North Lees Through Time walk

• Start: Hollins Bank car park, SK 238 837
• Distance: About 4 km
• Time: 2 hours
• Access: Over rough and muddy ground with stiles. Outdoor clothing and walking boots are essential.

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Explore over 3,000 years with this self-guided trail through the moorland and fields of the North Lees Estate.

• Follow in the footsteps of Bronze Age farmers, Medieval traders and the quarrymen of the Industrial Revolution.
• Discover a Romano-British settlement and a curious field chapel.
• Visit quarries, kilns and mills. See the Elizabethan manor that inspired Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre.

This trail was written by Phil Sidebottom. It has been produced by the Hunter Archaeological Society in partnership with inHeritage.co.uk to celebrate the centenary of the Society in 2012. Photographs by Bill Bevan.

This trail has been funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, Peak District National Park and Hunter Archaeological Society.

Turn right out of Hollins bank car park and follow the road round. As you approach the trees of Dennis Knoll plantation, look to your left for the stone outcrop across the stream.

1. Old Quarry and Hollow-Way

Millstone Grit was quarried from Sheepwash Bank to make grinding wheels, build houses, barns, walls and pave roads. It fell silent in the early 20th century, but imagine how noisy it would have been before then.
The sunken track across Sheepwash Bank plateau was once the main route across this land, worn deep by use. The wall across the Way suggests it was disused by the time of Enclosure.

Take the path by the edge of the plantation. Immediately bear left through rough grass to cross Sheepwash Bank, keeping to the top of the stream gully. Look out for a group of low stony mounds, one is visible by its short, green grass.

2. Prehistoric Sheepwash Bank

A farming community lived here during the Bronze Age, long before the rough grass covered the knoll and the conifers were planted. About 3,000 years ago, the knoll had fertile, sandy soils, which were divided into small fields for crops. These mounds are clearance cairns, created as the Bronze Age farmers cleared the ground of boulders. The farmers lived in stone-footed timber houses close to where the plantation now grows.

Return to the track beside the conifers, heading towards the wall stile to the left of the plantation. Cross the stile and climb to the top of the slope.

3. Prehistoric Dennis Knoll

Here you have a good view of Hathersage, nestled in the Hope Valley. There are more clearance cairns from Bronze Age fields here. Look for the low, stony mounds between the plantation and the edge of the knoll. Occasionally cairns contain burials. This would be a prime site for a burial with views far to the limestone plateau.

Follow the winding wheel track downhill, away from the wall stile. Look for the large spoil heap down to your left and head towards it. Climb up to the spoil heap and look back towards the plantation to find the stone wall with the small entrance tucked into the slope.

4. Limekiln

This stone-built limekiln dates from about 1830. Here, limestone imported from the White Peak tumbled into the top and was burned to produce agricultural lime for soil improvement. It is likely that another by-product was used in lead smelting at nearby Green’s Mill.

Join the track at the bottom of the spoil heap and walk downhill to Green’s House. Where the track takes a sharp bend to the right, bear slightly left towards the large boulders ahead.

5. Dennis Knoll Romano-British Settlement

Look for large stones set on end (orthostats) aligned in double rows, and supporting the terraces and building platforms hewn into the hillside here. The irregular enclosures suggest stock compounds within larger fields. Almost certainly this is part of the same Romano-British settlement you’ll see at The Warren [9]. Hundreds of years of farming life have destroyed the archaeology that linked them.

Rejoin the path and descend towards the wall, where you bear right and cross over the stile and continue to Green’s House.

6. Green’s House

This former farm probably has Medieval origins, but has been added to repeatedly over the centuries. The quoins (corner stones) in the middle of the range reveal the outer edges of an older building. Next door, Green’s Cottage was probably built in the 1600s. The Green family lived here for several generations and were involved in the lead smelting and milling at Green’s Mill.

Turn left at Green’s House then turn right along the path signposted Hathersage. Continue into the wood. Look for the stone-lined circular pit behind the holly bush to the left of the path.

7. White Coal Kiln

White Coal begins as wood, dried out to create fuel with a fiercely-hot burning temperature, suitable for use in smelting. White coal was used to smelt lead, and the fuel produced in this kiln was probably used at Green’s Mill.

Continue down the path, cross the brook by the wooden bridge, and turn left up the path on the opposite side of the brook. Cross the stepping stones to the ivy-clad ruins opposite.

8. Green’s Mill

Originally a lead-smelting mill, first mentioned in the early 1700s, by the late 1700s Green’s Mill had been remodelled as a paper mill. Here, coarse brown wrapping paper was produced to supply the metal industries in nearby Hathersage. By the mid 1800s the mill had fallen out of use.
Look for the dam wall above the ruins of the old mill buildings, and the housing of the long-gone overshot wheel. Look carefully for traces of the lead ore in the track through the complex. The ore was smelted high on the nearby Bole Hills, then brought here to be worked.

Cross the stepping-stones and climb up the track to The Warren. Look for the stone-faced terraces rising to the left of the track. Spring is the best time to visitbecause the terraces are overgrown with bracken in summer and autumn.

9. The Warren

Some terraces are wide, some narrow, some rectangular, some irregular – probably reflecting a mix of farm-fields, working and domestic areas. Archaeological evidence suggests lead-smelting and quernstone (grindstone) manufacture, with pottery dating this to the Romano-British period. The settlement extends into the adjacent oak wood (north-east), and in low sunlight you might pick out faint traces of more terraces across the fields to the south-west. The sinuous boundary wall to the south may also be Romano-British.

About halfway up the slope are two gate posts on your right. Go through and cut across the field to the chapel.

10. Chapel of the Holy Trinity

There’s controversy over the origins of this tiny chapel. Did it host post-Reformation clandestine Catholic masses, or was it Hathersage’s quite-above-board St Michael’s chapel? We know a Catholic chapel existed briefly at Hathersage; built in 1685, destroyed by Protestants in 1688, but not its location.

Nearby there used to be a well. In a letter of 1780, it was described as a focus of an ancient custom where villagers flocked at dawn, each to drop a pin in the water for votive purposes.

Return to the gateway and The Warren. Turn right up the slope to the top terraces.

11. Top Terraces

Compare the large level terrace here, picked out in smaller stones, with the more higgledy-piggledy terracing bounded by large boulders below.

Continue along the track and cross the stile. Where the track crosses the hollow-way, turn right down towards North Lees Hall, keeping the hollow-way and wall to your right and North Lees Hall ahead of you.

12. Medieval Wall and Hollow-Way

See how this ancient road is crossed with the later track from The Warren to the mill complex. This winding wall is likely of Medieval date, built to surround an earlier North Lees Hall. It’s a strong contrast to the rectilinear walls you see from the early 1800s enclosure of common lands.

Continue to the large manor house, in a field to your right.

13. North Lees Hall

The 3-storied Elizabethan tower-house you see dates from the late 1500s. But the Estate is first mentioned as early as 1306, when ‘Alexander of North Leghes’ lived here. It was while the Derbyshire Eyres lived here that Charlotte Bronte visited. She published her novel Jane Eyre just 2 years later in 1847, clearly basing Rochester’s Thornfield Hall on North Lees. The house was altered in the 1800s and restored in 1965. The grade II* listed house was altered in the 1800s. There’s a fine cruck barn behind the house and several seventeenth to nineteenth-century farm buildings.

Walk uphill from North Lees Hall towards the road. You should meet the road by the Mountain Rescue Post and public toilets shown at B on the map. Turn left to return to Hollins Bank car park.