Ilam’s cottages come as a surprise: steep gables, tall chimneys and diamond timberwork, an Alpine-looking model village that Jesse Watts-Russell had rebuilt around 1840 to designs by George Gilbert Scott. At a road junction stands a tall stone cross he raised in memory of his wife, modelled on the medieval Eleanor crosses. The village sits where the Manifold and Dove valleys meet, below Ilam Hall — a walkers’ gateway to Dovedale.
© Bill Boaden / Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
