Ebenezer Rhodes, in his travel book Peak Scenery (1824 reprint)…
* he suggests the Derbyshire Peak as one of the roots of the landscape of the gothic novel… “Mrs. Ann Radcliffe, who was a native of Derbyshire, often visited Haddon Hall, for the purpose of storing her imagination with those romantic ideas, and impressing upon it those sublime and awful pictures which she so much delighted to pourtray: some of the most gloomy scenery of her “Mysteries of Udolpho” was studied within the walls of this ancient structure.”
* an apparently Roman eyewitness letter on the erecting of stone circles is recalled and quoted by him, on visiting the ancient stones of Stanton Moor. However, he was not to know that “Quintus to M. Tullius Cicero” was actually a fake devised by one of the antiquarians of the time. It seems to have been produced by the Earl of Buchan.
* [At Tissington he finds the survival of the…] “WELL-FLOWERING, and Holy Thursday is devoted to the rites and ceremonies of this elegant custom. The day is regarded as a festival; and all the wells in the place, five in number, are decorated with wreaths and garlands of newly-gathered flowers, disposed in various devices. Sometimes boards are used, which are cut to the figure intended to be represented, and covered with moist clay, into which the stems of the flowers are inserted, to preserve their freshness; and they are so arranged as to form a beautiful mosaic work, often tasteful in design and vivid in colouring: the boards, thus adorned, are so placed in the spring, that the water appears to issue from amongst beds of flowers. On the occasion the villagers put on their best attire, and open their houses to their friends. There is service at the church, where a sermon is preached; afterwards a procession takes place, and the wells are visited in succession: the psalms for the day, the epistle and gospel, are read, one at each well, and the whole concludes with a hymn, sung by the church singers, and accompanied by a band of music. This done, they separate, and the remainder of the day is spent in rural sports and holiday pastimes.”
* on the silence of a Peak town at night… “There is hardly any silence more solemn and profound than that which pervades a country town at midnight. In the fields the sighing of the winds is heard amongst the branches; whenever the breeze stirs the very quiver of the leaves is audible, and there is a voice in every grove and thicket. Sometimes the low of cattle, the twitter of a lone bird among the bushes, or the purling of a stream, breaks the stillness of the night, even where the dwellings of men are few and far apart; but in the midst of a throng of houses, the habitations of beings like ourselves, the idea of silence is alien to the feeling that prevails, and the mind being sometimes more powerfully influenced by associations than actual existences, the stillness of a town is more awful and impressive than the stillness of the country.”
* his account of a a hobbit-like hill near Buxton has already been noted here.