Well, three to be precise.
What ho, what ho, what ho! So, I’m back from my summer holiday. Actually, I was only in France for two weeks (with lots of cheese and wine), and the rest of the time I have been busy with life… alas. I have loved the weather here for the last 10 weeks – a decent summer at long last, and the polar opposite of the spring we had. Bizarre.
So, missing out August completely, I’m back with a bang, and hopefully more than one post over the weekend, here we go.
I love milestones. There is something so definite and so grounding about them, and the way in which they locate with reference to other places – you are X miles from Y – you know exactly where you are in the world. They have a long history – the Romans used them all the time, and in reality, they haven’t changed since. This one was found in Buxton, and is inscribed with the following: “TRIB POT COS II P P A NAVIONE M P XI”.
Which translates as “With tribunician power, twice consul, father of this country, from Navio, 11 miles”. The Roman fort of Navio is at Brough, near Castleton (information here). This is a great little fortlet, right on the river there, and well worth a trip out to see it. There’s not a great deal to see as such – rather like Melandra, it is lumps on the ground, requiring a bit of imagination – but it produced some fascinating archaeology. My favourite being an altar to the goddess Arnomecta – a local goddess, about whom we know nothing at all. She may be the same as the Goddess Arnemetiae who gave her name to Roman Buxton – Aquae Arnemetiae, but then again possibly not. Something about that both fascinates and frightens me – a lost Goddess.
But I digress… where were we?
Milestones. Mine are nothing like as old, but they are interesting. Honest.
The first is located on the Woodhead Road/B6105 by Allmans Heath Farm and B&B. It is carved into the side of a mounting block, used for getting onto horses, is/was painted white, and it simply states ‘Glossop 1 mile’ with an arrow pointing the direction.
Now, the mounting block is clearly old. They don’t make them anymore, for one, and the fact that the ring has been set in place using lead would certainly age it to the Victorian period, and potentially earlier. The carving is another matter altogether. I had assumed that the words would have been carved in the Victorian period, but on the way to take the photograph, I got speaking to the owner of the house there who informed me that they were only 10 years or so old – her ex-husband, being a stonemason, carved them. Well, why not? The fact that the mounting block sits next to a very old stone gatepost (on the right in the upper picture) suggests that the owners had moved the stone to the front wall in order to create a feature, which it does.
So, this one might not be of any great age, but the next two certainly are, even if they are slightly out of the area.
I went looking for the fabled White Stone of Roe Cross the other day.
I say fabled as there is very little information about it, and I was hoping to see it to put in my two penn’orth about what it is, why it is, and where it is. It is mentioned in Sharpe’s “Crosses of the Peak District” as potentially marking the junction of the boundaries of Matley, Hollingworth, and Mottram, so I thought it would be worth a look. Alas, I failed utterly to locate it, although I did get as near as White Stone Cottage, so I could’t be too far away. It has almost no presence online, either, besides a letter that was written to protest against the proposed Mottram bypass which mentions it in passing, and references to White Stone Cottage.
If anyone knows the location of the stone, please let me know, as I’d love to see it – and you all know how much I love a good stone.
Now, that same letter, also mentions a carved milestone in that area, and thinking it might be worth a look, young Master Hamnett and I set off down Dewsnap Lane to find it. Which we did in record time – standing alone in a right hand turn into the riding stables there (the location is shown by the red circle on the map below).
The stone states it is “10 Miles From Manchester” and I have no reason to doubt that. It has clearly been used as a gatepost at some stage, and you can see the hole where the hinge was mounted.
As I turned around to leave the stables area I noticed another milestone, this one placed against the wall.
This one proclaimed itself to be ’13 Miles From Manchester’.
“Hmmmmm”, thought I. “Ice cream” thought Master Hamnett.
Now, I know what you are thinking… that Roe Cross is a geographical anomaly, being simultaneously both 10 and 13 miles from Manchester; a quantum place, if you will.
The two stones are obviously carved by the same hand and at the same time – the rounded top and squared shoulders are the same in both instances, and the stone is the same – a coarse sandstone. The writing is also the same, and with the ‘long S‘ in the word ‘Manchester’, we can roughly date it to not later than the first half of the 19th Century, and possibly a little before. After this time it falls out of use, and people used the ‘short S’.
