Above: I’ve highlighted the earthworks in yellow on this map from the 1950s. And the C&HPR line in green
Watford Farm lies on a popular walk into the Goyt Valley from Buxton (walk 21). On the right, as you approach the farmhouse from Cavendish Golf Course, is a hard-standing area used to store heavy machinery. And on the left is a flat area of grassland that looks like it must have been formed for some purpose in the past.
This is the southern end of an earthwork that stretches for around a mile. The northern end is at Longhill Farm, which lies near the lane running down into the Goyt Valley from the Long Hill Road between Whaley Bridge and Buxton.
Above: The view from above Watford Farm, looking south along the final section of the embankment (photo: Alan Roberts).
There are conflicting ideas about what purpose the embankment may have served. And the various theories have surfaced again on the Goyt Valley Facebook Group.
Some say it was created around 1860s to install a large military gun, maybe as part of a military training exercise. Andrew has excavated here in the past and discovered many military artefacts from this period. (We know it was used during WW1 to train soldiers in trench warfare – click for details.)
Others suggest that it could have been dug during the construction of the first turnpike between Whaley Bridge and Buxton, opened in 1795. It certainly connects – and in the same direction. Maybe it was simply abandoned when a better route was found.
But the most popular theory is that it’s associated with the nearby Cromford & High Peak Railway that ran through the Valley from 1831, and could have been used as a test track. Robert sent a comment:
I think that this is a short piece of railway built to demonstrate ‘Fell’s Experimental Railway’. I seem to remember an article in the Railway Magazine in the 1950s about it. It ran underneath the Cromford and High Peak in a sort of S curve. Fell had the idea of two horizontal wheels compressing against a central rail in order to get up steep gradients.
Above: The only documentary evidence (click to enlarge).
Andy has managed to discover the only written evidence we have – about a legal claim from Longhill Farm against a railway company for cutting their land in half. But it’s not the C&HPR.
The report explains that this company (later to become Midland Railway) was seeking a route for the extension of their Matlock to Buxton line into Manchester in the 1840s. The plan may have been to join the C&HPR at the top of the Bunsal Incline. But the company was forced to abandon these plans for another route.
My go-to guru for the history of local transport information is Alan Roberts, who has written books on both the turnpikes and the railways, and also hosts presentations on the subjects. He explained:
I have been looking for information on them for years. Originally, I thought that they were part of a plan to build a branch of the Leek/Buxton Turnpike to provide a link to the Grin Low quarry area, to save packhorses going too near Buxton.
Then, I was shown the short article (above) which comes from a walking guide. I contacted the author to try and find the material that he quoted but he couldn’t remember the source. I couldn’t find anything in the railway company’s records.
However, a possible interpretation comes from the fact that the LNWR was running CHPR in the 1870s and was making some upgrades at that time. One such upgrade was to replace the Hopton Incline with a 1 in 15 stretch of adhesion railway, no winding gear.
This proved unsuccessful because at times it took two locos to get freight wagons up the slope and it didn’t operate in bad weather. The Watford Incline has a 1 in 15 slope so it could have been part of an upgrade plan to get a better line to Whaley Bridge. Then the complaint from Long Hill Farm blocked it.
Then, along comes this folk memory of moving a large gun up a slope built for military purposes. I did wonder if it could have been part of some extensive military training exercise, I can’t think why else they should be dragging a big gun about in that area.
However, the railway option still strikes me as the most likely though where the line would have gone beyond Long Hill is anybody’s guess – perhaps to follow the general line of the road to Whaley Bridge.
Perhaps, buried away in the LNWR archives is a clue but I am not going there!
I’ll try and get in touch with Longhill Farm to see if they have any more information about the legal claim and will update this page if I discover more. Meanwhile, if anyone can shed some light on the mysterious earthworks, or wants to support any particular theory, please leave a comment below, or head over to the Facebook Group.
