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Lanes, Hollow-ways, Guidestones, Bridges and Railways

Many of today’s lanes radiating out from villages and hamlets have been in use for at least a thousand years, giving access to fields,commons, quarries, mines and surrounding settlements.  Some were parts of longer distance routes running to local market centres and to industrial areas centred on Manchester, the Potteries, Sheffield and Chesterfield. 

Much of the commercial traffic transported goods by strings of packhorses, although wagons could be used on some routes, if sometimes with difficulty.  One of the most important products coming out of the Peak District was lead ore going to smelters, and in turn smelted lead that was mostly taken to the port of Hull.  Other exports included lime for building, agriculture and chemical industries, millstones and other quarry products, and agricultural produce such as milk, cheese and meat.  Some routes are old droveways used to take live animals to markets. 

Imports to the Peak included manufactured items from potteries, ironworks and other workshops to the east and west.  Salt was brought eastwards from Cheshire.  As industrialisation increased from the 17th century onwards, the routes in and out of the PeakDistrict gradually had heavier use, and by the 18th century they increasingly could not cope with the amounts of traffic that resulted. Better quality roads, still often in use today, gradually upgraded and in some cases replaced the traditional network.

A now quiet and deeply sunken lane west of Edensor, which in the medieval period was a main road from Bakewell to Chesterfield, as well as providing a local access route through open fields and commons.  It was turnpiked in 1739 and was one of the earliest such roads in the region.

A now quiet and deeply sunken lane west of Edensor, which in the medieval period was a main road from Bakewell to Chesterfield, as well as providing a local access route through open fields and commons.  It was turnpiked in 1739 and was one of the earliest such roads in the region.

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Moorland Hollow-Ways

On the Peak District moors to the east and west there are many disused hollow-ways at the sites of traditional packhorse routes. 

This map shows the courses of old packhorse routes on the East Moors around Big Moor between Baslow and the eastern foothills.

Where these routes were not bounded by fields they often comprised a series of braided linear hollows, sometimes many metres wide, where alternative routes were taken to avoid boggy ground in earlier hollows.  These are often most visible on steeper slopes, because in such areas there was much erosion by water once the vegetated surface was broken by horse and foot traffic. 

Hollow-ways around the now abandoned Bamford House once connected it to the fields and moorland common.

In some cases deep and wide cart-ways exist, where routes rise up steep scarps or lead from major quarries. 

This paved packhorse route climbs towards Stanage Edge.

This deep cart-way descends towards the Derwent Valley from the top of Gardom's Edge near the Three Men.  Much packhorse traffic and goods on carts once passed here, probably from Medieval times onwards.  Erosion started by wheels, hooves and feet was accelerated by water running down the steep slope to form the deep cut seen today.

Clearing of material from major routes by local parishioners, as part of agreed parish duties to maintain highways, took place after the passing of a law requiring this in 1555.

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Guide Stoops and Packhorse Bridges

Associated with many traditional routeways there are early 18th century guide stoops, found both on moorlands and occasionally against lanes. 

These stone posts, with destinations named and sometimes indicated by carved hands, were set up after an Act of Parliament of 1697, enforced locally in 1709, required that such stones be set up by road commissioners.

An 18th century guide stoop alongside a packhorse route above Harland Edge, north-east of Beeley, with the hand pointing the way to Chesterfield.

A guide stoop neat Moscar between Stanage Edge and Derwent Moor.

While major river crossing points have large medieval and later bridges, as at Bakewell, there are also fine examples of narrow packhorse bridges, as at nearby Holme and below Jacobs Ladder leading to Edale Head. 

A stone packhorse bridge 'in use' at Nag's Head, Edale.

There are also well-known but moved and re-erected examples at Slippery Stones in the Upper Derwent Valley and in the upper Goyt Valley.

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Turnpike Roads and Milestones

Trusts were first set up to build improved roads in the early-18th century and gradually the modern network of roads was established, much of which was in place by the mid-19th century.  The roads were gradually paid for by charging tolls and many redundant road-side toll houses survive as dwellings. 

Some of the 18th century turnpikes across the Peak District, most of which followed pre-existing traditional routes, proved to be difficult to use in winter because gradients were too steep for wagons.  As a result new 19th century diversions were created that took gentler but more sinuous routes.  Sometimes these were short, re-routing around awkward sections, but in other cases longer diversions and totally new roads were constructed. 

In places abandoned 18th century roads, now rough trackways, can be followed.

This old lane between Derbyshire Bridge and Burbage was built as a turnpike road in the mid-18th century, linking the Duke of Devonshire's coal mines with his limekilns at Grin Hill.

Another well-known example much further east is that across Burbage Moor from Fox House to Ringinglow where there is a fine toll house.

The turnpike roads that replaced the hollow ways from the 18th century also have interesting road furniture; each Turnpike Trust had differently designed milestones or cast-iron posts and these often survive at the roadside.

A milestone on the Sheffield to Glossop Road

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Canals, Tramways and Railways

The Peak District is too hilly for canals! 

A radical solution to this problem was adopted in the last decade of the 18th century at an industrial tramway that ran from the Peak Forest Canal wharf at Buxworth, near Whaley Bridge, up inclines to limestone quarries near Dove Holes. 

In 1825 a more ambitious scheme was planned, the Cromford and High Peak Railway.  This linked  canals at Whaley Bridge to the north-west with Cromford to the south-east and was finished in 1831.  The route had several impressive inclines with stationary steam engines for haulage, as at the still working example at Middleton Top.  Whilst initially built as a tramway, steam locomotives were used from 1833. 

An embankment and cutting on the Cromford and High Peak Railway near Pikehall, now part of the High Peak Trail.

Other railways were later brought through the Peak from the 1840s onwards, built by various companies with the aid of long tunnels and viaducts.  The 1860s line through the Wye Valley gorge had a particularly large number of obstacles to negotiate and well-known structures here include the Monsal Dale Viaduct and Millers Dale Station,

This viaduct was built in the 1860's to carry the Midland Line across the Monsal Dale.

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