Page:VCH Derbyshire 1.djvu/469

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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