ROMANO-BRITISH DERBYSHIRE 



Longlane, Longford Park (where its course is interrupted), and Cubley. 

 If continued east of Mack worth in the same straight line, it would pass 

 Markeaton and strike the Derwent close to Little Chester. It is not a 

 parish boundary, nor does any significant name mark it except Longlane. 

 But its straightness and its obvious connexion with Little Chester have 

 induced many writers to call it Roman, and the conjecture may reasonably 

 be accepted. 1 Its object is not very clear. Roman remains have been 

 found at Rocester. But they are not abundant, 8 and indicate no more 

 than a village such as would hardly require a definite highway for itself. 

 Possibly the road may have run on into Staffordshire, and the straight 

 highway between Draycott, Longton, and Stoke may be a continuation 

 of it ; but the age and object of this road also are as yet doubtful. Usually 

 the Derby and Rocester road has been considered to form a link in a Via 

 Devana connecting Colchester (Camulodunum) with Chester (Deva) by 

 way of Cambridge, Leicester, and Derby. But the whole theory of this 

 through route is an unproven fancy. 8 



(</) LITTLE CHESTER TO BUXTON 



The eighteenth-century antiquaries who first discovered, or first 

 properly appreciated, the Roman remains at Little Chester and Buxton, 

 laid down a Roman road connecting the two places and running further 

 north to Stockport and Manchester. The vestiges of this road are 

 adequate to prove its existence, but they do not fix its course throughout, 

 and large parts of it present us with perplexities similar to those of 

 Rycknield Street north of Derby. For the first 13 or 14 miles from 

 Little Chester northwards the line of the road is entirely unknown. The 

 general conjecture is that it crossed the Derwent to Darley Slade, and 

 thence ran north-west between Kedleston and Duffield. But no trace 

 whatever of it has ever been seen or imagined except the inconclusive name 

 * Pennylong Lane,' near Markeaton. 4 An alternative route may be found 

 a little to the east of this line. There is some reason to think that a 

 Roman road may have diverged from Rycknield Street near Breadsall, 

 crossed the Derwent at the old Makeney ford between Duffield station 

 and Milford village, passed Moscow Farm (where it is stated to be 

 observable in the fields), and run along the Chevin to Blackbrook and 

 Knave's Cross (near Belper Lane End), between which places some bits of 

 Samian were found among its stones in 1873.* Here, however, its traces 

 stop, and its direction nearly due north is not quite that which our 

 route requires, but points rather to Alderwasley or Cromford or Wirks- 

 worth. On our present evidence we must be content to leave the southern 



1 So first Bannet in Lysons, p. ccxiii, repeated by Glover, Bateman, Watkin, etc. 



* Redfern, Hist, of Uttoxeter (Hanley, 1886, ed. z), pp. 65-71 ; Shaw, Hut. of Staff. (1798), 

 i. 34 ; Antiquary, xxviii. (1893), 255. 



3 V.C.H. Nortbanls, i. 205. The O.S. continues boldly to mark the Via Devana. 



* Glover, i. 291 note. 



5 Cox, Derb. Arch. Journ. viii. 214 note, ix. 141 ; O.S. xxxix. SE. Street Close is the name of a 

 near Knave's Cross, and the O.S. gives Street's Wood near the same place. 



247 



