Site Event/Activity record ECH4187 - Millbrook Boreholes to Lamaload Reservoir, Peak District National Park.

A total of 73 sites were identified during the desk-based assessment, only 13 of which were previously recorded in the Cheshire Historic Environment Record. Of these, three are Scheduled Monuments. The vast majority of sites were post-medieval in date with only the following sites being earlier; a Neolithic quern, Bronze Age barrows, a standing stone, Roman coins and a Medieval field system. An additional twelve sites were identified during the walkover survey. All twelve lie within or very close to the proposed pieline, and may be directly affected by it. Of these, nine were post-Medieval and included quarries, gateposts and field boundaries and trackways, and three were of an unknown date. Much of the landscape was enclosed after the 17th century, and most of the proposed pieline passes through what was originally commons. The area around Macclesfield is described as ancinet enclosure, i.e. that it was enclosed prior to the seventeenth century, while hte area around Lamaload Reservoir was probably pasture until the nineteenth century. Several farms also date to the post-medieval period, but often with their origins in the medieval period. A great deal of information is available regarding thee buildings, principally from a number of surveys of the area of Macclesfield Forest, which revealed a series of wealthy farms which kept cattle, sheep and pigs, as well as being engaged in button-making, coal mining, quarrying and spinning.