A small cache with log, pencil and a few small swaps.
Accessible from Middleton Top car park via a wide grassy track, or paths up from Middleton Village.
A couple of notes about the cache:
1) Be careful, especially with kids, as there is thorny vegetation around the cache at head height
2) Please don't climb on or disturb the stone wall - the cache is not in the wall, nor is it accessible from below the wall.
I chose this location as it provides an excellent view of Middleton By Wirksworth.
Middleton - perched high on a hillside above Cromford and Wirksworth - is a village with a long history of mining and quarrying.
It is surrounded by the scars of industry yet steeped in history and bursting with community spirit.
Founded in Saxon times as a farming hamlet around an unusually high spring, the village developed in the 17th and 18th centuries as a lead-mining centre (like nearby Wirksworth) and a few of the older buildings in the upper part of the village date from this period.
A quarry over the hill from Middleton-by-Wirksworth towards Hopton was worked for the world renowned "Hopton Wood Limestone"; an almost translucent marble-like stone that can take a very fine and highly polished finish. It has been used extensively for hundreds of years in buildings of character and prestige such as the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, The Albert Memorial, Lichfield Cathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, Calke Abbey and the new Bank of England building to name a few. Hopton Wood Stone was also used for over 120,000 headstones in First World War cemeteries.
Middleton Mine, a huge undergound quarry (one entrance to which is located just below the cache site) is remarkable because its tunnels extend underground for approximately 25 miles on three different levels running under Middleton Moor.
The mine is so vast, limestone was literally quarried underground. Lorries drove a quarter of a mile to the working face with excavations carried out along roads controlled by traffic lights. The roads were some 35 ft wide and 20 ft high with pillars 40 ft square to support the roof. Even the stone crushing plants were operated underground to produce 5,000 tons of limestone a week.
The quarries around the village closed in the late 20th century.
The village is spread out around a long main street with several narrow sections where it passes between old buildings.
The south end of the village is known as "Rise End", home to one of two village pubs and a campsite, while the North (upper) end of the village is home to the second pub and Millenium gardens.
In between are the village school, church and village hall.
DH Lawrence spent a year here living in a cottage on the road down to the Via Gellia to the north of Middleton.
Please replace the cache exactly as you find it.
Happy hunting!