Thursday 6 October 2011

Youlgrave

My personal challenge for this round of Miss Jenny Matlock's alphabe-Thursday is to post about a location within the borders of my own county of Derbyshire, UK, for each letter of the alphabet.

Look for the letter, to see where I am.


Y is for Youlgrave.

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Youlgrave is a large-ish village which boasts three pubs...


The George Hotel, opposite the church...


The Bull's Head Hotel, in the centre...


and the Farmyard Inn towards the further end of the village.

Balancing this out very satisfactorily are three churches...



The Anglican parish church of All Saints, which dates from the 13th century but was heavily restored in 1870...


The Wesleyan Reform Chapel, built in 1857, with a weekly Sunday service...


and the  Primitive Methodist Chapel of 1895, which holds services twice each Sunday.



Youlgrave also has a Health Centre...



and a Primary School, which caters for children from 4-11 and has strong ties with the parish church. I love the small raised garden with the tomatoes growing.


Further into the village is the original school building.


The village hall is tucked away down a quiet side street,


after which the lane drops away to open countryside.



Some houses in the village are named after their past functions, this is one such: The Old Grocers Shop.


But the name of this house made me smile.

Take a guess!

Have you guessed?

Here it is...

Very profound :)



Erected in AD 1887, the former Co-op (which stands at the top of Co-op Hill) is now a Youth Hostel.


Opposite the Youth Hostel is the Conduit Head.

The provision of the original water supply for the village, was developed because of fundraising by the Youlgrave Friendly Society of Women, founded in 1827. Water was piped from local springs to the Conduit Head, this large circular tank and, each morning, the 'waterkeeper' unlocked the tap at 6am for villagers to come and collect their water.



In 1869, a new water system was developed and piped to 9 taps around the village and some of these are still decorated each year as part of the Derbyshire well dressing season.

Most of the buildings in the village are constructed from local stone.

Here, you get a sense of the elevated position of the village, standing above Lathkill and Bradford Dales.


Use has been made of the green spaces around the village, with a cricket ground and park at one end...


...and allotments at the other.

I enjoyed my tour round Youlgrave, a place I hadn't visited lately. I hope you did too :)

Just one more letter to go now :) and that would be 'Z' :/



28 comments:

  1. My sort of village I think! Great that you didn't have to cheat like me!

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  2. Happy Alphabet Thursday! I hope that my seminar was helpful, but I really agree with you--every person blogs for different reasons and if you get tons of followers it IS hard to keep up!!! Sometimes it is wonderful to just keep it intimate and have meaningful visits with people who truly CARE!!!

    Such beautiful pictures you shared here....It all looks so dreamy. Thanks so much for visiting and sharing.
    XO
    Cindy

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  3. What a lovely little village. I love the pubs and the churches and all the other old buildings.

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  4. pretty village. i love this natural stones :)

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  5. I loved the tour because I love old buildings and architecture. Thanks for sharing, and for visiting my blog:)

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  6. hmmm Z... I'm wondering where you can go for that now... ashby de la zouch perhaps?!

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  7. Three pubs and three churches? A perfect balance! =>

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  8. What fun that houses have kept the names of what they used to be!

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  9. Beautiful photos, definitely a nice place.

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  10. Oh, I love it. It's so beautiful!

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  11. I enjoyed the tour so much that I would love to stay in the Bull's Head Hotel ! I love the name I never stayed in a Bull's Head and the hotel looks lovely. The pubs also, lol ! What a romantic little village !

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  12. So very different from where I'm from. Our little city is just over 100 years old.
    Dana

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  13. A great post about a lovely place. Some boyhood memories return, camping near there with the Boy Scouts!

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  14. it looks so lush! I love the history of the water system, and how everyone used to share from one well. Reminds me of a book I read, about the plague in one English village, and how they closed off the village to everyone else. Think the title was the plague year... or maybe had the word "plague" in it... sad, but great story! {:-Deb

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  15. This was just lovely. Very quaint and peaceful. Makes me want to go make a cup of tea. My sister lived in England for two years. Once in Farnham, maybe twice because I can't remember the other place. I so enjoyed the pictures and stories of the lifestyle over there. Thanks for sharing Youlgrave with us!~Ames

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  16. Love the tour !
    Two of the three pubs are the most colorful building in the village... just saying.
    Beautiful Village, with a very different name. Doesn't sound very English to me.
    Since I am not familiar with this area I can't wait to see what Z will be. I am not going to look it up, I want to be surprised.

    cheers, parsnip

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  17. I enjoyed this town very much. The buildings are beautiful in the native stone. Three pubs, balanced by three churches - good thinking!

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  18. Youlgrave looks charming and quiet...and very hilly! I loved the third from last photo you took looking down the street towards the bottom of the hill.

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  19. Oh I just love this photo tour of Youlgrave! I love how the architecture there are so similar but also very different for each church and each pub :) I'm going to miss your Derbyshire tours when Alphabe-Thursday ends.

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  20. Ah, Youlgrave is a lovely village. I love the old Co-op that's now YHA. I've enjoyed all your Derbyshire places - I wonder where Z will take us?:)

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  21. Thanks for the virtual tour of the village - especially the three pubs. What a shame they haven't worked out a way of having a virtual pint yet.

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  22. Hello.
    I've really enjoyed your Derbyshire tours...makes me feel like I'm actually in the UK (smile). The villages look so quaint & I love the stone cottages/buildings.

    Thanks for sharing.

    Yesterday With You

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  23. Youlgrave is lovely! definitely an enjoyable tour! The buildings are so wonderful1

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  24. Your beautifully aged, stone buildings truly are gracefully AGED, yet still so steadfast and strong, standing proud and tall through all the ages...what great stories they must have hidden within...they put our own infant buildings to shame, crumbling about in ruins as so many of them are. I love all the lush, floriferous hanging baskets and planters adorning so many of these public and private dwellings and it always amazes me how well-nurtured they are. Who has the job of tending, trimming and deadheading them, I wonder, to keep them flourishing all through the spring and summer months. There must be an instinctive competitiveness amongst these many and varied gardeners, as each one seems to want to out do all the others. I just have a few hanging baskets, very much smaller and far, far less imposing, yet I find they need constant tidying and diligent feeding and watering. Youlgrave certainly has great appeal and that typical English charm that is so well-known and instantly recognisable, worldwide. You do live in a very beautiful country! Pity the weather doesn't play fairly so much of the time. Thank you for another super outing, H!

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  25. My goodness what a beautiful old village... Loved this post!! =)

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  26. YOu did it! You found a perfect Y link! Wow.

    Love that conduit head! It looks like a sweet little playhouse! And everything else is absolutely lovely!

    I am soooo enjoying my outings with you. I'm sad that we're almost at the letter Z.

    Thank you for sharing Youlgrave with us!

    A++++

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  27. So which of the three churches was most opposed to the pubs? ;-) Another fabulous report of a charming town. Some lovely stone buildings in Youlgrave. The Post Box House made me smile too... but that IS a red post box, is it not? :-)

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  28. PS. It's way past bedtime, so I failed to mention that I enjoyed my meander through your blog to this post, H. :-)

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