Matlock: The Hydros, Bank Road and Getting There from Bakewell

Matlock is the county town of Derbyshire, in the south-eastern part of the Peak District with the National Park directly to the west. The civil parish of Matlock Town had a population of 10,000 at the 2021 census, and it works for a living: all three tiers of local government have their main offices here, ranged up one hill in order of seniority.

You come from Bakewell for what the water cure built. Thermal springs were found in 1698 in what was then a scatter of settlements — Matlock Town, Matlock Green, Matlock Bridge and Matlock Bank — and the 1800s brought the hydros, where paying guests took the water treatment. There were around twenty at one stage, most on the steep slope of Matlock Bank, and they are still standing, mostly doing other jobs.

The straight-line distance from Bakewell is 11.4 km. The road that connects them is the A6, from Carlisle to Luton, which passes through the town and reaches Buxton and Bakewell one way, Derby the other.

What twenty hydros left on Matlock Bank

The largest was built in 1853 by John Smedley. It closed in 1955 and reopened in 1956 as the headquarters of Derbyshire County Council, and it is County Hall still, a Grade II listed building that dominates Matlock Bank. Most of it went up after Smedley’s death in 1874, ending with the domed glass Winter Gardens in 1901.

Rockside Hydro stands higher again, built around 1860 and extended by Parker and Unwin between 1901 and 1905. In the Second World War it served as an RAF psychiatric hospital where service personnel, mostly aircrew, were rehabilitated, and locals called it “Hatters Castle”.

The pubs are a by-product: the number of public houses on Matlock Bank is thought to have followed from the ban on drinking inside the hydros, Smedley’s in particular. The Gate, dated 1869, still stands opposite Smedley’s on the corner of Smedley Street, now an arts venue called Designate at the Gate.

Bank Road, the cable tramway and the climb

The shape of Matlock is a hill. Ground level runs from 91 m in the valley bottom to 203 m at the top of Wellington Street, with Riber Castle looking down from 260 m to the south-east and Masson Hill from 339 m to the south-west. The town climbed those slopes only in the late 19th century.

Bank Road is that climb, from Crown Square at Matlock Bridge to Wellington Street, steep enough to need machinery. The Matlock Cable Tramway opened in 1893, conceived by Job Smith in imitation of San Francisco’s cable cars, with a stop halfway up at Smedley Street for the hydro. At a gradient of 1 in 5½ it was the steepest tramway in the world, rising 300 feet (91 m). It closed in 1927 after losing business to cars and buses.

Hall Leys Park, the Derwent and the flood marks

Hall Leys Park is the town’s centre of gravity, a Victorian public park opened in 1898 between the Derwent and Causeway Lane, 4.6 from 764 Google reviews. At the Crown Square end stand the war memorial and a wishing well; the Victorian bandstand, used in summer by local brass bands, is in the middle, with a boating lake beyond. A miniature railway runs half the length of the park and, having nowhere to turn, makes the return journey in reverse.

The river explains the flood marks. The footbridge beside the bandstand carries markings for the height of several floods in the 1960s and 1970s. The park is now part of the flood defence: the wall along its northern side can be sealed with sheets of wood, turning the whole park into a reservoir. The Derwent flooded in November 2019, damaging many local businesses — the Wetherspoons closed and later reopened as Ostello Lounge in March 2022 — and claimed the life of Matlock’s former high sheriff, Annie Hall, who was swept away and drowned, aged 69.

Dale Road, Lumsdale and where the reviews point

Dale Road runs south from Matlock Bridge towards Matlock Bath, part of the A6 and full of bends. Only four of its buildings are listed, though all fall inside the Matlock Bridge and Matlock Dale conservation areas. The Market Hall of 1867–68 is Gothic Revival, with carved heraldic shields across its front, and is now shops and offices. The Olde Englishe Hotel, timber-framed with a spire-like turret, stopped being a hotel in 2009 and is now bars and shops, and the HSBC on the corner closed in June 2015. Much of the best architecture here is doing something other than the job it was built for.

Know where the visitor reviews sit. Most of the heavily reviewed attractions filed under Matlock’s name — the cable car, the show caverns, the aquarium, the theme park — are in Matlock Bath, the resort immediately south. Of the places in Matlock itself, Lumsdale Waterfall is the best rated, at 4.6 from 1,130 Google reviews. The terrain is the recurring complaint across the area: a visitor to Gulliver’s Kingdom in July 2026 wrote, “The hills were a shock to us at first”.

Getting there from Bakewell

The bus is the practical answer. Matlock is served by Trent Barton and Stagecoach Yorkshire, and the Transpeak runs hourly from Derby through Matlock and on to Buxton, taking 90 minutes end to end and linking Matlock with Bakewell. One quirk is worth knowing: several routes serve only the old bus station on Bakewell Road rather than the newer one beside the railway station, which makes Matlock one of the smallest towns in Britain with two bus stations. Check which your service uses.

Matlock is also the rail head for this side of the Peak District, Bakewell’s line having closed in 1968. Trains approach from the south only: East Midlands Railway works the Derwent Valley Line to and from Derby, generally hourly each way. The station sits 11.5 km from the Bakewell centre point and carries 4.7 from 80 Google reviews.

Nothing runs north any more, that section having closed in 1968 after Beeching. The preserved Peak Rail runs steam trains from Matlock through Darley Dale to Rowsley and has shared the mainline station since 2011. Further north the old trackbed became the Monsal Trail, 8.5 miles (13.7 km) of walking and cycling from Wye Dale to Coombs viaduct about a mile south-east of Bakewell — near Bakewell, but nowhere near Matlock, so it joins the two towns only on a map.