Anglo-Saxon / Anglian
the period of english history dominated by the settlement of northern europeans in the eastern counties of england. it dates from the collapse of the roman economy during the early fifth century ad, to the norman conquest of 1066. in the midlands settlement was dominated by the angles, hence the term anglian. it also includes influences from occupying scandinavians during the 200 years before the normans arrived. the early part of the saxon period is sometimes known as the dark ages because of the lack of historical documentation for this period. in the peak district, there is little evidence for extensive intrusion of anglo-saxon people or cultural ideas until the seventh century.
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Ard
a simple form of plough comprising a large pointed stick that was either used by hand or pulled by animals.
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Ashlar
an architectural term for high quality well-finished smooth stonework used in the superior parts of a vernacular building such as quoins and those around openings. sometimes also used for main walls as a whole.
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Belland Yard
the walled enclosure around a lead mine and its hillocks, built to keep stock from belland (poisoned) ground.
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Bronze Age
the prehistoric period that comes between the neolithic and the iron age, dating roughly from 2000 to 800 bc. this was the time of the introduction of metals and more importantly of fields used in a sustained way by farmers. in the first half of the period people continued to use ritual sites such as barrows and stone circles. few if any of these monuments were built after about 1500 bc.
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Buddles/Buddling
stone or timber lined troughs, often rectangular but sometimes circular, through which crushed ore and other minerals are passed in flowing water. because lead ore is heavier than other minerals, this separates-out and thus can be concentrated ready for smelting.
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Building Platform
when buildings are constructed, the ground is often levelled by cutting into a slope, and/or by building up one end, to create a level terrace. often the sites of demolished timber or stone buildings can still be identified by a surviving building platform. prehistoric examples are commonly circular, while from the roman period onwards they tend to be rectangular.
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Burh
an anglo-saxon word for a type of fortified settlement most associated with the kingdom of wessex. some were only temporary settlements while others grew into towns that remain today.
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Cairnfield
in later prehistory, stony soils were cultivated and cleared rocks were placed in many piles within fields or unfenced plots; the areas where these occur in large numbers are termed cairnfields. they are common on the east moors, often the heaps are small and roughly circular, some placed on large earthfast boulders as this ground could not be cultivated. some clearance was placed at field edges and as a result is found in linear piles.
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Clearance Cairn
a pile of stones, often relatively small, which has been gathered into a heap in preparation of the adjacent ground for cultivation. in the peak district the majority are of prehistoric date. however, later examples are known, including some made in the twentieth century.
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Commons
a term used from the medieval period onwards for the extensive parts of a parish, manor or township that were not divided into fields and were used communally for grazing of stock and for acquiring resources such as firewood and peat. the term went out of use in 18th/19th centuries when the wastes and commons were enclosed.
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Early Medieval
a term often used for the anglo-saxon period, i.e. from the collapse of the roman occupation during the 5th century ad until the norman conquest. however, only the later anglo-saxon period can be strictly called "medieval", a period distinguished by the development of towns, nucleated settlements and an organised agrarian landscape.
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Earlier Prehistory
a term used here to denote the time when humans subsisted by hunter-gathering, before the advent of farming around 6000 years ago. this covers both the palaeolithic and the mesolithic.
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Enclosure Award
between the mid eighteenth and mid nineteenth centuries a large amount of waste and common land was enclosed in the peak district and other parts of england and wales. this enclosure movement was undertaken under the strong belief in the need for agricultural improvement amongst landowners at the time. to enclose land the distribution to farmers and other landowners of the newly enclosed fields had to be approved. this approval could be via an act of parliament or by private agreement between local landowners and others with traditional land rights. in all legally ratified cases, and some privately agreed examples, an enclosure award setting down the agreed extent and layout of the enclosure in writing and a corresponding plan was drawn up. the level of accuracy and detail that allotment boundaries were planned to is usually good, but in many cases the subdivisions into individual fields were not shown. in the case of parliamentary awards these were often done on a parish by parish basis.
