Peak District
The Peak District is an upland area in central-northern England, at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It is subdivided into the Dark Peak, moorland dominated by gritstone, and the White Peak, a limestone area with valleys and gorges. The Dark Peak forms an arc on the north, east and west of the district, and the White Peak covers central and southern areas. The highest point is Kinder Scout. Most of the area is within the Peak District National Park, a protected landscape designated in 1951.
A 2021 report states that "the Park's own population numbers around 40,000 and supports an estimated 18,000 jobs, predominantly through farming, manufacturing and, inevitably, tourism".
The area has been inhabited since the Mesolithic era; it was largely used for agricultural purposes until mining arose in the Middle Ages. During the Industrial Revolution, several cotton mills were constructed in the area's valleys by Richard Arkwright. As mining declined, quarrying grew. Tourism came with the railways, spurred by the landscape, spa towns and Castleton's show caves.
Toponymy
The upland area of the Peak District, centred around Derbyshire, has historically been known as Peakland and The Peak. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle of 924 AD recorded the region's name as Peaclond, home of the Pecsaetan tribe. From the Renaissance, prominent authors referred to the area as just The Peak.Geography
The Peak District forms the southern extremity of the Pennines. Much of it is upland above, its highest point being Kinder Scout at. Despite its name, the landscape has fewer sharp peaks than rounded hills, plateaus, valleys, limestone gorges and gritstone escarpments. The mostly rural area is surrounded by conurbations and large urban areas, including Manchester, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Derby and Stoke-on-Trent.The formal boundaries of the national park cover most of the Dark Peak and White Peak, but the wider, informal region known as the Peak District is less well defined. The Dark Peak is largely uninhabited moorland and gritstone escarpments in the northern Peak District and its eastern and western margins. It encloses the central and southern White Peak, which is where most settlements, farmland and limestone gorges are found. Three of Natural England's National Character Areas cover parts of it. The Dark Peak NCA includes the northern and eastern parts of the Dark Peak and the White Peak NCA most of the White Peak. The western margins of the Dark Peak are in the South West Peak NCA, sometimes considered a third area, where farmland and pastured valleys are found with gritstone edges and moorland.
Outside the park, the wider Peak District extends from the gritstone moorlands of the South Pennines to the north, separated approximately by the Tame Valley, Standedge and Holme Valley. It continues south and roughly ends at the Weaver Hills near the Churnet Valley. It often includes the area approximately between Disley and Sterndale Moor, encompassing Buxton and the Peak Dale corridor. It may also include some of the outer fringes and foothills, such as the Churnet and lower Derwent Valleys, and the area approximately between The Cloud and Mow Cop. Conversely, while the rural west of the City of Sheffield falls in the park boundaries, the urban area of the city is usually excluded, alongside the other surrounding large urban areas. The rest of the region is surrounded by lowlands, including the Cheshire Plain and Greater Manchester Built-up Area to the west. The Derbyshire and Yorkshire Coalfields lie to the east while the lowlands of the Midlands are to the south, near the north of the Trent Valley.
The national park covers, including most of the region in Derbyshire and extends into Staffordshire, Cheshire, Greater Manchester and South and West Yorkshire. Its northern limit is on a track near Deer Hill in Meltham; its southernmost point is on the A52 road near Ashbourne. The boundaries were drawn to exclude built-up and industrial areas; in particular Buxton and the quarries at the end of the Peak Dale corridor are surrounded on three sides by the park. Bakewell and many villages are in the national park, as is much of the rural west of Sheffield. In 2010 it became the fifth largest national park in England and Wales. In the UK, designation as a national park means that planning and other functions are provided by a national park authority, with additional restrictions that enhance protection from inappropriate development. Land within this national park as in others is in a mix of public and private ownership.
The National Trust, a charity that conserves historic and natural landscapes, owns about 12 per cent of the land in the national park. Its three estates include ecologically or geologically significant areas at Bleaklow, Derwent Edge, Hope Woodlands, Kinder Scout, the Manifold valley, Mam Tor, Dovedale, Milldale and Winnats Pass. The park authority owns around 5 per cent; other major landowners include several water companies.
