ANCIENT EARTHWORKS 



When the weather is stormy and the clouds lowering, the general appear- 

 ance and surroundings of this fortress are strangely overpowering from 

 whatever point it is approached. Rising up out of the adjoining swampy 

 moorland, this dark mass of rock, about 600 feet long by 200 feet broad, 

 presents the appearance, according to one picturesque writer, of ' an 

 immense blackened altar ' ; or rather, as we have seen it when storms 

 swept by, of a great derelict, whose vast blackened hull had grounded on 

 some unseen sandbank. 



The Carl's Wark has naturally attracted the attention of certain 

 competent writers, as well as of several careless scribblers. Major Rooke 

 described it as early as 1783 j 1 Bateman wrote a little about it in 

 1848;* Sir Gardner Wilkinson gave valuable details in i86o; 8 and 

 Mr. Pennington made some pertinent remarks in 1877.* The most 

 picturesque and at the same time accurate and detailed account of 

 the fortress appeared in 1893 m a WOI "k by Mr. S. O. Addy; 6 whilst 

 the whole question was well summed up by Mr. I. Chalkley Gould 

 in 1903. 6 



The Carl's Wark, an isolated mass of hard Third Millstone Grit, 

 left upstanding when the sur- 

 rounding more shaly mass had 

 been gradually disintegrated 

 and washed away, naturally 

 suggested itself to the earlier 

 inhabitants as a fort of refuge 

 and defence. On three sides 

 it rises high and almost per- 

 pendicularly, particularly on 

 the north, above the boggy 

 swamp of the greater part of 

 Hathersage Moor. On the 

 east and south great stones 

 that doubtless once formed CARL'S WARK. 



part of the protecting walls 



on the summit have been flung down in the course of centuries and are 

 scattered over the steep slopes below. Some of these once-used blocks 

 measure as much as from i o feet to 1 5 feet in length, and are truly of a 

 cyclopean character. At the west end of the fort, nature had not pro- 

 vided against attack, for the ground sloped away, comparatively gradually, 

 to the general surface of the moor. It was at this place that man came 

 specially to the help of nature. A great rampart of earth (thus allowing 

 us to include the Carl's Wark in a section on earthworks), about 20 feet 

 in thickness, was here thrown up, gradually sloping back into the interior 

 of the fort, thus permitting ready access to its outer face or scarp. This 

 outer face is composed of a well-packed wall of dry masonry, which is 



1 Archaologia, vii. 175. 2 Vestiges of the AnAq. ofDerb. 122-3. 



3 RtBfuay, I 163-6. Notes on Barrows and Bone Caves. 



5 The HallofWaltheof, 1893. e Derb. Arch. Journ. xxv. 175-180. 



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