Mam Tor
The Shivering Mountain or Mother Mountain
Mam Tor stands guarding the western end of the Hope Valley, it's dark imposing face staring impassively at Castleton. Variously nicknamed The Shivering Mountain or Mother Mountain it has been the focus of the western end of the valley for thousands of years.
The Hope Valley in which Castleton lies marks the division between the limestone plateau to the south and the gritstone hills of the Pennines to the north. Sandwiched between these two solid rocks are layers of loose, weak shale alternating with thin bands of gritstone. The shale being weak and liable to saturation has a tendency to slip which is what has happened at Mam Tor. This mighty landslip has developed over thousands of years but is still slowly moving -anyone wanting close inspection of the face is advised to wear a hard hat and not to climb it.
In a ring around the top of Mam Tor are the remains of the Bronze Age fortifications. Mam Tor was a defensive hill fort and excavations have revealed numerous hut circle remains and many artefacts. It is thought that people only lived in the fort when under threat, retreating there to defend themselves from this magnificent lookout point. Once the threat had passed they'd return to their individual farmsteads.
Mam Tor is also thought to have been a control point for the passage of goods along packhorse routes on the drier and safer hilltops. A series of such forts exist in the Peak, including Carl Wark on Burbage Moor at the other end of the Hope Valley.
The now defunct road that lies across the mudflow beneath Mam Tor was built in 1801 as a gentler
alternative for stagecoaches to the steeper Winnats Pass. It started slipping immediately but it wasn't until the laying of heavy tarmac, that the road began to cause users real problems. During the last war, Italian prisoners of war were assigned to rebuild the road. The constructed drainage channels under the road that would take water away from the 'dam' wall that was the tarmac road. This worked well until more restoration work in the 1970's employed a bridge engineer to 'solve' the problem again. He sunk a concrete wall to the top of the road once more damming up the water which over the years built up pressure until it gave way in the late 1970s. For a while the road was one lane but in the 80's it closed for good and will remain so for ever. The road is no longer a public highway and is owned by the National Trust.
It is an impressive place to walk or cycle (with care) and is a perfect reminder how puny man's efforts are when trying to compete with nature.