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Bridges, Tracks & Roads

Communications are vital in an upland area like the Peak District, where communities are often isolated and insular and the winters long and hard.

The first ‘roads’ were nothing more than tracks, usually sticking to the high ground along ridges where the going was easiest, such as the Old Portway through the limestone country. This prehistoric route crossed the River Wye at Ashford near the later medieval Sheepwash Bridge.

Then came the Romans with their imperial programme of road building, designed to subjugate and control their newly won provinces. Routes like Batham Gate, between Buxton (Aquae Arnemetiae) and Brogh (Navio), and Doctor’s Gate between Brogh and Glossop and the fort of Melandra beyond, can still be traced on the ground.

Later still, medieval pack horse routes were the ‘motorways’ of their day, and long trains of pack horses, carrying heavy goods and commodities on panniers or baskets on either side of their saddles, were a common sight on moorland routes. The man in charge of the pack horse train was known as a ‘jagger’, after the German Jaeger ponies which were often used. Jagger’s Clough, draining the eastern slopes of Kinder Scout, perpetuates the name.

Pack horse bridges, small narrow structures with low parapets to avoid the swinging panniers, still exist on many routes in the Peak District, an interesting ‘bridge’ with the past.