Our wonderful well dressings this year are an absolute delight to behold.  They went up on Friday evening and will stay on display all this week.  There are two individual dressings: the first celebrates Caudwell’s Mill, a working flour mill in Rowsley for over four hundred years until its recent sad closure and the second is done by the primary school and celebrates “things that make us happy.”

Well dressing is a uniquely Derbyshire tradition dating back to medieval times.  A board is soaked in the river and then covered with clay so a design can be created using petals, moss, seeds, cones and all sorts of other natural materials.  Most villages in Derbyshire have a well dressing week and ours coincides with the neighbouring village of Youlgreave and Bakewell