Image:Near the High Peak - pano.jpg|800px|thumb|center|A High Peak panorama between Hayfield and Chinley
Settlements
Bakewell is the largest settlement and only town in the national park and the site of the National Park Authority offices. Its five-arched bridge over the River Wye dates from the 13th century. Castleton is the centre of production of a semi-precious mineral, Blue John. Eyam village is known for a self-imposed quarantine during the Black Death. Edale is the southern end of the Pennine Way, a 268-mile national trail which traverses most of the Pennines and ends at Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish border. The park also contains the highest village in the United Kingdom, Flash, at. Other villages in the park include Hathersage, Hartington, Ilam and Tideswell.The towns of Glossop, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Buxton, Macclesfield, Leek, Ashbourne, Matlock and Chesterfield are on the national park's fringes. The spa town of Buxton was built up by the Dukes of Devonshire as a genteel health resort in the 18th century while the spa at Matlock Bath, in the River Derwent valley, was popularised in Victorian times. Hayfield is at the foot of Kinder Scout, the area's highest summit. Other towns and villages fringing the park include Whaley Bridge, Hadfield, Tintwistle, Darley Dale and Wirksworth in Derbyshire, Stocksbridge in South Yorkshire and Marsden and Holmfirth in West Yorkshire.
Rivers, reservoirs and canals
Several rivers have sources on the moorland plateaux of the Dark Peak and the high ridges of the White Peak. Many rivers in the Dark Peak and outer fringes were dammed to create reservoirs for supplying drinking water. Streams were dammed to provide headwater for water driven mills; weirs were built for the same purpose. The reservoirs of the Longdendale Chain were completed in February 1877 to provide compensation water, ensuring a continuous flow in the River Etherow, which was essential for local industry and provided drinking water for Manchester. In a report for the Manchester Corporation, John Frederick Bateman wrote in 1846:The western Peak District is drained by the Etherow, the Goyt and the Tame, all tributaries of the River Mersey. The north-east is drained by tributaries of the River Don. Of the tributaries of the River Trent draining south and east, the River Derwent is the most prominent. It rises on Bleaklow just east of Glossop and flows through the Upper Derwent Valley, where it is constrained by the Howden, Derwent and Ladybower reservoirs. The reservoirs of the Upper Derwent Valley were built from the early to mid-20th century to supply drinking water to the East Midlands and South Yorkshire.
The rivers Noe and the Wye are tributaries. The River Manifold and River Dove in the south-west, whose sources are on Axe Edge Moor, flow into the Trent. The River Dane flows into the River Weaver in Cheshire.
Image:Bugsworth 058079.jpg|thumb|right|upright|The Bugsworth Basin on the Peak Forest Canal
There are no canals in the national park, although the Standedge Tunnels on the Huddersfield Narrow Canal run underneath the extreme north of it. Outside the park, waters from the Dark Peak feed the Macclesfield, Ashton, and Huddersfield Narrow Canals and waters from the White Peak fed the Cromford Canal. The Peak Forest Canal brought lime from the quarries at Dove Holes for the construction industry. It terminated at Bugsworth Basin and the journey was completed using the Peak Forest Tramway.
The Cromford Canal, from Cromford to the Erewash Canal, served lead mines at Wirksworth and Sir Richard Arkwright's cotton mills. The Caldon Canal from Froghall was built to transport limestone from quarries at Cauldon Low for the iron industry and flints for the pottery industry.
Climate
Most of the area is over above sea level, in the centre of the country at a latitude of 53°N, bringing relatively high annual rainfall averaging in 1999. The Dark Peak tends to receive more rainfall than the White Peak, as it is higher. The higher rainfall does not affect the temperature, which averages the same as the rest of England and Wales at.In the 1970s, the Dark Peak regularly had more than 70 days of snowfall. Since then the number has fallen. The hills still see long periods of continuous snow cover in some winters. Snow in mid-December 2009 on some hill summits created some snow patches that lasted until May 2010. In the same winter, the A635 and A57 were closed due to snow for almost a month. Frost cover is seen for 20–30 per cent of the winter on moorland in the Dark Peak and 10 per cent in the White Peak.
The Moorland Indicators of Climate Change Initiative was set up in 2008 to collect data in the area. Students investigated the interaction between people and the moorlands and their effect on climate change, to discover whether the moorlands are a net carbon sink or source, based on the fact that Britain's upland areas contain a major global carbon store in the form of peat. Human interaction in terms of direct erosion and fire, with the effects of global warming, are the main variables they considered.