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. 46
