Following her sterling work amongst wounded soldiers in the Crimea, Florence Nightingale returned to England. After spending a few days in London, she boarded the London to Manchester train at St Pancras Station. Leaving it unannounced at the tiny halt serving Whatstandwell, she set off to walk quietly along the hillside road, climbing steadily to Holloway and Lea Hurst, summer home of the wealthy Nightingale family. The only people she met along the climb would have been local quarrymen and one or two farmers, whose polite greeting she acknowledged with a friendly smile. This winter warmer walk follows her hillside route as far as Holloway, before dropping back into the valley and returning along the canal, which would have been far busier in her day, but with more wildlife than today’s.
Florence was a member of the Nightingale family, owners of a successful mill and hat factory at Lea Mills, as well as having profitably run lead mining and smelting interests. Her immediate family inherited Lea Hurst, but her mother was unhappy living there so far from London society. Living on a cold hillside was not for her, and in any case, the house was too small, having only 15 bedrooms! As a compromise, Florence’s father bought a more suitable property at Embley Park in Hampshire, but still using Lea Hurst purely as a summer residence.
Florence was named after the Italian city where her parents were living at the time, likewise her elder sister Parthenope was named after the Greek settlement in Naples. It was during her visits to Lea Hurst that Florence’s commitments to nursing began to take shape. At first she spent her time ministering to the local sick and poor, along with people living in and around Holloway. This hardly met with the standards of her socially minded mother, but eventually a compromise was reached whereby Florence was allowed to nurse her grandmother in her final years, and following the latter’s death, she looked after her old nurse until she also died. Unfortunately this didn’t satisfy her mother’s idea of the proper way for a gentle young woman to act, but Florence, realising where her vocation lay persuaded her mother to support her scheme, which was to convert the inherited family property of Cromford Bridge House into a nursing home.
Realising that it would be almost impossible to find a source for training nurses in England, Florence set about acquiring everything that had been written on the subject, before visiting a German nursing institute in Kaiserwerth. At the end of this hard fought struggle, and despite continuing family opposition, she was appointed to manage The Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances in London.
In 1854 and with little or no logistical planning on the British side, a war broke out in the Crimea. Such was the lack of support at all levels that little or nothing was known at home about conditions on the Crimean battlefield until The Times reporter William Howard Russell sent regular dispatches to London, using the then newly invented electrical telegraph network across Europe. Horrified by the almost daily reports coming out of Crimea practically as soon as they happened, especially his reports about conditions of the wounded, the Government were forced to act with consummate speed. The Secretary for War was prompted to write to Florence, inviting her to lead a small party of nurses to Scutari in neighbouring Turkey – in fact she had already been planning a similar, but privately organised team. In less than a week she left London accompanied by 3 volunteer nurses, arriving in Scutari where she soon had to face the enormity of tasks facing her team. Conditions were so appalling that they had to cope with a death rate of 75% from cholera alone.
Such was her strength of will that Florence Nightingale was able to cope with the horrors of wounded soldiers struggling to survive under the terrible conditions surrounding them. Walking through the wards late at night, despite being a strict disciplinarian she managed to offer comfort to all of the sick and wounded, becoming a ministering angel with a gentle touch. Probably the first forces sweetheart, she was known as The Lady of the Lamp, and bed-bound soldiers kissed her shadow as it passed them.
Returning to England a little less than two years later, she found herself in the midst of being treated as a national icon, something she hated and made every endeavour to shun publicity, especially when summoned to Balmoral by Queen Victoria. After a short one-night stay in London, she caught the train to Whatstandwell and the home comforts of Lea Hurst.
Back home once more, almost immediately she returned to her ‘good works’, helping those in need as well as setting up reading rooms in Holloway and Whatstandwell, along with providing books for pupils at Lea Primary School, she also paid for the services of a doctor to attend to the needs of the poorer inhabitants of the district. Florence set up a penny bank, encouraging the local children to become thrifty. Following her death in 1910, there was a small legacy in her will for the school’s headmaster. From her nursing training, she was able to care for her grandmother and her mother during their final years.
Throughout the last years of the nineteenth century typhoid fever became rife and an outbreak overtook Holloway. During the epidemic she arranged for improvements to be made to the water supply and foul water drainage.
Florence Nightingale spent the last thirty years of her life in London until her death in 1910.
USEFUL INFORMATION:
An easy 3½mile 3.5 (5.6km) walk mainly along byways and the canal towpath. With one steady climb along the byroad from Whatstandwell to Holloway.
RECOMMENDED MAP:
1:25000 scale Ordnance Survey Outdoor Leisure, White Peak Area. Sheet OL24
PARKING: Canal-side (free) at Whatstandwell, or station car park (pay & display).
PUBLIC TRANSPORT: TP from Derby to Whatstandwell railway station.
REFRESHMENTS: Family run restaurant above the A6 crossing the River Derwent at Whatstandwell.
THE WALK – STEP BY STEP
From the parking space next to the road bridge carrying the road from the A6 to Whatstandwell, cross the bridge and immediately turn left along the narrow side road.
Follow the road, climbing beneath trees, at first next to ancient quarrying activities. Keep on this road uphill for about 1 miles until it meets the Crich road and turn left.
Follow the road through Holloway village for about a quarter of a mile.
Bear left and continue along the Crich road when passing a side road on your right.
Keeping to the Crich road, follow it downhill for half of a mile, ignoring side roads and access to modern properties until your road reaches Lea Mill – there is a mill shop at the mill, selling woollen knitwear.
The road crosses a mill stream and bears left to continue onwards towards Cromford. Follow this road for a little under a quarter of a mile, past houses on your left lining the roadside.
Turn left at a footpath sign and walk along a narrow path between the houses and over a swift flowing brook. Turn left on reaching the dried-up remains of an abandoned side canal.
Continue along the old tow-path, then go over a footbridge crossing the railway before the track disappears into a tunnel beneath Lea Wood.
The abandoned canal joins the main Cromford and High Peak canal next to the Lengthman’s Cottage (currently being restored by Derbyshire Wildlife).
Cross the footbridge opposite the cottage and turn left alongside the main canal – be on the lookout for the rare water voles inhabiting this stretch of the canal.
Continue beside the canal for almost two miles as far as the bridge carrying the Whatstandwell road. Refreshments are to your right at the roadside and with parked cars nearby.