372 Bunkle Edge Forts. By Francis Lynn. 



follow onward to the north. The line running south-west 

 can be traced into the wood. It stops, however, entirely 

 at a line some distance within the wood, which has, I think, 

 been the boundary of the ploughed ground on the slope. 

 Before the boundary lines of the plantation were laid down 

 as at present, probably it ran down the slope in the direction 

 of where Preston now is. Whether or not the larger line, 

 coming in from the north-west, ran on past the Fort we 

 cannot now be certain. There are indications of a track 

 having run down the slope to the south-east ; but on the 

 meadow land below the modern road running to Marygold 

 I have not been able to trace it. Probably it ran onward 

 and crossed Billy Mire by what was known as Billy Cause- 

 way, a very ancient work ascribed during the last century 

 to the Romans, but much more probably constructed by the 

 native Britons. 



The curious way in which these old trenches are filling 

 up on the moor, and in the wood on Bunkle Edge, making 

 them resemble a chain of pits, is difficult to account for. I 

 would attribute it to some local accident, characteristic of 

 the soil and the vegetation. I saw the same tendency in 

 some small ditches running across the moor further to the 

 west, and these were evidently middle-age enclosures, perhaps 

 600 or 700 years old. And on a line of old mound and 

 ditch, crossing aslant the moor track known as the Thieves 

 road, about half-a-mile to the east of the modern road 

 crossing the ridge from Crossgate Hall, I saw this tendency 

 more marked than anywhere else, and yet this was evidently 

 only a field enclosure. 



Now leaving this curious Fort, and proceeding north-west- 

 wards, the next Fort in the line is the one to the east of 

 Dog Bush, and is a large oval work, measuring 410 feet 

 lengthways along the ridge, by 395 feet across, from the 

 centre of the mound, which is a single one with a ditch 

 outside, and a counterscarp and small mound on the outer 

 side. The enclosures are in places much obliterated, but I 

 give one section which gives a fair idea of the parts that 

 remain. I was unable to see any signs of divisions or 

 hut-circles inside this large enclosure. Quarrying has been 

 carried on in modern times, and that may have obliterated 

 some things; but so far as can now be seen, the Dog Bush 



