BUXTON.
Just before we come to this place, on the right hand is a square vallum, ditch inward; both small, about fifty feet each side: eastward adjoins a roundish space, marked out in the same manner. There are barrows upon the tips of the hills hereabouts. We found infinite quantities of shells among the stone: but the belemnites are most frequent; they are dropped as it were into the superficies of the stone, while soft, with the points downwards. The soil of this country is sandy and rock: the whole superficies of it is a rock, whose strata lie every where parallel to the declivity of the ground: it is lime-stone, like that at Bath; but the layers of it are much thicker. One may guess hence, that this sort of stone by some means procures the warmth of the waters.
We saw Mam Torr from hence seven miles; a steep huge rock elevated above the hills. There is a great yawning between two rocks split as it were from top to bottom: on the precipice of one jaw is an old castle, whence the adjacent town Castleton. Between it is the great cavern called the Devil’s Arse. A few little houses under the very rock. This country is fruitful in what we may call the magnalia naturæ. By these wonders of the Peak, and the warm waters, people are tempted to visit these wild wastes. At a place called Hope I learnt there are some stones, called Marvel-stones, which cannot be numbered: I guess them to be a Celtic temple. I could not hear of those at Chelmerton, though I fancy there must be such, because of some barrows on the hills looking that way: it requires some time, labour, and hazard, to hunt them out, by reason of the rockiness of the country. The sides of the hills, where the villages are, are divided into closes by stone walls, as in other places by hedges.
We went into Pool’s Hole again. This cavern rises, as we go farther in, with the hill: the stones within are covered over with petrifaction, from the water distilling down: some of the icicles are three or four yards long, hanging from the roof; the slow accretion of ages: the springs dribble down every where, as draining through the strata into this cavity. I fancy there are such in most rocky hills, and they cause springs: for we may conceive that after the harder shell of a hill was condensed, and first, as being outermost and more exposed to the external heat, in the infant globe; the internal parts, when they came to harden afterwards, by attraction of so much solidity, cracked and shrunk (as we see clay does in the open air) and so left casual fissures every where: the water then by degrees found or made an outlet from many meeting together; and this created fountains, most commonly toward the bottom of hills. This reasoning is strengthened by springs running in less quantity in summer than winter, because the sun exhales the dew and moisture, not suffering it so freely to sink down into the earth.
Escaped from this Stygian cave, I revisited the antiquity called the Round Fold, by the road side from Chelmerton hither, at Stadon; and under the hill called Stadon Hoe. I take it to be a curious Celtic antiquity, much of the nature of those which in Anglesey and Wiltshire we call Druids houses: so in Dorsetshire circles of stones they call Folds. The country people say it was cast up in war-time long since. It consists of a square vallum, 100 feet each side: the ditch whence it came is on the inside: eastward from this is a circle of 160 feet diameter, of like manner: the whole stands on an open plain, which declines northward: the square is upon a level; but the circular part declines gently from thence: on that point of the circle farthest from the square is a little semicircular cove of earth, like the place of a tabernacle. It is hard to say whether it was for a private use, or for judicature, or religious affairs; but in the pasture behind it is a barrow, and several more barrows in view, on the hill-tops. At Stadon I saw a large square intrenchment, now divided into pastures; and upon the top of the hoe, where the hawthorn stands, seem to have been some works. This circle of ours, by sinking the ditch within, seems well contrived for shows: five or six tire of people may stand commodiously round it, and look over one another’s heads. Both vallum and ditch are but small, much inferior to that of a camp.
In the field by the garden at Buxton are two springs close together, one hot, the other cold. Little flint arrow-heads of the ancient Britons, called Elfs arrows, are frequently ploughed up here. Roman plaster found here, mentioned in Thoresby’s Ducat. Leodiens. p. 558. A Roman road is said to go hence to Burgh, beyond Elden park.
Journeying hence over the remainder of these Alpine regions, we come to Goyt house, in the very centre of desolation. The most western of these hills are more barren and difficult than the others, and fuller of springs. At length we entered the pleasant country of Cheshire, as into a new world; wondering that people are found who can content themselves with the poverty and horror of the Peak, so near riches and delight.