Out & About: Solomon's Temple

Today we went straight up the A6 to Buxton with the purpose of visiting Grin low Tower, otherwise known as Solomon's Temple. We parked near to a gateway with a footpath sign and it was all uphill.

Solomon's Tower is a Victorian folly apparently built by Solomon Mycock in the 1890s, paid for by public subscription to provide work for the locally unemployed with assistance of the seventh Duke of Devonshire. The tower was restored in 1998.

We walked past an old farm building which looked like it was made up from all different windows from the local scrap yard. Very ingenious these farmers.
The footpath led us straight to the tower. When we got there the sky was a bit miserable and the light was bad for getting any decent photo's. The tower is quite impressive The structure is a 20-foot-high, two-storey tower built on top of a Bronze Age barrow, sitting on top of a ridge at a height of 1,440 ft above sea level. From the open top of the tower there are good views over the town and the surrounding countryside.

They should all be locked in the tower!!

View from the tower

View of Buxton Dome from the tower

Ike trying his pick pocket technique

Mooove along now.

After we had a look around and in the tower we walked down through the woods towards Buxton. We got to the bottom of the woods and came out on some playing fields with a community hall so we sat there and had our breakfast.
I checked my GPS and we had descended over 400 feet which of course meant we had to go back up 400 feet.

Grin Low Wood planted in 1820 by the 6th Duke of Devonshire to hide the industrial scars of all the lime kiln spoil heaps. The site is 100 acres and designated SSSI due to the rich woodland and wild flowers.

After having breakfast we set off heading up through the woods towards the tower but on a completely different route.

This building had a turnstile and we think it may have been the original access to Poole's Cavern.

This is a memorial seat to 21 year old Royal Marine Scotty Taylor who was a local lad and unfortunately was killed in Afghanistan. He was the 289th member of the UK services to have been killed in Afghanistan.

This is the site of one of the mid 17^th century lime kilns which litter this area. The raw materials to make the lime powder would have been sourced locally from the surrounding hills and Axe Edge .It took 10 tons of limestone and 10 tons of coal to produce 3 tons of lime powder. All incoming and outgoing material would have been transported using pack horses.