The record rainfall this winter has seen landslides happening and sinkholes appearing both here and across the country. Here, Steve Brown looks at what’s been slip-sliding away in Derbyshire across the centuries…
IT IS NOW 35 YEARS since Derbyshire’s highway engineers finally gave up a long battle to keep open the main A625 road between the Hope Valley and Chapel-en-le-Frith. Unbeknown to the turnpike road builders back in 1819 they had unwittingly constructed the road over one of the most active and long lived landslips in the British Isles; indeed geologists have found evidence that this slip has been moving for over 3,000 years! The county also boasts arguably the UK’s largest landslip plus many other examples where nature has taken a very obvious and sometimes inconvenient course to create well known landforms and astonishing sights…