Archaeology Walks in the Peak District

Don’t be put off by the slightly dusty sounding title of this book. It is written with the interested layman in mind. Probably like myself you have a passing interest in archaeology. You know that the Peak District has lots of ancient remains, but you don’t know where they all are and if you do, you don’t understand why they are there, who made them and when. If this applies to you, then this book will be of great interest.

At the beginning of the book there is a summary of the archaeological periods. These go from the ‘Late Upper Palaeolithic:12000-8000BC, right through to the Mid and Later Medieval: AD1000 plus. Changes to the landscape, human development, use of materials, farming practices etc are summarised in an interesting and understandable way. There is also a useful glossary of terms.

There are 21 main walks ranging from 3 to 12 miles, with several ‘sub-walks’ within these. They are all centred on areas which have significant archaeological interest, ranging from the Manifold Valley, the upper Dove Dale, Beeley Moor, Stanton Moor, Castleton and Baslow Edge to name just a few. Each walk is prefaced by a ‘preamble’ (should maybe be pre-ramble?) which summarises the walk and gives an idea of the type of archaeological interest which will be encountered.

The book gives an extra layer of interest to a walk in the Peak and helps to bring to life the lives of our long-lost ancestors. The book will help you to explore and understand such features as Iron Age forts, Roman lead mines and Bronze Age stone circles. The book includes many black and white photos.

The accompanying sketch maps for each walk, are in my opinion a little too ‘sketchy’ although they are scaled. There is also no cross-referencing of the instructions with points on the map. This would be a help to ensure you don’t miss any important site of interest, or get confused with the directions. However I would thoroughly recommend Alison’s book, which should have wide appeal.