Redmires to Stanage Edge Walk (With Spooky House)

August 15, 2023 CIRCULAR WALKS, MEDIUM WALKS 4-9 MILES, PEAK DISTRICT WALKS, PEAK DISTRICT WALKS WITH KIDS

This Peak District walk starts at Redmires and heads over to Stanage Pole, Stanage Edge and High Neb before returning over the moors past the “Spooky House” at Redmires (aka the old water board house at Oaking Clough). This walk is just over 6 miles long and is a lovely walk when the heather is in bloom.

The Redmires Spooky House

The Redmires Spooky House is actually an old Sheffield water board house, abandoned long ago. It stands alone on the banks of Oaking Clough and has a cracking view over the nearby moors. The building has two rooms, each with the remains of a substantial old fireplace range. Apparently one of the rooms was meant for water board workers and the other for game keepers and grouse shooters. Nowadays sadly it’s full of rubbish from fly campers – if you visit, please take all your rubbish home with you as I’m not sure who’ll be trekking out here to empty any bins!

Our walk started in the free car park off Long Causeway near Redmires Reservoir. We headed out onto the road and followed it south to where the footpath heads south-west up onto the moors. The old packhorse track runs alongside a wood for a short while which opens out onto moorland and it was blooming with heather when we did this walk. The moors were a sea of purple!

After about a mile of gentle walking we reached Stanage Pole which marks the boundary between Derbyshire and South Yorkshire. Good old Wikipedia tells me

“A pole has stood on the site since at least 1550. Many initials have been carved into the rock that supports it, and five can be identified as initials of the parish road surveyors who renewed the pole when needed. “T.C. 1550”, “H.W. 1581”, “T.M. 1631”, “H.H. 1697” and “F.N. 1740” are the marks of the parish surveyors and the date the pole was renewed. The pole is a way marker on a medieval packhorse road known as the Long Causeway or Long Causey which runs west from Sheffield. It was used for centuries as a boundary marker between the parishes of Sheffield, Hathersage and Ecclesfield.“

A man and his daughter walking along a stony track

Stanedge Pole with a foreground close up of purple heather

Stanedge Pole, a wooden pole which is a boundary marker

From Stanage Pole we headed west to join the main track that runs along Stanage Edge, which has amazing views over to Win Hill and The Great Ridge. Turning right at the junction we followed the path and where it forked we took the lower path, which forks again and we took the higher of these, leading through the bracken to a stile.

Over the stile we followed the path until it reached a large millstone. Stanage Edge used to be a quarry making millstones but the industry stopped virtually overnight with the introduction of French millstones which were said to be cleaner, leaving less bits in the flour. Stanage Edge has abandoned millstones dotted around all over. We had a detour down the hill to find some more millstones, which meant a climb back up afterwards!

We continued up the hillside until we reached the top of Stanage Edge, and then it was a short walk to High Neb trig point which again has amazing views over to Win Hill.

A white trig point at High Neb with purple heather in the foreground

From High Neb we picked up the path leading north-east(ish) along the line of the grouse butts, stopping for lunch in the stone shelter along the way. This part of the moor gets very boggy and we had to do a bit of bog dodging even though the weather had been so dry!

A woman walking on heather clad moors under a dark and brooding sky

A small open fronted stone barn on a heather moorland

The trail followed a collapsed stone wall across the moors to a small woodland plantation and officially runs round the edge of it, so we followed that and spied the Spooky House in the distance.

The Redmires spooky house, an old building abandoned long ago.

A view inside the Redmires Spooky House, a red brick interior with an old fireplace.

The path goes pretty close to the Spooky House but to enter you have to cross the bridge over the weir. We popped over for a look inside and then followed the track alongside the conduit until we reached a crossroads with a metal gate. We turned right to head over Brown Edge and back down to the car park.

You might also like this longer Stanage Edge walk or Scenic Bamford Edge and Stanage Edge walk.