To undertake a desk-based assessment of the quality and extent of the archaeological, cartographic and documentary evidence relating to the projected course of Batham Gate Roman Road through Smalldale Head Quarry and Cresswellpart Quarry, Bradwell, Derbyshire. The assessment was required in relation to an appeal to ODPM (DCLG) submitted under the Environment Act 1995 Review of Mineral Planning Conditions (ROMP), from land to the north of Cresswellpart Lane. Partial survival of metalling close to the southern wall of the field found in 1991 suggests that Batham Gate Roman Road entered the site from the south-west, before continuing through the Cresswellpart Quarry area and running north-east in the direction of the extant agger to the east. This suggests that the proposed twenty-metre stand-off zone would not protect subsurface deposits associated with the Roman road. Within the Smalldale Head Quarry area it may thus be safest to allow for a forty five-metre exclusion zone within which work will not take place. The line of protection until further research is carried out and reported upon, with any recommendations, should be extended across the section of the Cresswellpart Quarry site, with the stand-off zone in this area tapered from forty five metres at the west to sixty metres at the east, in order to take account of the oblique angle followed by the line of the Roman road across the field. Further archaeological evaluation may be required in advance of the works in order to determine accurately the survival and location of subsurface archaeological deposits associated with Batham Gate Roman road, geophysical survey followed by trial trenching targeted on any potential subsurface deposits thus identified. A disused mineshaft at the north-west of the site was shown as an old lead mine in 1880, although the period in which the mine was worked is unclear. An upcast spoil mound associated with this feature was shown in 1896 and remains extant, although the shaft itself has been blocked. Archaeological evaluation of these features is recommended, perhaps in the form of a measured survey to define the limits of the feature and trial trenching through the mound in order to recover any datable archaeological material.
Mark Stenton (Sun,) studied this question.