Image ref
PTPD300283
Credit
From collection of F H Brindley
photographer
Brindley, F H (Sheffield and District News Pictures, 973 Abbeydale Road)
ImageDate
c 1930s ?
Location
Mam Tor
Town
Castleton
About this image
The photographer's original caption for this view reads:
'A PHOTO THE MINISTRY OF TRANSPORT DID NOT SEE, when refusing permission.
WHY THE RAMBLERS from Manchester, Sheffield etc, who have won first round in the fight to stop a new road in WINNATS PASS, may have won a hollow victory. The recent Snow must be blamed.
Derbyshire County Council's application for making a road down Winnats Pass, Castleton, to replace the present dangerous MAM TOR roadway, has been refused.
This photo shows something they did not know, but the Council experts did, and now they will take the matter up in higher Court. The recent rain and snow has opened cracks underneath the foundations of the Mam Tor road, and where this snap was taken below the road, a landslide is now forming, and if it comes, will carry the whole road here into the valley over 100ft below this point, and any traffic unlucky to be on it at that moment.
Present inspection show this might happen at any moment now.'
Mam Tor is a 517m (1,696ft) hill. Landslips, caused by unstable lower layers of shale, have been a characteristic feature over many years and have prompted its alternative name of the Shivering Mountain. Although this view shows subsidence problems before World War Two, it was not until 1979 that the on-going battle to maintain the A625 road (Sheffield to Chapel en le Frith) on the crumbling eastern side of the hill was lost and the road officially closed as a through-route. As predicted by the photographer, traffic now uses the nearby steep and narrow Winnats Pass.