Monument record MDR6930 - Alleged section of Roman road, Stanage Edge, Outseats

This Roman road is paved with large slabs of gritstone, two yards by one yard, with channelled ruts. It is in a part that is overgrown with heather. A 'medieval' and post-medieval' pack horse route over Banford Moor can be followed through to this holloway, which twists and winds up the escarpment on a very narrow, treacherous route with an average depth of 1.5m and width of 4m. The southern part of this post-medieval route over the edge is overlaid by a 19th century quarry road. The paving only remains on the top of the edge and over the storage moss in the form of rough pavers forming a causeway through the soft ground of a maximum width of 2m. The wheel ruts measure 2ft 8ins centre to centre. The Roman road from Brough to Noe (Navio) to Templeborough has not been located by recent fieldwork on this alignment. (1) A major set of braided hollow ways run from Dennis Knoll plantation, across wet ground below Stanage Edge, to the Buck Stone [SMR 11348]. From here it rises diagonally up Stanage Edge, and follows the top of the edge for some distance before turning eastwards to Stanage Pole. This forms one stretch of a main highway that ran from the Hope Valley, with a branch from Hathersage, to Redmires and beyond. It has its origins in the medieval period, if not before, and was used as a saltway amongst other things. It was used until the 18th century, when it was replaced by another road by 1771 [see SMR 11349]. Various stretches of this route, known as Long Causey, have surviving lengths of stone causeway, comprising a double line of contiguous slabs set at cart/carriage width. One of these lengths occurs at a point where the route drops down Stanage Edge following a natural break in the cliff. This section is a Scheduled Monument, initially protected due to a mistaken interpretation as a Roman road. Such causeways were built from the medieval period to the 18th century, and the Long Causey cannot be any more closely dated than this (except that it predates 1771). At various times the causeway has been mistakenly thought to be the remains of a Roman road. The first time a Roman road was postulated was not until 1879. The lack of earlier descriptions of the road as Roman suggests that earlier antiquarians recognised it for what it was, a paved way that in their day was still relatively new, and for which memory survived of its construction and/or use. Despite the recognition that the Long Causey is not Roman, the tradition that it follows the line of a Roman road has been maintained. There is no evidence that this is the case and the attribution is almost certainly spurious, being nothing more than the product of earlier mistaken scholarship. (3)