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Field Barn
one feature of post-medieval field enclosures in many parts of northern upland britain is stone built barns placed within fields. often of two, or one and a half storeys, with a cattle byre beneath and a hay loft over. a small cobble yard may be associated with the barn. such barns were often used for over-wintering stock such as cattle, milk cows and sheep, and also sometimes working horses. hay taken from the adjacent fields was stored in the loft and fed to the stock by passing it through a chute or trap door to feed troughs or mangers below. for simplicities sake all smaller single-storey stone sheds and byres within fields are also referred to as field barns.
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Gin Engines / Gin Circles
the horse-drawn winding engines used from the seventeenth century onwards to extract lead ore or coal from relatively deep mine shafts are called gin engines. these could have been of two basic types. the first to be developed was the cog and rung gin, where the horse went round a shaft which had winding gear above it. the later and more easily used whim gin had the horse circling the winding gear to one side of the shaft. the circular track left by the horse, often still recognisable today, is called the gin circle.
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Hotch / Hotching
hotching is a simple mechanised way of sorting gravel-sized metal ore from other minerals. the hotch comprised a wooden box at least 1.5m long with a sieve in suspended from above by a long pole. the box was filled with three quarters water and one quarter partially sorted ore and waste. as the sieve was jerked up and down the lighter material would make its way to the top and the heavier ore-rich material would sink to the bottom. the lighter waste could be skimmed off the top leaving the metallic ore.
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Inbye
normally defined as the farmland included within the ring fence of a farmstead, including both improved and unimproved land. however, it is used here as a term of convenience for the enclosed fields used by the farms on the estate and does not include the moorlands, which are managed differently.
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Intakes
land enclosed for use by a farm that originally lay beyond the ring fence or the farm’s existing inbye. over time intakes on better land would be improved and inseparable from inbye. some intakes are on marginal land that cannot be viably improved and remain as rough pasture.
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Iron Age
the prehistoric period that comes between the bronze age and the coming of the romans, in the peak district dating roughly from 800 bc to the 70s ad. this was a time of settled farming communities living in scattered farms and hamlets, some overlooked by hillforts. in the peak district, identifying direct evidence for iron age occupation is currently problematic, although some have recently been positively identified on the east moors.
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Later Prehistory
a term used here to denote the last 4000 years of prehistory, covering the neolithic to the iron age, a time when farming was first practiced. over this time there were radical social changes, which went hand in hand with a move from seasonal tenure to a more-sustained farming lifestyle (see neolithic, bronze age, iron age).
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Lime Kiln
a kiln in which limestone is burnt using coal to produce lime used as agricultural fertiliser, for lime mortar for buildings and for various industrial/chemical purposes. there are two basic types, field kilns where farmers produce own lime for use on the farm, and sale kilns where lime is produced to be sold. in both the kilns can be intermittent or continuous. intermittent kilns are loaded with limestone and coal, fired and then left to cool before being emptied and the process restarted. continuous kilns are run for several weeks being tall, limestone and coal can be poured in at the top and lime is retrieved at the bottom. field kilns are of two types, circular (a circular mound surrounding the kiln pot) and oval clamp (a hole in the ground filled with limestone and coal and covered with soil before firing). sale kilns are of two common types, early kilns in circular earthen mounds similar to the field examples but with waste heaps, and later banks of vertical masonry kilns.
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Lynchet
an artificial bank formed by a build up or loss of soil against a field boundary, or deliberately produced as the downslope edge of a cultivation terrace on a slope. lynchets are usually found running along slopes and accumulate soil upslope, derived from downward movement of soil after ploughing, which is trapped by the boundary. they also lose soil downslope where ploughing cuts into the slope. where a boundary has later been removed, a lynchet is often the main surviving evidence that a wall or hedge once existed. those forming cultivation terraces often appear in groups and date from the medieval period and once lay within strip fields.
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Medieval
used here for the period that dates from the norman conquest of 1066 ad to approximately 1500 ad. also known as the middle ages.
