WYASTON AND EDLASTON TO YORKSHIRE BRIDGE
A TO Z – DERBYSHIRE AND THE PEAK DISTRICT – CHAPTER 59
WYASTON AND EDLASTON (3 miles south of Ashbourne, off the A52 Derby Road – SK186424)
Wyaston and Edlaston are two small villages in the same parish in a lovely rural setting just south of Ashbourne. Edlaston was mentioned in the Domesday Book and consists of a few farms and cottages, much like Wyaston. To the west of the village is Edlaston Hall, which, along with its outbuildings, has been converted into multiple accommodations. The villages share a public house, The Shire Horse, a popular garden nursery and a church.
YEAVELEY (3 miles south of Ashbourne, off A515 Lichfield Road – SK186403)
Yeaveley is a pretty, but relatively isolated village, which together with the neighbouring village of Rodsley forms a small parish. The village has a church and public house, and little seems to have changed over the last 200 years. Henry Yevele, who lived in and is claimed to have been born in the village, was a stonemason credited with designing Westminster Abbey. A more recent arrival just outside the village is the Yeaveley Estate, a centre for outdoor and country pursuits, including fishing, clay pigeon shooting and quad biking.
YORKSHIRE BRIDGE (on the A6013 north of Bamford – road links A57 and A6187 Hope Valley Road – SK200850)
Yorkshire Bridge has its pub of the same name, and the bridge spanning the River Derwent also bears the same name. The pub dates back to at least 1826 and takes its name from an old packhorse bridge which was the last crossing point on the River Derwent before the county boundary. Today, Yorkshire Bridge is a tiny hamlet within the parish of Bamford, consisting of three rows of attractive gritstone cottages built on the sloping east bank of the Derwent to re-house the inhabitants of the former villages of Ashopton and Derwent. Both villages and the surrounding land were submerged when the reservoir was completed and filled with water.
Despite all the references to Yorkshire, you are still in Derbyshire. The boundary between the two counties is more than two miles away to the northeast. The visitor centre at Fairholmes, situated further north below the wall of the Derwent Dam, tells the story of the drowned villages and the birth of the village of Yorkshire Bridge.
