Another feature of Big Moor that i hadn’t seen despite passing it hundreds of times …
Just inside the white gate to Barbrook Cottage off the A621 ‘Sheffield Road’ is a guide stone (on the left).
The 1927 Clarion Rambler details (in great detail !) a route from here over Car Top, past the spoil heap from the reservoir build, and across Bar Brook to Big Moor and beyond.
‘When a young man’ Charles Rushton of Holmesfield (aged 76 in 1927) ‘went this way 3 or 4 times a week with pack saddle horses for coals’. He also recounts that he repaired the sich’ over Barbrook annually for over 20 years.
The photo is of a slight holloway still visible (albeit i never noticed it until i observed it from the direction of the sitch) and once part of this cartway that locals called the ‘Long Causeway’.
The two drainage ponds where the route crosses the Brook – although looking ruined and filthy to the human eye – are absolutely teeming with life.