2 THE ANCIENT ROADS AND THE SITE 



places wliich cluster round them as well as by tlie habita- 

 tions. In Derbyshire the road passing along the ridge 

 from Hope past Mam Tor, along Rushup Edge and on to 

 the west, is dated by the stronghold of Mam Tor and by 

 tumuli of the Bronze Age. These roads occur, as might 

 naturally be expected, where the natural conditions were 

 easiest. They are represented by many of the existing 

 " ridgeways " which follow the higher ground. At the 

 time they were made, the whole of Britain, with the 

 exception of a few isolated clearings in the uplands, was 

 covered with forest, the remains of which are to be seen 

 in the stumps of trees lying in the peat on the top of 

 Kinder Scout, and in the large trunks of oak found in the 

 peat between eleven and twelve hundred feet above the 

 sea, by Mr. Watts in making the Upper Swineshaw reservoirs 

 for the supply of Oldham. ^ The bottoms of the valleys 

 were for the most part marshes, and the low-lying region 

 of the Lancashire and the Cheshire plain was covered with 

 forest and marshes, so impenetrable that even as late as 

 the Bronze Age it was rarely traversed. This is proved 

 by the rarity of the remains of this age in the Lancashire 

 and Cheshire plain, as well as in the great low-lying tracts 

 of clay land on the east of the Pennines ranging from 

 London as far as York and Newcastle. The roads there- 

 fore in the Bronze Age followed the irregular direction 

 of the ridges, winding along the water partings, and 

 avoiding the valleys as far as possible.^ They were 

 probably used by pack-horses. 



2. [" In an old document it is said that the bailiff of the Lord of 

 Stockport has for his perquisite all the trees washed down by the Mersey 

 from the hilU of Longden." Longdendale, by Ralph Bernard Robinson 

 (Glossop, 1863), p. lOn. Ed.] 



3. These generalisations are based on the study of the roads of the 

 south of England from Devonshire to Kent, as well as of those ranging 

 from London through the eastern counties as far as the Tyne, and in 

 part also of those of Derbyshire and of Wales. 



