4 History of the 



The gravel was very coarse, containing numerous large sandstone 

 boulders, weighing from one to two hundredweight, and was prin- 

 cipally derived from the carboniferous rocks of the surrounding 

 hills— mixed with granite and trap pebbles. The river appeared 

 to have changed its bed frequently, and had, doubtless, at one 

 time flowed where the discovery was made. The antlers and leg 

 bone were found at the same place, and as they did not exhibit 

 any appearance of having been water-worn, it was reasonable to 

 infer the animal died near the place where they were found. They 

 appear to be the remains of red deer, which at one time were very 

 abundant in the Rossendale valley. The short horn was found 

 along with several others, about a quarter of a mile higher up the 

 valley, and was probably the horn of Bos Primige^iius. Near the 

 same place two antlers were found a short time ago, resting upon 

 a loamy clay, under a bed of peat, seven to eight feet deep, near 

 a spring of water, in a depression of the surface, where animals 

 formerly resorted for the purpose of drinking, {b) 



Names having reference to the deer and its kindred are plentiful 

 throughout the district ; we have Deerplay, Stacksteads, evidently 

 Stagsteads, Staghills, Harthill, Buckearth, Cridden or Cribden, 

 which, says the historian of Whalley, "is pretty obviously Keini 

 don, the Hill of Stags. It is precisely such an elevation as that 

 animal affects during the heat of summer, while the fallow deer 

 graze on the plains or slopes beneath ; and it might continue to 

 merit an appellation acquired in the remotest ages of antiquity 

 till within less than three centuries of the present time."(f) Bacup, 

 or Baycop, the cop or hillock, according to the same authority, 

 where the deer stood at bay. 



Rockliffe — or rather Roclyffe, [roe cliffe,] as it is given in ancient 

 documents — the cliff that afforded shelter to the roe — the cliff 

 whose base was the favourite haunt of the roebuck — or the cliff 

 where that animal, in its headlong haste to escape its pursuers, 



(6) Transactions Manchester Geological Society vol. IV. p. 333. 

 (r) History of the Parish of Whalley and Honor of Clitheroe, by Thomas 

 Dunham Whitaker, L.L.D., F.S.A., 3rd edition, p. 8. 



