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What is the history of limestone dales?After the last Ice Age, around 13,000 years ago, the frozen land began to gradually warm and melt the ice that covered it. This melt water formed fast flowing streams that coursed their way through cracks, gullies and troughs in the landscape.
Cavedale, near Castleton In the Peak District, the melt water streams and rivers gradually carved through the limestone rock beneath to create steep-sided valleys or limestone dales. For more information about the geology of the Peak District limestone landscape click here.
Much of the Peak District, including the limestone dales, would naturally be wooded. However, since Neolithic times (4500 years BC), people have felled trees to clear the land for growing crops and rearing animals. In the more accessible areas of the limestone dales, clear felling took place to create grassland that was, and still is, used to graze sheep (as they are a relatively hardy, agile animal!). In the more inaccessible, steep-sided parts of the dales, where it was not so easy to clear the land, pockets of woodland still remain today, for example at Dovedale.
Dovedale In addition to farming, people have extracted minerals from the limestone. From Roman times to the present day, mineral veins have been mined for lead, fluorspar, barite and calcite. The evidence of these workings can easily be observed in the landscape today. For example, the mined lead veins can be seen as deep gullies in the hillside surrounded by unnatural grassy mounds marking the site of old 'spoil heaps' or lead rakes.
Tideslow Lead Rake from the air For more information on the history of lead mining click here. The limestone itself has been quarried since Roman times, as evidenced by the grassy remains of past works and the bare white cliff faces of the large scale quarrying industry of today.
The different ways that people have worked the limestone dales over thousands of years has resulted in a rich, mosaic of cliffs, woodlands, scrub, grasslands and rivers that supports many different species of wildlife. Today many people visit the Peak District's limestone dales to enjoy a pleasant walk by the river and admire the wildflowers and birds.
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