We bought Britain’s oddest attraction on a whim after seeing an advert in The Telegraph
I’m swinging in the breeze some 330 feet in the air. Below are lush pastures and thickly forested slopes; the only sound being the delighted squeals from the cable car behind me. The scene is almost Alpine. But there are no cowbells or soaring peaks. Instead, I have a tree-top view of tightly packed rows of stone-terraced houses, a train chugging into a station and a posse of motorbikes dodging the traffic along the busy A6. I’m in Derbyshire on my way to one of the UK’s most bizarre tourist attractions – and a cable car is the only way to gain entry.
This isn’t a flash-in-the-pan novelty attraction – the hilltop Heights of Abraham (more on the esoteric name later) in Matlock Bath has been attracting visitors to its show caverns and romantically “wild” hillside gardens since 1787. (A canny local entrepreneur had seen the profitability of turning the original lead mines, on the rocky slopes above the town and River Derwent, into show caves – using former miners as tour guides – and thus adding another attraction to the town’s spa waters.)
This year, the attraction is celebrating 40 years since the cable car was installed (definitely a novelty, and a UK first, in 1984; an uphill slog was the previous entry method). More interesting, however, is that it’s 50 years since Andrew and Vanessa Pugh responded to an enigmatic advertisement in the Daily Telegraph that roughly read: “For sale: the most unusual business you’ve ever thought of: woods, caves and a house”. Despite having never heard of Matlock Bath (never mind the Heights of Abraham), they drove up from their home in London and bought the business, more or less on a whim. And they’re still here.
“We loved the house and had no commitments,” Vanessa points out. “We liked the idea of an adventure, and had the confidence of youth.”
Confidence and bucketloads of physical hard work were needed. In 1974 the site, named after its apparent resemblance to the scene of a decisive colonial battle in 1759 against the French, near Québec, had lost the allure of its Georgian and Victorian heyday when Queen Victoria and Lord Byron were amongst the visitors. The romantic serpentine paths and “surprise” vistas were overgrown, the woodland and gardens unkempt, only one of the two show caves was operating and there was just one small café.
“Here was a wasteland,” gestures Andrew. We’re in the bright, chalet-style Vista restaurant near the cable car’s top station, with its floor-to-ceiling windows and balcony overlooking the gorge-like Derwent Valley. Stretching up the hillside behind us are a small amphitheatre, an adventure playground, two exhibition centres, a rose garden, a pergola picnic spot as well as the restored show cavern, the Great Masson.
On the slopes below are another show cavern (the Great Rutland), a woodland playground, a tower viewpoint, a pub and a summerhouse. The serpentine paths weaving between these attractions are busy with families, while folk in Victorian period costumes provide entertainment. Everything (bar food and drink) is included in the entrance price.
Andrew and Vanessa have the whiff of James Bond and his leading lady about them. Before they met, in 1972, Andrew was a professional powerboat racer, travelling abroad for competitions and leading a bachelor high life. Vanessa, who worked for a property developer in London’s fashionable Jermyn Street, caught his eye at a dinner party; she was glamorous, blonde and feisty. At 79, she still is – with a twinkling charm and infectious giggle.
Andrew (now 83) was smitten. “Until then, I’d lived for the moment. But a lot of people die with powerboat racing and when I realised we’d be a ‘team’, well…” he drifts off. He realised he had to readjust his life to keep his lady. “We decided to look for a business where we could work together. We had joint assets: Vanessa is an amazing administrator and organiser; I can do practical things.”
They spent their first 10 years restoring the attraction, and working in the site’s pub – “I made cheese toasties, Andrew served beer,” recalls Vanessa – and wheelbarrowing paraffin up to the reopened Great Masson cavern to fill the hurricane lamps. They also found time to get married and have a son, Rupert (now the site’s development director). By the winter of 1983, recalls Andrew: “We were very proud of what we’d achieved but people were not prepared to pay more, and the tourism world was changing. So either we gave up, or we did something dramatic.”
Ask why they didn’t introduce money-spinners like the amusement arcades, hologram attraction and gift-and-confectionery shops which attract day-trippers to Matlock Bath down below, and they look politely horrified. “It would have made a lot of money but we’d have felt we’d failed,” explains Vanessa. “This is a historic site, and making our history interesting is what we do.”
The underground tours in the two caverns, I later discover, are not full of whizz-bang pyrotechnics but a careful balance between education and entertainment. The guides point out scorch marks from miners’ candles, gleaming minerals – zinc, barite, fluorite, malachite – and hundreds of fossils. I learnt that the miners drank copious quantities of beer because it was considered a cure for lead poisoning, and that much of the lead needed to rebuild London after the 1666 Great Fire came from Derbyshire mines.
Most evocative is the realisation that these dark (we stand in near black-out for several minutes), chilly (around 10C) and occasionally cramped (some passageways are narrow and low) conditions that we only fleetingly experience were the miners’ daily existence. Popping out into the daylight through an old mine shaft, 130 feet higher than the lowest point in Great Masson Cavern, is both disorientating and breath-taking; the views across the valley to the cliffs of High Tor, stark Riber Castle, and the surrounding Derbyshire hills, remind just how high we are.
And this height had become a sticking point back in 1983; the steep route to the site was discouraging visitors. To Andrew, the solution was obvious – a cable car. The fact that this exotic transport system had to avoid houses, be in a straight line (corners are shockingly expensive), had no precedent in the UK (Italy, Austria and France were the only manufacturing countries) and required huge borrowings, did not dampen their spirits.
It says volumes about the couple’s charm, conviction and energy that agreements and financial backing were in place by September 1983, and the cable car was built and opened the following April. “We couldn’t do it today,” says Vanessa, who still looks amazed that they pulled it off. “But we had so much support. Our greatest asset is our team of people here.”
The respect is two-way; I’ve rarely seen so many staff happy in their jobs. Even though their role is more backseat these days, the couple – who live on-site in a white-washed fairy-tale folly with three towers (the house that charmed Vanessa back in 1974) – walk up to the Vista every day. “Some people think we’re a couple of basket cases, but we still get a thrill,” says Andrew.
“We absolutely love it, never tire of it, I think it’s what keeps us going,” laughs Vanessa with her 100-watt smile. “We bought a lifestyle.”
How to do it
Tickets for the Heights of Abraham cost from ￡25 for adults and ￡17.50 for children. Under fives go free (01629 582365).
Where to stay
Darwin Forest offers luxury self-catering lodges in a woodland setting with a restaurant and leisure activities and discounted tickets to Heights of Abraham. Four-night stays from ￡419 for two, ￡429 for four (01639 732428).
Other things to do
Cromford Mills: Birthplace of the modern factory system and site of the world’s first water-powered cotton spinning mill, designed by Sir Richard Arkwright.
Peak District Mining Museum: Traditional museum telling the story of the area’s geology and lead-mining industry, plus guided lead and fluorspar mine tour.
Gulliver’s Kingdom: Children’s adventure theme park including log flume, high ropes and dinosaur park.
Walking: High Tor cliff and former lead mines, plus riverside paths along the River Derwent.
Rowing boat hire: See Matlock Bath Boats.
Helen Pickles was a guest of Darwin Forest lodges
