Tufa Cottage.

I had come across references to Tufa Cottage in the past so on the 28-9-2011 I set off with my camera and Pacific Coast motorbike to take advantage of the Indian summer we were experiencing and to see if I could get some decent shots of the property.

I travelled into Derbyshire from cheshire and headed towards Matlock. my sat nav taking me to the A5012 which runs past Tufa Cottage and which travels through the Via Gellia, however when I was 2 miles away I found the road to be closed but I carried on anyway and finally came to the Cottage.

Tufa Cottage was built in the 1830s and what makes it different from any other house in this country is that it has been built from Tufa which is a calcified moss which has formed on volcanic rock and which occurs only in very few locations in this country.

Tufa Cottage was originally built as a gamekeepers cottage for the Gell estate, and in some of the old postcards that are in existence from the 1800s some of the original building tufa stone can be seen. In more recent times the cottage has appeared on TV in Heart of the Country and Haunted houses of Derbyshire.

These days Tufa Cottage is more famous for its delicious honey that is produced here, the following is an article taken from the Tufa Cottage website about the honey produced here:

Tufa Cottage Apiary has now moved from hives spread around the garden into a
‘Bee House’. The Via Gellia valley is quite cold and damp during the winter
months and not liked by honey bees so the Bee House has much improved the over
wintering. Although Bee Houses are popular in the colder areas of europe, there
are very few, if any (?), in the UK and information is very limited even on the
internet. Some very interesting information was found however in The House Apiary by John Spillar, written around 1952. Being
within the Peak National Park honey from the Via Gellia area is of course
delicious and during August I take the bees on their annual holiday to the heather moors, still within the Peak National
Park just north of Chatsworth House. The Heather Honey from this area is of
course second to none!

So if you are travelling through the Via Gellia look out for this unique cottage which is the only one to be be found in this country, you can’t miss it really as there is a cable car in the garden advertising their honey!

Photographs by Gary Tacagni.