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Mesolithic
the prehistoric period that comes between the palaeolithic (old stone age) and the neolithic (new stone age), dating from the end of the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago, to the advent of the first farming in about 4000 bc. this was a time when people lived as gatherer/hunters, moving seasonally round the peak district landscape exploiting wild resources, eating both game and roots, nuts and berries.
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Mullions
an architectural term for vertical bars dividing lights in a window, which can be of stone or wood.
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Neolithic
the prehistoric period that comes between the mesolithic (middle stone age) and the bronze age, dating roughly from 4000 to 2000 bc. this was the time of the adoption of the first agricultural practices, including cereal cultivation, but more importantly the rearing of domesticated animals, including herds of cattle and flocks of sheep. in the beginning, farmers probably moved around the landscape with their herds, much as they had in the mesolithic, except they took animals with them rather than following wild game. it was only after more than 1000-1500 years that they started to settle in more sustained farms that they surrounded by hedged fields. they built impressive ritual monuments, often used to establish traditional right to the use of land, by burying the bones of the ancestors to overlook pastures.
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Orthostats
large upright stones. a minority of these are standing stones, normally found on the moorlands, erected in prehistory as ritual monuments. others may be prehistoric or later guidestones or boundary stones. further large upright stones are found incorporated into dry stone walls, either naturally placed or erected. they tend to either occur in walls bounding the edges of moorland or in walls that have not been fully rebuilt in the recent past. many are also found forming the walls of romano-british settlements and fields. however, their presence reflects initial agricultural clearance of boulder-strewn areas and is not an indicator of the age of a wall per-se.
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Palaeolithic
the earliest prehistoric period, the old stone age, which covers several glaciations and inter-glacial periods and ended with the end of the last ice age, roughly 10,000 years ago. this was a time when people lived as hunter/gatherers, often living in the open but also using caves in cold periods, exploiting wild resources, eating both game and roots, nuts and berries.
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Parish
the smallest unit of local government today is the civil parish. in some areas this covers the same area as an ecclesiastical parish, which is the area of jurisdiction covered by the parish church. ecclesiastical parishes, which sometimes are much larger than civil parishes, almost always cover the same ground as medieval manors, especially in rural areas; many have remained unaltered in their boundaries since the medieval period. in the peak district many civil parishes have boundaries that follow those of traditional townships and manors rather than the often-larger ecclesiastical parishes.
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Pit alignment
a series of pits dug into the ground and arranged into a line. these are usually later prehistoric and date and were used to divide land. however, it is far from clear whether they were functional field or land-ownership boundaries in the usual sense, or whether ritual or ceremonial explanations need to be sought.
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Post-medieval
the period after the medieval, beginning at approximately 1500 ad and used here to include modern features up to the present day. this period is distinct from the medieval because of the change from a feudal to capitalist society and the eventual rapid development of industrialisation from the 18th century.
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Prehistory
the period from the first human presence in the region, covering many thousand years, to the coming of the romans and the first written documents just less than two thousand years ago.
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Quernstones
shaped stones, often of gritstone or finer sandstone, that were used to hand-grind corn. early examples, known as saddle querns, comprise a stone block, often with one concave face where the corn was placed, which was ground with a small hand-held stone known as a rubber. from the iron age onwards rotary querns were used, with two shaped stones, placed one above the other, with the upper stone turned to grind the corn. sometimes these had an overall beehive shape. in the romano-british period examples with two relatively-flat circular stones were also used.
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Quoins
an architectural term for corner stones to the walls of buildings. these stones are squared masonry used where the walling stones are much smaller. sometimes of ashlar to accentuate the edges.
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Rake
a local term for a vein of lead ore and associated minerals, often several metres wide, extending up to hundreds of metres deep. rakes often run across the landscape for several miles, sometimes discernible on the surface as a line of disturbed ground, including old shafts and waste hillocks. increasingly these hillocks have been removed for their mineral content or as agricultural improvement and in these cases all that remains is a levelled area.
