Charles Cotton (1630-1687) was the owner of (the now demolished) Beresford Hall in Beresford Dale, on the upper reaches of the River Dove. As a Royalist sympathiser he found it prudent to live quietly in the country after the Parliamentary victory, but he was also a notable writer who wrote poetry in praise of the Peak District, as well as a best-selling handbook on games. But today he is mainly remembered as a fishing enthusiast who built a fishing ‘temple’ in his grounds on the Staffordshire side of the river. This still stands, on private land but visible from the footpath on the Derbyshire side. Over the doorway the initials CC and IW are intertwined, commemorating his friendship with Izaak Walton.

Walton (1593-1683) was born into an innkeeper’s family in Stafford but seems to have been socially mobile, moving to open a linen draper’s business in London and becoming friendly with the local vicar, John Donne. But he was also a committed Royalist, and retired to Staffordshire after the War, where he bought land. His political leanings may have cemented his friendship with Cotton, but angling was probably the main tie, and Walton’s most famous work was The Compleat Angler (1653), to which Cotton later added some chapters. This book has gone through scores of editions in the past 370 years, yet is frankly almost unreadable today. Walton, who was 37 years older than Cotton, must have been good company, for he spent the last half of his long life staying with friends, and in some cases writing their biographies, including George Herbert and Richard Hooker.

In Cotton’s part of The Compleat Angler he describes a journey from Asbourne north to Milldale, in the form of a dialogue between a traveller (Viator) and a fisherman (Piscator), which emphasises the horrors of Derbyshire roads – this is the descent into the Dale:

Viator: It is as steep as a penthouse.

Piscator: To look down from hence it appears so, but the path winds and turns, and will not be found so troublesome.

Viator: Theses stones are so slippery I cannot stand. What’s here, a bridge? Do you travel in wheelbarrows in this country? This bridge was made for nothing else – ’tis not two fingers broad.

Piscator: I have rid over the bridge many a dark night.

Today the bridge at Milldale is still called Viator’s Bridge.