So what are they doing there? I don’t know for certain, but I have a possible/probable answer.
The ‘Deep Cutting’ between Mottram and Matley/Roe Cross was opened in 1826 as part of the Manchester to Saltersford turnpike road. Essentially, it allowed easy access between Yorkshire and the east of the country, and Manchester and the west. Prior to this, the roads were in a terrible state of repair, and the heavily laden packhorses that made that journey really had to struggle. The turnpike roads were privately financed and built, and in order to recoup costs they operated as toll roads, charging for their use (think M6 Toll road for a modern comparison).
The toll gate at Roe Cross, the place you had to pay for passage, was situated here:
Now, obviously, the milestones are not in their original location, and I would like to suggest that they were originally situated near to, or at, the toll gate, showing the distance to Manchester along the road. However, if that was the case, then why the difference in distance? Well, perhaps the ’10 Mile’ sign was put next to the new road, whilst the ’13 Mile’ sign was by the original, old, road. With both signs showing, most people would want to shave 3 miles off their journey, and travel along a new well surfaced road, rather than along a muddy track, pitted with animal and cart ruts – after all look how many people use the M6 Toll Road. The tentative date of the stones, too, fits with the construction of the road – the first quarter of 19th Century.
Of course, once the toll gate ceased to exist, the stones lost their usefulness, and particularly once new, more clear, signs began to be used on the roads. However, instead of being broken up, their size and shape is perfect for a gatepost, and so they were hauled a few hundred yards up the hill and given a new function.
Well worth a look of you get chance, and there is lots of good walking to be had up there. I am going to have good explore myself sometime soon, particularly up Gallowsclough, which, as a placename, can have only one meaning – ‘the valley where they hanged people’. Blimey!
Incidentally, I love the Deep Cutting for the Mottram Frog Stone which is celebrated on the wall there, about half way down on the right (going from Mottram to Stalybridge). I couldn’t do this post and not mention it – I tweeted about it, but it is so good, that it needs to be celebrated on the blog, too.
There may be more this weekend, if I can manage it, but I will try to get back to my one a week post target, so stick around. Thanks for reading, and please, as always, comments and corrections are always welcome.
RH
The Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities 
The Roe Cross milestones date from 1770. In January of that year, the trustees of the Manchester-Saltersbrook Turnpike, which had been constructed in the mid 1730s, in response to a new statutory duty ordered their surveyor James Brown jnr to erect milestones along the road. I found the 13-miles-to-Manchester one about 10 years ago, when it was still serving as a gatepost off Dewsnap Lane, and the 19 miles one in a field wall at Higher Woodhead, and another, with number missing, still sits in what’s probably its original location alongside the old turnpike at Rhodeswood. I never found the 10 miles one, but that’s the one which would have belonged at Roe Cross; 13 miles along the 1730s turnpike would bring you to Tintwistle, so someone has clearly acquired that one, and I wonder whether they once sat on opposite sides of the gate. They are all in identical style so Mr Brown clearly bought them as a job lot.
They would, however, have become redundant when the first turnpike was upgraded, in stages, over 35 years starting in the mid 1790s. By the time it was all finished it was only 9 ½ miles to Roe Cross and many of the stones’ locations had been bypassed. The Deep Cutting is usually said to have been finished in 1826, but it wasn’t actually started until 1834 and was probably not finished until 1841. Confusion has arisen because this was the last of a succession of improvements along this stretch of road, beginning around 1800 with the new line up Staley Hill, followed by what’s now Old Road in the early 1820s. The line up Staley Hill was itself diverted in 1832 to ease the gradient around Fox Hill, and they then started on the Deep Cutting and the embankment, which largely reinstated the original line but at a much lower level.
By spending around £5k, or £615k at modern prices, 2/3 of a year’s toll income, they lowered the summit by 11 metres, although that only reduced the overall gradient from 1 in 21 to 1 in 27. The motivation may well have been that in 1835 the Mottram-Hyde turnpike was opened, offering an easier route to Manchester for the traffic from Glossop, by then a booming industrial town which contributed a fair chunk of the trust’s income, but it was a very short-sighted investment as the Manchester-Sheffield railway was already inching towards them, and by 1847 the trust was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
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Thanks for the reply Roger. The development of the road system in these parts is fascinating, especially when you add long-lost milestones. RH
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