Linda-spring is at Lindway Spring Wood, Lindway Lane, a boundary between Brackenfield and Crich. In the late 1700s Hayman Rooke supposed it was once the site of an ancient town
X. Description of certain Pits in Derbyshire by Hayman Rooke –These pits go by the name of Pitheads, and are in a wood called Linda Spring, lying at Linda-lane, about a mile from Brackenfield near Crich. They are in two straight lines, forming a street 250 yards long; in width at the western end four yards, in the middle five yards, at the east end nine yards. there are 28 pits in the southern row, and 25 in the northern; one with another 16 feet by 15, and 6 feet deep. This street of pits, the writer, not without a great show of probability, supposes to have been a British town, which, allowing three only to a pit, would contain 159 persons.
The history of the county of Derby Volume 1 by Stephen Glover (page 284)
Pit-steads: In a wood called Linda spring, near Crich, are two rows of round pits, called Pit-steads, one of them containing twenty-five and the other twenty-eight ; and extending about two hundred and fifty yards in length: most of them being about fifteen feet in diameter and six feet deep. A particular account of them is printed in the Archeologia, Vol. X. page 114. communicated by Hayman Rooke, esq. who conjectured that it might have been a British town; there being no ore, coal, stone or clay, to be found here.
A History of Crich by J.G. Dawes Landmark Publishing 2003 (page10)
Early men avoided both marshy valleys and too-exposed high places and one of the earliest traces of men in the parish is in Lindway-Spring Wood [358580] to the north-east of Crich Hill at a height above sea-level of between 500 and 600 feet. Here are to be found the remains of stone-lined pits in which Stone Age men of 4000-2000 B.C. made their homes. There are two rows of pits of circular form - called the Pitsteads. One row contained twenty-five, the other twenty-eight, extending two hundred and fifty yards in length: most of them were about fifteen feet in diameter and six feet in depth.
Site of the Pitstead
Reproduced from 1899 Derbyshire Sheet XXXV.5 Second Edition Ordnance Survey map with the kind permission of Ordnance Survey.
The green shading is the site of the Pitstead
The Red line is Crich Parish boundary
Home| History Index