Sitting in the hamlet of Hopedale near Alstonefield, The Watts Russell Arms is a charming 18th century, stone-built inn, set in the beautiful countryside of the Peak District National Park, within walking distance of Dove Dale and the Manifold Valley.

Hope was an inhabited place by the 1320s. Hopedale, further south-west was apparently an occupied site by 1657 when there was a house of that name. The New Inn there existed by 1815, and from the 1860s it was known as the Watts Russell's Arms (later the Watts Russell Arms). The name Hope derives from the old English word, hop meaning a valley. Alstonefield is mentioned in the Doomsday Book, completed In 1086.