"I've only just been able to get through," says Tony Wheeler, when he picks me up at Cromford Station. "The police closed the road – there's been a murder." This is not what anyone wants to hear, and especially not before spending the night alone in a Gothic chapel.
The car purrs out of the station and a few minutes later we come into Wirksworth. The optician's window is Halloween'd up with black tissue paper, fake spiders and masks.
Tony and his wife Viv run The Old Lock-Up as a B&B. It looks like a perfectly normal house from the street – if you disregard the old metal Police sign by the front door – but was built in 1842 as a magistrate's house, then used as a cop shop. It has four barrel-vaulted cells within its sturdy gritstone structure, into which assorted drunks and criminals were chucked before being released or sent for trial at Derby Assizes.
The Wheelers have lived here for almost 20 years, and along with creating a sort of mini-museum in the breakfast room, hallway and bar area, have two rooms for B&B guests upstairs, two more in a coach house behind, and a separate suite in the chapel, located in a small cemetery next door. This is where I'm sleeping (or possibly sitting bolt upright in terror) tonight.
From the street, the chapel is visible through wrought-iron gates. A sign on the gatepost says: "This private cemetery is open to visitors to the graves." One of those is right up against the chapel's front wall. "To the memory of James Fryer of Cromford," it says. Baptists built the chapel, Tony informs me (not entirely reassuringly), because they couldn't negotiate coffins around a narrow entrance into the church. Has anyone had trouble sleeping in here, I want to know? Well, one guest reported being woken at 2am by a loud crash. A grave had toppled over, the hefty stone breaking into several pieces. That's put my mind at rest, then.
Through the arched door and stone hall – relief: it's one big, light and welcoming room. Cast-iron lancet windows with lacy cafe-style curtains look out across the cemetery to farmhouses which dot the slopes of Black Rock on the High Peak Trail. Chocs, in a gold box, and tiny perfume bottles sit atop a Victorian washstand. Tea and coffee and a mini fridge occupy one little nook, and behind a louvred door, a skinny bathroom (bit of damp, nose tells me), another.
Supper is simple and good in a local bistro called Le Mistral, which displays its wines in a rustic cabinet (and sells mixed cases if you are so inspired).
The graveyard shift approaches. Clutching my chapel door key I determinedly do not look at The Old Lock-Up's fox-head door knocker as I pass. No owls hooting, good show. Inside the chapel a plethora of lamps cast a homely glow, it's warm as toast. Time to inspect the books and DVDs before bed. Nothing by Stephen King, instead a lighthearted mixture of Barbara Taylor Bradford, Rabbi Lionel Blue and feelgood movies. I jump in to the big old wooden bed, snowy with what my info calls "percale linen".
Sunlight catches the red stained glass in the morning. The room is suffused in romantic pink light. Honestly – I don't know what I was worrying about.
Don't miss Round off with a walk in St Mary's Church for the carved Saxon coffin lid built into the south transept wall.
• North End, Wirksworth (01629 826272/929, theoldlockup.co.uk). From £40 per person B&B. Pick-up from Cromford rail station available. No children. Dinner at Le Mistral (01629 824840), around £20.
