Ilam Park - Discover Derbyshire and the Peak District

Alpine-style cottages, a Tudor Gothic Hall, an eccentric river and a wonderful background of soft green hills make Ilam a very popular place with visitors. Many of whom come to walk in Ilam Hall’s beautiful parkland, which is free for all to walk round, along the aptly named Paradise Walk by the River Manifold.

Paradise Walk is fringed by woodland, planted as a pleasure ground for the hall, and is a favourite with most people. It was here that Jesse Watts-Russell a wealthy industrialist, had a rather grand hall built. It had battlemented towers, ornamental chimneys and a flag tower. The architect, who designed the hall, was also engaged in the building of Alton Towers and there were some similarities between the two.

Following Watts-Russell’s death, the hall was in the hands of the Hanbury family for a time, before being tried unsuccessfully as a restaurant, then sold, and partly demolished. In 1934, Sir Robert MacDougal was persuaded to buy it for the nation and give it to the Youth Hostels Association ‘for the perpetual use of the youth of the world’. As the YHA did not have a trust body, it gave the building to the National Trust. What remains today are the old entrance hall, armoury and servants’ quarters, which have been converted into a Youth Hostel. There are tea rooms, a shop, information facilities and a car park available for the use of the general public.

A short distance from the YHA is St Bertram’s Bridge, which carried the old road across the River Manifold before the present bridge existed. Bertram, who had connections with the Royal family of Mercia, was returning from Ireland with his wife and newborn child. He left them briefly, only to find on his return that wolves had savaged them both. At once he denounced his heritage and spent the rest of his life as a hermit preaching the gospel.

In the church of the Holy Cross, the chapel of St Bertram contains a shrine that became a place of pilgrimage in the middle ages and the scene of many miraculous cures. The Chantrey Chapel holds a finely carved memorial to David Pike Watts a former owner of the estate, whose daughter married Jesse Watts-Russell.