be put before the next session of Parliament "to repair, widen, alter and amend the road leading from Cromford ... along the Via Gellia to Hopton ... also to set out and make a new road, branching from the same road, up the Valley between the Griff and Ible by Grange Mill, to or near Newhaven House ..." and another new road up to Wirksworth. The road was to pass through several parishes i.e. Wirksworth, Matlock, Bonsall, Brassington, Bradbourne and Hartington^[2].

In 1922, following yet another motor accident, the road junction was described as
"one of the most dangerous cross-roads in the county"

The sender of the second card had been on a works outing to the Via Gellia from Sheffield and the group had been driven there in large charabancs^[4]. The sender had "paid into" it, so it was presumably he belonged to a scheme whereby the workers could pay for such trips by instalments. What looks like a rocky outcrop on the left seems, on closer inspection, to have been a tip or spoil heap. On Middleton Moor, not far from Rider Point, are hillocks from old lead mines^[5]. These included the Goodluck and Silvereye mines, slightly further up the hill, which were disused by the early twentieth century^[6].

Henry Moore described the Via Gellia in one of the excursions he took from Matlock Bath in 1818. He mentioned the spoil heaps:

"The road [from Cromford] now follows the winding of the dale, by the side of a rivulet, on which are a succession of mills and small cascades. Rocks and declivities with a fine mantle of foliage, and hills that are sometimes streaked with the rubbish that is thrown from the mines, which falls down their steep sides to the road : these are the picturesque materials of Bonsall and the Via Gellia^[7]".

Taken shortly after the First World War.
A huge tarpaulin covers the former stables and there seems to be a protective barrier on the top of the Rider Point rockface.

In 1925 a motorbike and sidecar unfortunately overturned whilst taking the turn at the foot of the hill and the female sustained facial injuries. In addition to reporting the incident a local paper commented that "the hill is very dangerous and both the warning notices at the top are unreadable except at very close quarters. There is a twist near the top which prevents the traveller from seeing the pitfall until he has gathered considerable speed. The road is extremely narrow and both turns at the bottom are extremely sharp. The finger board at Rider Point ..., which points to Hopton and Ashbourne, leads many motorists to mistake this for the main road from Matlock to Ashbourne^[8]."

In both 1922 and 1927 the County Council announced that property in the Via Gellia was to be purchased so the dangerous Rider Point junction could be improved. However, it took some years for work to be carried out^[9].

In the 1920s and 1930s numerous cycling groups would travel downhill from either Middleton or Hopton to Rider Point before journeying onwards, on the flat, to Grange Mill and Newhaven or to go to Cromford. For example, in November 1925 two cyclists visited Ashbourne, Kniveton and Carsington. After leaving Carsington they had climbed a hill between pine woods.

"To the left a deep ravine clothed with trees, and under one great beech tree lay scattered the cloak of russet Autumn.

We asked a bucolic man in the way how far it was to Cromford, and he said, "About four mile or it may be five or happen a bit furder". His last guess was right, and there was no "happen" about it. So down and down we went, until we came to Rider Point in the Via Gellia, with Cromford but two and a half miles away.

And it came to pass that when we arrived at the Greyhound it was dark, and we were a hungered.

It was a great and lovely day".^[10]

The fourth and fifth pictures (above and below) were taken some years later, probably in the 1930s, following the demolition of all the Rider Point buildings (Ryder Point today). The road had been widened and the trees are a little fuller. It is almost impossible to tell where the house and its outbuildings had been.

Although it is difficult to read, the registration number of the car is believed to have been WA5038.

One journalist, writing in 1935, described the Via Gellia, from Cromford to Grange Mill, as "four miles of fairyland". In his eyes it was the most beautiful of the "dry" dales of Derbyshire. As he reached Rider Point, "where the roads from Middleton (Wirksworth) - a noble aproach - and Hopton, drop steeply into the Dale" the walls closed in, "on the left the low limestone cliffs rise straight from the roadside ... and on the other side tall trees ... making a veritable tunnel of verdure ... before the road opened out" to the Lillies inn. He also noted that there were impressive views of the valley from the tops "notably from the Wirksworth-Rider Point road" which are shown on these cards.

This final postcard, of the view into the valley towards Cromford from the Middleton road, was probably taken in the late 1940s.
There is another, larger version available in the "Just" images section

Also see: Davies, David Peter (1811) "History of Derbyshire" pub. S. Mason, Belper which describes what was then the new road through the Via Gellia and notes what was found when it was built. Read the transcript elsewhere on this web site (look under Hopton)

References:

^[1] Ward Lock & Co's "Matlock, Dovedale, Bakewell and South Derbyshire", Illustrated Guide Books of England and Wales (1926-7).

^[2] "The Derby Mercury", 8 September, 1803 - notice of application. The Act became law in 1804.

^[3] "Derby Daily Telegraph", 19 June 1922. This accident involved a motor-bike and side car - so a man, his wife and two children - and a bicycle ridden by a local. Everyone, apart from the male motor-cyclist, required medical treatment.

^[4] See: Visitors to Matlock Bath - Travelling by Motor Charabanc.

^[5] Willis, Lynn and Parker, Harry (1999) "Images Of England: Peak District Mining and Quarrying", pub. Tempus Publishing Limited, Gloucester ISBN 0-7524-1710-X.

^[6] The two mines were shown as still in use on the Derbyshire map Sheet XXXIV.SW Surveyed: 1879, Published: 1884. Gell's Mine next to them was already out of use by then. Derbyshire Sheet XXXIV.SW Revised: 1898, Published: 1900 shows all three mines were out of use.

^[7] "Picturesque Excursions From Derby to Matlock Bath, and its Vicinity ; Being a Descriptive Guide to the Most Interesting Scenery and Curiosities in that Romantic District, With Observations Thereon", by Henry Moore (1818), published by H. Moore, Drawing Master; Printed by T. Wilkinson, Ridgefield, Manchester. This quote from Excursion to Bonsal, Via Gellia, Middleton, Wirksworth and Cromford Moor (from Matlock Bath) pp.102-103.

^[8] "The Belper News", 7 August 1925.

^[9] "Derby Daily Telegraph", 12 August 1922 and "Derby and Chesterfield Reporter", 8 July 1927 when £800 was set aside to improve the two sharp bends at Rider Point.

^[10] "Ripley and Heanor News and Ilkeston Division Free Press", 13 November, 1925. Week By Week, by Anglo-Saxon.

^[11] "Derby Daily Telegraph", 14 July 1935. Derbyshire Dales. - No. 8. Four Miles of Fairy Land. Beauty of the Via Gellia by W. H. Walton.