Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 4.djvu/214

 290 [9* 8. IV. OCT. 7, NOTES AND QUERIES. we look at the road from the valley below. On the summit of the hill the ground is nearly flat, and here the road is as straight as an arrow for about three hundred yards, and is sixteen feet wide. There is a ditch on each side, and the road is covered with grass, for the occupants of the house at Over Shall on do not use it, but go in the opposite direction. A labourer in an adjoining field described it to me as "an old turnpike." If the earth were removed it is possible that a fine piece of paved road would be laid bare. When the wayfarer has reached the end of the "old turnpike," he turns about fifteen yards to the right, and immediately enters a lane eight feet wide. The lane seems to have taken the place of the Roman road, and to run nearly parallel to the site of that road, down to Nether Shatton. At first, when the inclination of the ground is slight, the depth is not more than a foot ; but as the inclina- tion increases the lane gets deeper, until it attains a depth of about twelve feet. This greater depth has been caused by the com- bined action of various kinds of traffic and running water during a long period of time. In all cases it will be noticen that the greater the declivity the deeper is the lane. The lane which I am describing has no ditches on either side, as the "old turnpike" has. The lane itself is the ditch. It is worn down through the rocky strata which are laid bare in its sides. Here and there may be seen, in the centre of the way, a single row of paving- stones, each of which is about two feet square and six inches thick. It is obvious that a lane twelve feet deep and eight wide cannot last for ever. A time will come when it must either bo filled up or disused. In practice such a lane is often, perhaps generally, dis- used. People begin to make a footpath in the fields along one of the sides. They have done so between Nether and Over Shatton, and, more than this, the farmers have begun to make a new lane by the side of the old sunken lane. As the sunken lane in question seems to have been substituted for the Roman road, and to be parallel to the now obliterated site of that road, so the new lane has been substituted for the old sunken lane, and is parallel thereto. For some reason the old Roman way seems to have been abandoned soon after it had left the summit of the hill, and its place taken by a lane which in its turn is now beginning to yield to a newer lane. In both these cases the deviation is towards the south. Processes like these must have been going on for ages, and they will help to account for the deviation of roads which were once much straighter. From Nether Shatton the lane goes down tho hill, crosses the Derwent by a bridge eight feet wide, and ascends the opposite hill, crossing the moors, and then taking the name of the Long Causey. On this side the lane is very little sunken, and paving-stones are very numerous. One sees a line of them for two or three hundred yards together; then comes a break in continuity, where there are no paving-stones. The width of the lane here varies from nine to fifteen feet. The line of paving-stones is usually in the middle, but is sometimes so much inclined to one side that, in the narrow parts, a cart passing along the lane would have one wheel on the pave- ment and the other on the bare ground. Here and there thick curbstones may be seen. I am told that nearer the moors there are, in some parts of the lane, two parallel lines of paving-stones.' There is no doubt that this lane is either the remains of the Roman road or a road formed near the site of that road. The central paving-stones remind me of the lines of dressed flagstone in the centre of the magnificent Roman road laid bare at Black- stone Edge, in Lancashire.* At Blackstone Edge, however, the flagstones lie in the centre of a metalled way, and are neatly hollowed out so as to leave a flat surface with a rounded curbstone on either side, as if they were in: tended as a channel for water. Moreover, one would hardly suppose that the paving- stones in these lanes, thick as they are, could have survived the wear of so many centuries. A sunken lane which goes up the hill from Bamford toThornhilLin the same neighbour- hood, is twenty feet deep in some places. It seems to have been long disused, for the earth and stones have slipped down the sides to such an extent that the width at the bottom is less than two feet. Hedges and trees grow on either side. Between my first and second visit to the place the wind had blown down an oak, which had fallen so as to make a natural bridgeacross the chasm. Everywhere during its course the lane is overgrown with tangled brushwood, and looks like a gloomy ravine. As usual, a footpath runs by its side in the fields above. There are no paving- stones. Such a lane is usually known as a packhorse (or packsaddle) lane. Perhaps I need hardly refer to the very pleasing description of water-worn lanes in White's 'Selborne,' letter v. At the end of the English edition of Leo's ' Anglo-Saxon Place-Names ' is a " Table of Anglo-Saxon Dikes and Roads." Among them ' Diet, of Greek and Roman Antiq.,' ii. 947.
 * An engraving of this road may be seen in Smith's