Talking Location With author Fiona Mountain – The Peak District

#TalkingLocationWith… Fiona Mountain, author of The Keeper of Songs – Derbyshire Peak District

Writing The Keeper of Songs felt like going home. I grew up in Sheffield, on the edges of the Peak District, one of Britain’s most visited national parks, and my novel features two of its most famous landmarks – Chatsworth House, once known as The Palace of the Peaks, and the atmospheric market town of Castleton, often called The Gem of the Peaks.

Chatsworth House, the historic seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, is England’s most beloved stately home and was my family’s favourite destination for a day out. On a recent TV documentary one visitor referred to it as ‘a little slice of heaven.’ The gilded mansion, filled with treasures, and magnificent garden adorned with grottos and fountains form an oasis, nestling before a backdrop of densely wooded hills and bleak gritstone crags, surrounded by desolate heather moorland.

Jane Austen used Chatsworth as a model for Mr Darcy’s Pemberley in Pride and Prejudice and I first had the idea for The Keeper of Songs at the height of Downton Abbey mania. It struck me that people love that programme because  there’s a belief that estates like Pemberley and Downton don’t exist anymore, with butlers and chauffeurs, footmen and housemaids, all the gossip and goings on. But they do still exist. The chauffeurs have been swapped for car park attendants and the downstairs people are called staff instead of servants, but it takes nearly three hundred people to keep Chatsworth running: curators and conservationists, park keepers and people who work in finance and marketing and in the cafes and shops. I knew that I wanted to write about someone who worked in the Peak District’s splendid stately home in the present day.

One of the most important tasks in my research therefore, was to find out what it’s like to work behind the scenes at Chatsworth nowadays, and I was honoured to be assisted by Christine Robinson, who was Head Housekeeper at Chatsworth for decades, still lives in the estate village of Edensor and has written two excellent books about her work. She took me on a tour of the House as preparations were underway for the hugely popular and truly magical Christmas opening, when the halls and grand rooms are decked with magnificent towering trees, fairy lights and scenes from wintry fairytales. Christine shared tips about everything from cleaning the enormous chandeliers, dusting the thousands of books in the gracious library and enjoying chatter and cakes in the staff room. There is something very special about Chatsworth, and it because a central character in my book.

The song that echoes like a refrain throughout The Keeper of Songs is a famous Peak District ballad from the eighteenth century.The Runaway Lovers, tells of a young couple, know only as Henry and Clara, who were murdered as they were riding one night in Winnats Pass, near the market town of Castleton, on their way to be secretly married in the remote chapel at Peak Forest. A steep, winding limestone gorge with craggy slopes clad in mossy green, Winnats Pass is like a scene from a fantasy story. Beneath it, lie caverns where Blue John is still mined, the rare gemstone distinguished by zig-zag bands of purple, that’s found nowhere else in the world and is a motif that I’ve used to symbolise beauty that comes from darkness. I’d visited the caves on a school trip and returned with my children. We were all awed by the glittering grottos of translucent rock formations, the sweeps of stalactite draperies that gleam like frozen crystal waterfalls.

Castleton lies in the poetically named Hope Valley, at the foot of Mam Tor, the Shivering Mountain, watched over by the ruins of Peveril Castle, immortalised by Sir Walter Scott. Its most famous cave is The Devil’s Arse, which was renamed Peak Cavern to avoid offending Queen Victorian when she visited! Two centuries ago, the Duke of Devonshire owned all the land in Castleton and he allowed gypsies and tinkers to live in the Devil’s Arse. There was a whole village inside the cave. A choir of tinker children sang there long ago and one Christmas, a brass band played traditional carols. This tradition has recently been revived and I attended an atmospheric cave carol concert and watched YouTube recordings of a memorable gig by singer/songwriter Richard Hawley. The Keeper of Songs opens with enigmatic young folk singer Molly Marrison singing in the gaping mouth Peak Cavern before she mysteriously disappears, leaving a legacy of dark family secrets befitting this dramatic, storied land.

Fiona Mountain

Fiona has written six novels, which have been published around the world, including America, Canada, Australia, Italy, Germany, Holland, Japan and Thailand. Her debut, Isabella was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Bloodline is the winner of the prestigious Mary Higgins Clark Award from the Mystery Writers of America.  Fiona grew up in Sheffield and moved to London aged eighteen where she worked for the BBC, in the press office for Radio 1, handling publicity for presenters including John Peel, Mark Radlcliffe, Pete Tong, and Simon Mayo, traveling with the Radio 1 Summer Roadshow and hanging out with rock stars! Fiona lives in the Cotswolds with her family

You can follow Fiona on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram

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