A HISTORY OF DERBYSHIRE section of our road doubtful. Surer traces occur on the moors west of Wirksworth. The road is said to have been cut through near Hopton by Mr. Cell in the eighteenth century. At present its visible remains begin a mile and a half north of Brassington village. From this point it can be followed with hardly a break for 16 miles to Buxton. Almost continuous parish boundaries mark it, and sometimes modern roads run on its line, and often its own raised bank may be seen in the fields which it traverses. Its general direction is north-westerly. It passes a few yards east of Minninglow barrow. At Pike Hall it coincides with Hedge Lane. Shortly after, it leaves Arbor Low nearly a quarter of a mile to the east, and runs through Benty Grange. Middle Street farm, Over Street, near Hurdlow, and Street House (opposite the Duke of York Inn) supply significant names. From Bull in the Thorn to the inn just named it can be clearly seen in the fields, running parallel to the Ashbourne and Buxton high road and a few feet west of it, and, after a divergence of old and new roads to save a gradient, it can again be traced from Brierlow barrow almost to Buxton cemetery, still parallel to the high road and some 60 or 80 yards west of it. The precise method of its approach to Buxton is less certain. According to some observers it divided into two, and one branch ran to Silverlands (p. 225), while the other turned to the west through Burbage. Supposed traces of the latter have been detected in the shape of old road- paving found at the corner of Lismore and Burlington roads in 1892, in Macclesfield road in the same year, and near Green Lane in 1889, and a low bank running from Burbage, near Green Lane, and the Golf Links has been pointed out as possibly showing its line. 1 All this, however, requires further investigation. At present we can only assert that it must somehow have reached Buxton. From Buxton the course of the road is still more obscure. It is generally alleged to have passed on north-westwards, crossing the Goyt valley at Goyts Bridge, and winding along a road called ' The Street,' and ' Embridge Causeway ' into Cheshire, to Bollington, Stockport, and finally to Manchester. 2 It is at least as likely to have run more nearly north along the line of the present Manchester road, but diverging from it on Long Hill and keeping a direct line across the moor by White Hall and Wythen Lache to Whaley Bridge. But this whole section of the road is practically still undiscovered, despite the confident assertions of antiquaries, and on our present evidence it is difficult to call even its existence proven. Nor is the evidence any stronger for another con- tinuation, which has been conjectured to lead from Buxton westwards over Axe Edge by Toot hill to Kinderton or to Leek. It will be observed that in reality only one part of the whole road is adequately attested. This is the stretch of sixteen miles from Bras- 1 Turner, Deri. Arch. Journ. xxv. 159 : personal inspection. For the sites, see fig. 26.
- Whitaker, Hist, of Manchester (1771), i. 232 ; letter by Watson (1782), cited by Pegge, Roads
through the Coritani, p. 35, and Lysons, p. ccxiii ; Watkin, Ches. p. 77 ; - s - six-inch, Derby, xiv. S.E., and Cheshire xxxvii. and xxix. 248