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Ridge and Furrow
in many fields that have not been ploughed in recent years, the land is corrugated by many parallel low ridges, known as ridge and furrow. earlier examples tend to be wider and more massive and have origins as medieval cultivation strips (see strip fields). in some instances they continued to be used and modified until as late as the eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries. narrow ridge and furrow tends to be nineteenth century in date (or from 1939-45 using old ploughs), resulting from ploughing using a fixed mould-board plough. there are rare exceptions to these trends, including pre-medieval ridge and furrow of various forms, wide but straight examples of relatively modern date and hand dug examples of various dates. all types of ridge and furrow tend to occur on heavier, thicker soils, but are rare on the thin soils of the limestone plateau.
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Romano - British
the period covering the occupation of the british isles by the roman empire. in the peak district beginning in the 70s ad and ending during the early fifth century ad. the term romano-british is used to refer to native activity and settlement during the roman occupation. although the local farming people present when the romans arrived adopted some roman products, such as superior pottery, for many their way of life continued much as it had done in the iron age.
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Scandinavian
that period of anglo-saxon history dominated by the settlement of scandinavians from denmark, norway and via the western isles of britain is known as anglo-scandinavian. the height of scandinavian power was during the 9th and 10th centuries, although north-eastern england, including the peak district, remained under scandinavian influence until after the norman conquest. there is no evidence for scandinavian settlement in the peak district until the 10th century onwards.
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Scrin
a local term for a smaller version of a rake, usually narrower and shorter, and often branching off from a rake.
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Sills
an architectural term for lines of stonework dividing two storeys to accentuate the line; also called string courses.
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Sough
a near-horizontal tunnel driven to drain waterlogged mine workings, to allow deeper mineral extraction.
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Strip Fields
in the medieval period, from at least as early as 1100 ad and probably from the mid 10th century, peak district villages were surrounded by large strip fields (often referred to as ‘open fields’ – in upland areas it is debatable whether some parts of them remained open for long and thus the term strip field is preferred). while often bounded at their edges by banks and ditches, internally they were initially divided into a large number of unfenced cultivation strips. the use of strips allowed a fair distribution of different grades of land between lord and villagers. this agricultural system was designed to favour the needs of arable cultivation. it seems to have been introduced into the area from the lowlands of the midlands. in the peak district, pastoral farming was of equal or greater importance, and some individual strips or parcels of strips were enclosed from an early date. others, in less favourable locations in what are known as ‘outfields’, may have only been used in an intermittent way from the outset.
from at least as early as 1350 ad the cultivation strips within medieval strip fields of the peak district started to be enclosed. typically these fields survive today as narrow walled enclosures with distinctive curved sides with a reverse-s plan. taken together, they often allow the extent and character of the medieval strip field to be recognised, despite the fact that use of open cultivation strips often ceased long ago. enclosure of the strip fields usually happened piecemeal, with small parcels created that vary in date from the fourteenth century to the eighteenth century.
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Township
a term given to a subdivision of a medieval parish or manor, which have developed into civil parishes in many parts of the peak district. such divisions were usually given the name of the principal settlement therein but also included farmland and open pasture attached to that settlement.
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Trough
normally carved from gritstone, water troughs were often originally plumped into a natural spring to provide a source of water for grazing stock. later ones are now linked to mains water.
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Vicus
a small settlement located outside and adjacent to a roman fort. a vicus supplied many of the needs of the roman army and its soldiers not met through official lines, including personal supplies, homes for spouses, accommodation for visiting civilians and brothels. nearly every fort of any size had a vicus. it is thought that they may have been officially encouraged or created by the roman army rather than being opportunist settlements. occupants may have been a mix of camp followers and the indigenous, local populace.
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White Coal
from the 16th to 18th centuries, lead was often smelted with kiln-dried wood, known to the smelters as white coal. wood was coppiced especially for this purpose and remains of the drying kilns sometimes survive, often as shallow circular hollows with a drafting hollow to one side (sometimes referred to as q-pits). occasionally these hollows were lined with drystone walls.
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