A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE 



small chirty flint gravel, different from the local stone, 18 or 20 feet 

 wide, and raised in the middle like a modern road. 1 It does not often 

 coincide with any existing lane or road, and hardly ever forms a parish 

 boundary.* 



(f) TEMPLEBOROUGH, BROUGH, AND MELANDRA 



It remains to describe the road which forms the north side of our 

 triangle (p. 243) and led from Yorkshire through the hills to Manchester. 

 It appears to have run from the fort at Templeborough south-westwards 

 up the valley of the Don, crossed the site of Sheffield, and mounted the 

 hills west of the town to Sandygate and the Redmires reservoirs, where 

 its track is visible on the moors and is known as the Long Causeway ; 

 then, climbing Stanage Edge at an elevation of some 1,450 feet, it 

 probably dropped by Bamford into the bottom of the Noe valley, a 

 descent of 900 feet, to Brough. On leaving Brough it seems to have 

 run north-westwards, at first along the Noe Valley, then, taking the 

 swin of the hill, it slowly mounted the ridge which divides Edale and the 

 Noe from Woodland dale and the Ashop, and sank into the latter, reach- 

 ing and crossing the Sheffield and Glossop road near Alport Bridge. 

 From this point (about 795 feet above sea level) it begins a new climb of 

 some 800 feet to Cold Harbour Moor, and its traces, called Doctor Gate, 

 are visible for some distance running roughly parallel to the modern road, 

 but on its north side, behind the Snake Inn. At the top of Ladyclough, 

 near the Doctor Gate Culvert, it rejoins the modern road and then again 

 strikes away northwards, passing between Cold Harbour Moor and Shelf 

 Moor and dropping down past Mossylee to Glossop and to Melandra a 

 total descent of nearly thirteen hundred feet in about five miles. 

 Throughout, it is a mountain road, and like Roman mountain roads 

 elsewhere, it appears to wind considerably where circumstances require. 

 It seldom coincides with existing roads, and still less often forms a parish 

 boundary. But in many places its metalling is well preserved. Watson, 

 writing in 1772, declares that its track was still used for a good part of 

 the way from Brough to Melandra, being set with large stones in the 

 middle and provided with proper drains cut on each side where it crosses 

 mossy ground. Much of it is still familiar to Manchester tourists 

 wandering in the neighbourhood of the Snake Inn. 8 



(g) OTHER SUPPOSED ROADS 



In the preceding paragraphs I have attempted briefly to describe 

 the six well-ascertained roads or routes of Roman Derbyshire, and I have 

 also noticed incidentally a few other roads which antiquarian writers have 



1 Whitaker, Hist, of Manchester (1771), i. App. p. Iviii note ; Bray, Tour (1783), p. 207. 



8 Accounts in Whitaker and Bray (see last note), and Pegge, Roads through the Coritani, p. 401 

 (hence Lysons, p. ccxii ; Glover, i. 290 ; Bateman, Vestiges, p. 141 ; Watkin, Derb. Arch. Journ. viii. 

 210, etc.) ; private information. 



8 Watson, Arch. iii. 237 ; Bennet, Bp. of Cloyne, cited by Lysons, p. ccxiv giving however a 

 very rough and incorrect line (hence Glover, i. 292, Bateman, Vestiges, 143) ; Leyland, Peak of Derby- 

 shire (London, 1891), pp. 10, 30-48. 



250 



