After the Romans departed from Britain’s shores the towns and roads that they established began to decay. Even so, the roads continued to be used as did earlier prehistoric trackways. A road running between Buxton and Wirksworth, known as The Street, was still being used in the eighteenth century and lets not forget that King Alfred used Watling Street to mark the boundary between his own realm and Danelaw. The addition of the name ‘Gate’ to any road was originally the Norse ‘gata’ meaning road while street, meaning a paved road, originated from Latin but which was adopted by Anglo-Saxon road users.
It wasn’t until 1285 that the Statute of Winchester required individual manors to maintain highways that passed across them. It also required tracks and bridleways to be maintained. At Norbury, Sir Henry FitzHerbert was required to obtain a licence in 1305 to divert the old road which rather inconveniently passed through the courtyard of his house.
More people began to travel as markets were established and monastic houses founded. The Earl’s Way, heading east, from Leek was established by the Norman earls of Chester using some preexisting tracks. In addition to the earl using the route to travel to various parts of his estates in meant that his tax gatherers could also access the area more easily. Other routes from Leek to Macclesfield permitted monks to send wool towards Chester for export.
Long distance packhorse routes including Portway and Doctor’s Gate near Glossop carried goods from Manchester to Nottingham. It is thought that some of the way originated during the Bronze Age. Pack horse routes, often in the form of hollow ways, caused by the erosion of countless feet, carried salt, wool, lead and any other merchandise that required transport. Hartington which had its own market from 1203 onwards was at the hub of a number of pack horse routes including a route passing Minninglow in the direction of Wirksworth.
One of the paths running eastwards is called Gallowlow Lane. The low refers to a Bronze Age bowl barrow, long since robbed out. Its name is suggestive of a place of execution but there’s no extant evidence for a gallows there other than the name and its position in a prominent place in the landscape. More cheerily there’s also a Jaggers Gate heading from Buxton in the direction of Macclesfield. A jagger was another name for a carrier or packhorse man while a jag was the load that a mule carried. In Derbyshire the term began as a name for the packhorse trains that carried lead ore. Meanwhile, Doctor’s Gate was named after Dr John Talbot who is recorded as improving a section of the old road during the late fifteenth century. Black Harry Gate is an eighteenth century addition to the names of Derbyshire’s roads. He was a highwayman – which possibly explains why there are so many references to gallows and gibbets scattered across the area. Daniel Defoe would call the region a ‘howling wilderness’ when he visited, so it’s safe to assume that it wasn’t necessarily always particularly law abiding.
There are also coffin roads that enabled isolated communities to carry the coffins of their loved ones to the nearest church. The best known one runs from Edale to Castleton. Hollins Cross marked the point where funeral parties might stop for a rest and to offer prayers. The Peak District has nowhere near as many of this kind of path as Yorkshire and Cumbria.
Dodd, A.E. and Dodd, E.M. Peakland Roads and Trackways
