CHAPTER XIV 

 THE FOREST OF THE HIGH PEAK 



THE king's forest of the High Peak was a wild district 

 that formed part of the patrimony of the Anglo-Saxon 

 kings, and was royal demesne at the time of the Great 

 Survey. The parish of Hope and other adjacent lands were 

 granted by the Conqueror in 1068 to William Peverel in con- 

 junction with numerous lordships in Derbyshire, Nottingham- 

 shire, and other counties which were known as the honor of 

 Peverel. On the south side of the Vale of Hope, in a place 

 of remarkable natural strength, Peverel built a castle, on the 

 site of a former stronghold, which had given the name of 

 Castleton to the cluster of houses below it. Twenty years 

 later the district around is styled the land of Peverel's Castle 

 in Peak Forest (terrain castelli in Pechefers Willelmi Peurel). 

 The district of Longdendale was added to the Peverel property 

 in the time of Henry I. On Peverel's death in 1114, his vast 

 possessions passed to his son, but in 1155 a younger Peverel 

 was disinherited for poisoning the Earl of Chester, and all his 

 estates were forfeited to the Crown. From that time until 1372, 

 the castle and forest of the Peak were in the hands of the Crown, 

 when they were transferred to the Duchy of Lancaster, and 

 thence returned to the Crown by absorption in the following 

 century. 



At the beginning of the twelfth century, the forest of the 

 Peak included the whole of the north-west corner of the county. 

 The Hope district embraced the seven berewicks of Aston, 

 Edale, " Muckedswell," half of Offerton, Shatton, Stoke, and 

 Tideswell ; whilst Longdendale included the whole of the 

 wide-spreading parish of Glossop, and much that was extra 



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