ANCIENT EARTHWORKS 



rampart originally bore a stone circle, for it much resembles the account 

 of one on Abney Moor described by Major Rooke in the eighteenth 

 century, and found stripped of its stones a few years later when visited 

 by Dr. Pegge. 



5. Below PENTRICH (xxxv. 14), to the immediate east of the high road 

 from Ambergate to Oakerthorpe, and to the west of the site of the Ryk- 

 nield Street, which can here be faintly traced, is a small circular enclosure 

 within a single rampart. It is known as CASTLE HILL, and is 125 feet 

 in diameter ; it lies to the north of the alleged site of a Roman camp. 



6. At STADEN Low, about a mile from Buxton on the Ashbourne 

 road, are the remains of several small tumuli and possible earthworks, 

 but much interfered with by enclosure and quarrying. Some 400 yards 

 due west of Staden Low is a circular earthwork with small rectangular 

 enclosure on the west side. This rather singular earthwork was first 



SCALE or rtCT 



too too 



SECTIONATA-B-C. 



STADEN Low. 



noted by Dr. Stukeley, nearly two centuries since ; his observations were 

 usually most correct, though his conclusions or surmises, in the light of 

 later archaeology, were frequently extravagant. Stukeley's measure- 

 ments and part of his description of this double earthwork correspond 

 pretty closely with its present condition, as will be seen from the plan ; 

 but the plough and other causes have very much reduced the former 

 height of the ramparts, whilst an angle of the rectangular enclosure has 

 been roughly cut ofF by the railway. 



The following is the account given of it by the learned doctor in 

 1725: 'Escaping from this Stygian cave (Pool's Hole), I re-visited 

 the antiquity called the Round Fold, by the roadside from Chelmorton 

 hither, at Staden, and under the hill called Staden Hoe. I take it to be 

 a curious Celtic antiquity, much of the nature of those which in 

 Anglesey and Wiltshire we call Druids' houses ; so in Dorsetshire circles 



373 



