28 BURTON, ANCIENT AND MODERN. 
up at a very ancient period, when the course of the river 
was very different from what it now is, which is a very 
unlikely supposition; or the course of the stream was 
stopped by the agency of man. In either case there must 
have been a very long period during which the water was 
stagnant, and the peat was forming by the dropping of 
vegetable fragments from the woods that encumbered its 
banks. After this process had abruptly ceased, water again 
ran slowly down the bed, depositing clay and sand, until 
the course became silted up. 
It is a curious fact (I am still quoting from Mr. Brown) 
that the Roman road called Via» Devana, connecting 
Leicester, or Rate, with Chester, the ancient Deva, has 
been traced at various places east and west of the valley, 
and to connect those points the line would pass exactly 
over the head of this ancient river course at Branstone. 
The Via Devana was traced by antiquaries of the last 
century from Leicester to Willesley, where all indications 
of it were lost; but I have ascertained that portions of the 
road have been tound at Moira, and also between Stanton 
House and Breach Farm; and more recently, John Spencer 
Stone, Esq., when forming a fish pond, found broken 
material (part of the metalling of an ancient road) in the 
valley below Callingwood which leads up to Knightley Park. 
All these points would be connected by a line passing near 
Drakelow Hall, and over the head of the old river course 
at Branstone above the ‘‘ Toad Hole,” and so on to Calling- 
wood by an old road which passes through the wood at 
East Hill, immediately north-east of Tatenhill Village. 
It does not therefore seem unreasonable to suppose that 
the works made to carry the Via Devana over the meadows 
obstructed one course of the stream, and turned it into 
stagnant water, in which the peat gradually formed, and 
that in the middle ages the Monks of Burton establishing 
a mill on its banks for the grinding of corn, partly re-opened 
