Eighteenth century Derbyshire may have been difficult to get to but it was a tourist destination of choice, particularly for the writers and painters of the day. While Byron was a fan: ‘Was you ever in Dovedale? I assure you there are things in Derbyshire as noble as in Greece or Switzerland’, Thomas Grey was less enamoured: ‘I entered the Peak, a countrey beyond comparison uglier than any other I have seen in England, black, tedious, barren and not mountainous enough to please one with its horrors’. Even Elizabeth Bennett comes to Derbyshire to rob the county of a few spars.

The tourist route included the caverns of Castleton, the mills of the Derwent Valley and extraordinary limestone pinnacles of Dovedale, all of which remain tourist honey traps for their magnificent landscapes. Equipped with their paint boxes, wet weather gear and walking boots, these intrepid visitors ventured into the bowels of the earth, at the mercy of cavern guides to see the glittering spars and cavern formations. They stayed in hotels both good and notoriously bad (Buxton had a particularly reputation!), sampled the warm, blue, efficacious waters and purchased tourist souvenirs made from blue john and inlaid Derbyshire Black Marble. Most excitingly, these tourists sought out the new factories built to harness waterpower for the spinning industry which dominated the rivers Wye and Derwent.

This encouraged some interesting museums and entrepreneurial opportunities. It encouraged debate and discussion, so that John Whitehurst’s book On the Formation of the Earth uses Derbyshire as his textbook example of the antiquity of the world.

On reflection, the literary record, from Charles Cotton through Erasmus Darwin and Wordsworth, may be seen as examples of the Romantic age. The technological challenge of bringing the railways through the Peak was viewed as vandalism by Ruskin, but today as Victorian engineering prowess. Re-examination of the paintings and engravings collections held in museums in the county has encouraged study of land use in the time of the Enlightenment, when Derbyshire was at the heart of a revolution of technology and innovation. Together these inform the destination management in the 21st century

This presentation will reflect on how the geology of Derbyshire inspired the writers and craftsmen, created the tourist industry with its associated hotels and tourist souvenirs pitched to the moneyed classes, and encouraged the print makers trades to thrive.