The village with many names

Mike Smith visits the ancient upland village of Youlgrave, which has its own very distinct character and atmosphere

- Mike Smith

In 2003, when I was researching a village feature for Derbyshire Life, I was surprised to come across three different versions of the name of the place I was about to visit. Although the village was marked on my Ordnance Survey map as Youlgreave, a finger-post at Newhaven pointed me towards Youlegreave, whereas a sign at the boundary of the village told me that I was about to enter Youlgrave. Seventeen years later, the contradictions remain. In fact, the Village History Trail, produced by the local history society, goes out of its way to add to the confusion by naming all 52 historical variations of the place-name that were discovered by Bill Shimwell.

Settling on the heading of ‘Youlgrave’ as the least convoluted of the variations, the village trail takes visitors on a 0.75 mile-journey along the main street of this former lead-mining centre, which sits on a shelf of land between the beautiful valleys of Lathkill Dale and Bradford Dale. The restrained architecture that characterises most of the stone-built village houses is offset by the far grander appearance of Youlgrave Old Hall and Old Hall Farm, two 17th-century gabled dwellings that look as if they have been transplanted from a village in the Cotswolds.

However, three new-builds constructed since my last visit to Youlgrave have been designed to match the unpretentious appearance of all the other dwellings in the village. These comprise a development of affordable, energy-efficient houses on Hannah Bowman Way, a new toilet block at the western end of the village and a new house that has featured on television as a ‘Grand Design’. Although much of this structure is rather futuristic in appearance, its multi-tiered southern aspect hides below a roadside section with the simple styling of other buildings on the main street.