For all serving and ex members of the RAF Mountain Rescue Service
John 'Campy' Barrows served as one of the founding members of the Llandwrog Team during WWII
The Strange Story of Watercress Jack
Many readers will have strolled through the delights of Monsaldale and surrounding countryside on a Sunday afternoon. Maybe some will have been a little more adventurous and explored even around Great Shacklow Woods and the limestone regions of Deep Dale. But very few walkers venture into the area of Taddington Dale after parking the car at White Lodge (on the A6 Bakewell to Buxton road).
There are many spectacular cave systems in the white Peak; notably Thor’s Cave in the Manifold Valley and many caverns around Castleton, Peak Cavern and the Giant’s Hole; all having impressive entrances. But all these have an almost unknown rival high on the slopes of Taddington Woods. A short stroll of some 300 yards up Taddington Dale, after leaving the White Lodge Car Park, brings us to a bend in the road and, keeping to the left hand side of the highway, we locate a grassy terrace on the hillside. The track has got rather overgrown with sycamore and silver birch trees, but the slope is only gradual and after 100 yards we break out on to a level plateau. Before us is a most impressive limestone cliff-face, some 100 feet high, and nestling at the base is a cave to delight the beholder. The entrance is fully 50 feet wide, 20 feet high and approximately 30 feet in depth – a most spectacular scene. Stranger than fiction, this was the abode of a most enterprising character who lived here just at the turn of the last century. He made his living by trading round the hamlets of Taddington and Ashford-in-the-Water and selling his natural health-giving potions and herbs to the locals. Known throughout the area as Watercress Jack, he collected his wares from the streams that flowed into the River Wye. Several local farmers also nicknamed him Donkey Jack, presuming his transport system was a donkey. He was a popular figure in Taddington Dale for many years, passing away around 1920. It was even reputed that at one period, his spouse also lived in the cave. There is evidence of quarrying on the broad terrace near the cave, for here are piled huge, square, limestone blocks, neatly stacked and weighing several tons. How they were cut and manhandled to this high spot is a mystery, for lifting and cutting machinery was primitive. I presume this stone was first used when a basic highway route was driven through the gorge of Taddington Dale. Modern-day traffic is never-ending as it thunders along the A6, yet on this high, level plateau we have stepped back into a by-gone era.
Maybe the spirit of Watercress Jack still lives on with another present-day
traveller. This bearded cave dweller is a popular character around Stoney
Middleton and Baslow. During the late 1970s, his address was a cave, high
in the woods of Eyam Dale. Tarpaulin sheets covered the entrance to keep
out the rain. He did odd jobs around the area. Maybe the blasting sirens
at the Middleton Dale quarries would act as his alarm clock. Anyway, he
moved his address in the 1980s to a cleft in the rocks along the A619,
Baslow to Chesterfield Road. This abode could hardly be called a cave;
more of a wedged rock recess and a mere 15 feet off the busy highway.
The location is 1¼miles from Baslow and nearby to the popular Robin
Hood Inn, below Birchens edge. Traces of soot from countless fires still
show the marks along the rock face where he once chose the spartan life.
John C. Barrows
PS. Harry, the cave dweller at Baslow, died a few years ago.
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