Crook Hill is a small hill in the

Peak District National Park Peak or The Peak may refer to: Basic meanings Geology * Mountain peak ** Pyramidal peak, a mountaintop that has been sculpted by erosion to form a point Mathematics * Peak hour or rush hour, in traffic congestion * Peak (geometry), an (''n''-3)-d ...

in the English county of

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...

, north east of Castleton.

Overview

The hill is situated above the A57 Snake Pass road between

Sheffield Sheffield is a city in South Yorkshire, England, situated south of Leeds and east of Manchester. The city is the administrative centre of the City of Sheffield. It is historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire and some of its so ...

and

Manchester Manchester () is a city and the metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester, England. It had an estimated population of in . Greater Manchester is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, with a population of 2.92&nbs ...

as it passes

Ladybower Reservoir Ladybower Reservoir is a large Y-shaped, artificial reservoir, the lowest of three in the Upper Derwent Valley in Derbyshire, England. The River Ashop flows into the reservoir from the west; the River Derwent flows south, initially through ...

. Crook Hill is regarded as an outlier of

Kinder Scout Kinder Scout is a moorland plateau and National nature reserve (United Kingdom), National Nature Reserve in the Dark Peak of the Derbyshire Peak District in England. Part of the moor, at above sea level, is the highest point in the Peak Distric ...

although the two are separated by the long western arm of Ladybower Reservoir. The hill has twin summits, the highest of which reaches a modest height of while the secondary top (sometimes referred to as Ladycrook Hill, although this name does not appear on Ordnance Survey maps) attains an altitude of . The actual high point of the ridge is Bridge-end Pasture, at above sea level, which is about 1 km north east. Geologically, the hill consists of Kinder Scout Grit, a kind of

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

. Both the hill's summits give excellent views of the surrounding countryside with Ladybower Reservoir, Derwent Edge and Win Hill being the main attractions. Between the two summits there is some evidence of an ancient

megalithic A megalith is a large Rock (geology), stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. More than 35,000 megalithic structures have been identified across Europe, ranging ...

standing stone A menhir (; from Brittonic languages: ''maen'' or ''men'', "stone" and ''hir'' or ''hîr'', "long"), standing stone, orthostat, or lith is a large upright rock (geology), stone, emplaced in the ground by humans, typically dating from the Eur ...

circle. The circle originally consisted of five stones around a surviving mound of which only two are still upright. There are also scheduled cairns in the vicinity. Crook Hill is one of the 95 Ethels hills of the Peak District, launched by the countryside charity CPRE in 2021.

Ascents

Crook Hill is normally climbed from the Derwent valley road just as it leaves the A57: a bridleway leaves the small car park at grid reference and climbs steeply and muddily up to Crookhill Farm, a working sheep farm owned by the

National Trust The National Trust () is a heritage and nature conservation charity and membership organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The Trust was founded in 1895 by Octavia Hill, Sir Robert Hunter and Hardwicke Rawnsley to "promote the ...

which also offers accommodation to tourists. Once the farm is passed, a stile is climbed onto the open sheep pasture and it is then a straightforward walk to the two twin summits, which are on designated access land.

References

{{Peaks of the Peak District Mountains and hills of the Peak District Mountains and hills of Derbyshire