| Description | Copy made from the original held in the Duchy of Lancaster Records at The National Archives
This copy is described in the Derbyshire Record Society's "A Catalogue of Local Maps of Derbyshire c.1528–1800" (compiled by Harold Nichols, revised by Mary Wiltshire assisted by Susan Woore, published 2012). The description reads as follows:
Peake Forest in its three parts Longdendale, Asshop aand Edall, the Champion [1585]. Scale: no scale shown. Size: 81 x 107 cm., irregular. Materials: ink on paper, coloured paints. Centred on: SK1079 Notes: top about north-east (variable). Records the harbages (rights of pasture) etc. among the 'great wastes' of Peak Forest, by geometrically shaped blocks painted red or yellow. In Longdendale, harbages at Coombes, Shelf, and, much larger, 'Herbage at Chinley otherwise called Maidstonfeld'; in Ashop and Edale, farms and in Edale 'the Queens ... farms are divided into 5 vacaries'; in the Champion, harbages at Bolt Edge, Hallstead, Green Fairfield, Tideswell, [Hucklow?] with some areas unnamed, surrounding Peak Forest parish area noted as 'The severals of the Champion'. Towns within the Forest are represented by drawings of the church and houses in perspective, apparently with some attention to reality, eg cottages in terraces, individual houses, 3 gabled Hall, at Glossop, but not accurate, eg drawing of Tideswell Church does not resemble this 14c. building (see Cox, below). Towns so noted are, in Longdendale, Glossop, Mellor, Hayfield; in Ashop and Edale, Castleton (with distinctive castle), Hope; in the Champion, Chapel-en-le-Frith, Fairfield [Buxton], Wormhill, Tideswell. Some tenant farmers named. No orientation. The areas of the blocks representing pastures etc vary in size and appear proportional to the areas of the parcels, the largest area of such parcels is in the Champion. Dating '? in the suit DL l/132 A.34 of 1585' . J C Cox, Plans of the Peak Forest; in J C Cox, ed., Memorials of old Derbyshire, 1907, pp281-306, states, without reference, that the map was prepared between 1587 and 1590 when Earl of Shrewsbury was permitted to buy a part of the Longdendale district, which was disafforested for the purpose. Location. "[The metes and boundes of the Forest of the Peak begin at] the New place or the New Wood of Goyt (somewhere near Goyt Bridge), then by the water of Goyt to that of Etherow; then by water of Etherow to Lanedicroft or Longdenehevid (Woodhead); then by ancient footpath to head of Derwent; then down the Derwent to Mythomstede (ie Mythambridge); thence to the rivulet of Bradwell; thence up the dell of Haslebache to Hucklow; thence to Little Hucklow; thence to Tideswell Brook, so to Water of Wye (near Miller's Dale) from thence ascending to Buxton and so to the New Place of Goyt". Duchy of Lancaster Records, Misc: xxv FF.51. Quoted in J H Brooksbank, The Forest of the Peak, Hunter Archaeological Society Transactions (1914), 1 (1914); 337-355. Quoted also, with different details of translation, CC Kerry, A history of Peak Forest, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal, XV (1893); 67-98. A clear, broad outline map of the Peak Forest is given in I E Burton, The Royal Forest of the Peak (1966). Location: The National Archives, Kew: PRO, MFC 1/53; copies in DRO, D7676/BagC/290, 76 x 113 cm., 1 sheet, faded modern copy, from original in The National Archives. |