This wild moorland walk traces the history of road transport over the Pennines. The route over Blackstone Edge was used in the past by trains of packhorses and later by wagons and carriages. Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, followed the route on a wild winter's day early in the 18th century and found it a daunting crossing.
The walk starts from the historic White House pub, once a coaching inn where teams of horses were changed and passengers rested. The modern A58 road follows the line of a turnpike toll road built in the 1790s. Some of the tall stones that marked the line of the road through winter snows are still in position. Below the A58, forming part of the walk, runs an earlier coach road; today it is a grassy terrace in the hillside, built in the late 1760s and replaced by a newer road on the line of the A58. Beside the road are many small, overgrown quarries which provided material for road making, with the largest — the Blue Delf — having been flooded to form an attractive pond. The Stormer Hill Toll House, where the old road rejoins the A58, was once a turnpike toll house.
The track that comes down to the cottages at Lydgate was formerly the main packhorse road over Blackstone Edge, deeply hollowed in places by centuries of traffic. The road that climbs towards the summit of the pass is very different though; as the slope steepens there are smooth, round cobbles among the peat and turf. Higher up, the full extent of this fine, paved roadway becomes evident.
Of all the old roads around Blackstone Edge, this one has caused the most controversy. On the map it is marked as a Roman road, and many textbooks refer to it as the best-preserved section of Roman road in Britain. There are, however, serious doubts about its age: halfway up the slope there is a passing place where a medieval packhorse track passes under the causeway, suggesting the road is relatively recent — possibly a turnpike from the 1760s which was abandoned due to its steep gradient.
At the summit of the pass the causeway and packhorse road meet at the Aiggin Stone, an upright block with a worn, crudely incised cross. This is a good place to pause for breath and admire the view of the distant factory chimneys of industrial Lancashire and the long line of gritstone outcrops that marks Blackstone Edge.
The Aiggin Stone was one of many wayside route markers on the medieval packhorse track. The section of the walk down from the Aiggin Stone to the reservoir drain follows a well-preserved section of this packhorse road.
Acknowledgment: Text derived from the Out and Out Series; Discovering the Countryside on Foot. Pictures courtesy of Wikipedia.
