Peak Experience

Bronze Age and Iron Age people lived on the land above Gardom’s Edge about 2,000 to 3,000 years ago. Extensive remains of this prehistoric landscape survive.  Rock art, houses, fields, burial mounds, a standing stone and a massive enclosure wall can all be found among the heather.

 

A picture of steve foxs painting A picture of Gardoms Edge

 

Look carefully for Gardom’s Edge rock art – one of the best examples in the Peak District. In the 1990s, archaeologists excavated a number of the sites, then them restored for visitors to see.  Play time detective as you search for these traces of our past.

 

Gardom’s Edge is just over 1 km east of Baslow.  It is accessible along a steep 2 km circular route, part of which crosses rough moorland.  Begin at the National Park car park, just off the Baslow to Chesterfield road.

The earliest monuments on Gardom’s Edge were built for ceremonies and to bury the dead.  A standing stone and a carved earthfast boulder probably date to the Neolithic period, over 4,000 years ago.  The boulder is engraved with a design of circles and lines.  Visitors today still discuss the meanings of these symbols.  Are they based on stories about the land?

 

A picture of Gardoms edge rock art

 

A burial mound was built at the very top of Gardom’s Edge about 4,000 years ago.  It’s a great view for the dead! Ancient people looking up at Gardom’s Edge would have been reminded about their ancestors.  The mound is difficult to see now because it is partly hidden below three large cairns.  These are the Three Men of Gardoms. They were built as memorials.  Some say they are for three shepherds who died in the snow, others that it was three drunken priests who perished after losing their way.

 

The largest feature on Gardom’s Edge is a 650-metre-long bank that encloses an area full of boulders immediately above the edge.  It was built in the Bronze Age, about 3,000 years ago.  Large boulders contain a bank of gritstone rubble.  Burnt tree branches were dumped against the inside of the bank and more stones placed on top.

 

At first sight this seems like the ideal place for a hillfort.  But the wall was not built to be defensive.  Less than 1 metre high, it has a number of entrances and is built on relatively flat land.  No evidence for settlement has been found inside the wall.  It would have been difficult to find space for any buildings among the boulders.

 

More likely, our ancestors built the wall to create a place for ceremonial gatherings.  Perhaps communities from the surrounding area met here regularly to celebrate festivals and exchange gifts.

 

Later on, people came to Gardom’s to settle more permanently – possibly only 10 generations after the wall was built.  Traces of circular wooden houses are scattered among small fields.  Archaeologists have excavated three so far.  Each was built of timber posts with walls of plastered hurdle fences supported on wooden stakes.  Roofs may have been made of thatch, heather or rushes.  Doors faced southeast. Large quantities of broken pottery were found outside the door of each house. 

 

A picture of Archaeologists at gradam

 

When the houses were abandoned, those leaving did rituals to close them up.  They put an upside-down corn-grinding stone in the doorway of one building.  Then they piled stone around the wall to block the door.  This marked the end of use of the house, perhaps symbolically preventing anyone else from entering it while it rotted away.

 

Around another house’s walls they built more elaborate piles of stones.  They left a gap in front of the door, which was later narrowed and paved.  Here, the place where the building stood continued to be used.  It is still unclear for what purpose.

 

Most of the light, well-draining sandy soils were turned over to be used as small fields divided by hedges or fences.  Perhaps the inhabitants cultivated crops by hand, using wooden spades.  They pastured their animals in the fields and on heavier clay soils that were more difficult to dig.

 

Look out for the most visible remains of this farming – the many piles of stones, known as cairns.  The sandy soils were full of boulders which had to be cleared out of the way.  The early farmers dumped the stones into small mounds or piled them against the field boundaries.

 

 

Look for any bus from Baslow to Chesterfield or Sheffield on Traveline in order to walk to Gardom’s Edge, or ring Traveline on 0871 200 2233.