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Back on the Portway: Smalley and Morley

I didn't by any means feel I had fully explored the Erewash Valley, but I had completed my planned routes and got some idea of the transport, industry, and general geography of the area. It was time to return to the Portway.


There are lots of -leys around here. Smalley, Morley, Mapperley, Stanley, Horsley. The suffix means "woodland clearing", and although there are not many woods around any more, it doesn't take much imagination to think of little villages among the trees. I started in Dale Abbey (or should that be Daley Abbley?) where the monastery once dominated the surrounding area.


I've been to Dale Abbey several times but never actually walked through the village before. There is a neatly trimmed pub, an old chapel, now a church known as The Gateway, and a house with an odd lumpy corner which I realised must be part of the ruined abbey.




A field path led me up to the main Derby-Ilkeston road. I crossed it and followed a couple of horses along a single-track lane past Upper Hagg and Lower Hagg farms. A hagg, apparently, can also be a clearing in a woodland. At Lower Hagg the road turned into a bridlepath which looked as if it had recently been a cowpat-laden swamp. I was glad that the mud had dried out and the cows were safely over the other side of the field.



could have been messy...

cows a safe distance away

Back on tarmac again, a couple of men were fixing a bridge. The road was closed but I was able to squeeze past. I glanced at my route map and turned right to follow a footpath up to the village of Stanley.



Stanley's little church had a hand-painted sign and a beautiful flowery churchyard. It felt cosy, if that's a word you can use of a graveyard. There were stacks of books in the porch.





Along the road, a house had a small replica trig point in its garden - an intriguing idea - and the former Wesleyan chapel featured decorative brickwork.

mini trig point


It was about this point when I looked at my map again and realised I'd gone wrong. My outward and return walks overlapped each other several times and, where I'd turned off to Stanley, I should have continued straight ahead to follow the Portway to Morley church. However, the route I was now on also headed in a direct line to Morley church, so rather than cutting back to the Portway, I decided to keep going. It was a very pretty walk.





St Matthew's Church inherited its stained glass windows from Dale Abbey when the monastery was dissolved. Carefully packed, the windows may well have travelled along the Portway. The church was closed when I visited, but the website has a fascinating video about the recent restoration of the medieval stained glass.



In the churchyard is a mausoleum, looking like a miniature chapel. The old bit of stonework next to it was part of the Morley Manor estate wall.



Stephen Bailey's book, The Old Roads of Derbyshire, remarks on the height of Morley church spire, pointing out that it "may have served as a useful landmark for travellers". I don't know if Dale Abbey's church had a spire, but it feels as if I have been navigating from point to point, from Bramcote to Stapleford to Sandiacre to Morley.

Bramcote

Sandiacre

Stapleford

Morley

From the church I headed south across fields covered in shredded black plastic, until I reached an old railway cutting. This is the same track - the Friargate line - which crossed Bennerley viaduct. A cycle path ran next to the cutting. I reached a road where a Longcliffe quarry truck was negotiating around a breakdown van.



As I followed the driveway down to Jesse Farm, the quarry truck passed me, kicking up clouds of dust, and presently I heard a muffled rumble as it dumped its load of limestone. Ahead, grassy meadows rolled down and up again to the horizon.


The railway cutting gradually turned into an embankment. At this end it was peppered with Private Keep Out signs, but there was obviously a path on top of it further on. A woman was walking along it with her dog. In the still air I could track her by her voice, but she was unaware of me; I surprised her when I crossed the trackbed and came up behind her.

looking across to the railway

crossing the embankment

I was now back on my missed Portway section, following Stanley Brook across velvety green fields. Just after the Bridge Inn, I turned right and headed uphill across fields, skirting the edge of the Locko Estate (stately home rather than council houses) and coming out on the A6096 again.



The path back to Dale Abbey ran next to the sandstone ridge that bounds the village to the south. Further along, the hermitage is dug into the rock, but I turned off before I got there, went past the semi-detached church, and finished my walk with a flapjack on a bench in the village centre.

a natural embankment this time!

new steps

church is left hand side

Dale Abbey - Morley 10 miles / 16 km

23 March 2026

xx




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