Gibbet Moor is a small gritstone upland area in the

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

Peak District The Peak District is an upland area in England at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southe ...

of central and northern England, near the village of

Baslow Baslow is a village in Derbyshire, England, in the Peak District, situated between Sheffield and Bakewell, just over north of Chatsworth House. It is sited by the River Derwent, which is spanned by a 17th-century bridge, alongside which is a ...

. Its highest point is above sea level. The Chatsworth Estate lies to the west and Umberley Brook run along its east edge. East Moor is the broader moorland area covering Gibbet Moor, Brampton East Moor and

Beeley Moor Beeley Moor is a small gritstone upland area in the Derbyshire Peak District of central and northern England, near the villages of Beeley and Baslow. Its highest point is above sea level. Geography The Chatsworth Estate lies to the north we ...

. Gibbet Moor is a prehistoric landscape with several protected

Scheduled Ancient Monument In the United Kingdom, a scheduled monument is a nationally important archaeological site or historic building, given protection against unauthorised change. The various pieces of legislation that legally protect heritage assets from damage and d ...

s. A

gibbet A gibbet is any instrument of public execution (including guillotine, decapitation, executioner's block, Impalement, impalement stake, gallows, hanging gallows, or related Scaffold (execution site), scaffold). Gibbeting is the use of a gallows- ...

was a wooden structure (like a

gallows A gallows (or scaffold) is a frame or elevated beam, typically wooden, from which objects can be suspended (i.e., hung) or "weighed". Gallows were thus widely used to suspend public weighing scales for large and heavy objects such as sacks ...

), where the dead bodies of criminals were hung on display. The last person to be gibbeted alive in England was a vagrant who was begging for food around Baslow and killed a woman in her cottage. The murderer was left to die in a gibbet cage on Gibbet Moor in the 17th century. A widespread

Bronze Age The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second pri ...

settlement covers a stretch of moorland over 1km long. The complex includes a stone circle, more than 250 cairns, cemeteries of burial mounds (barrows) and remains of field enclosures and building platforms of probable farm houses. The stone circle has an outer ring of standing stones about 10m in diameter, with an inner square of standing stones (with three of the "four poster" stones remaining). The historic landscape has been modified by World War II training exercises. The site is a Scheduled Monument. To the west of the large prehistoric settlement is another cairnfield and field system, which is a separate Scheduled Monument. This formed part of the same Bronze Age cultivation landscape but was separated by more recent land enclosures. A Bronze Age cairn cemetery on the eastern edge of the moor is a further Scheduled Monument. The largest cairn is 10m long with at least seven other cairns nearby.

Hob Hurst's House Hob Hurst's House is a Bronze Age barrow on Beeley Moor near Bakewell in Derbyshire. It is unique in that instead of the normal round shape, Hob Hurst's barrow is rectangular. Originally made with 13 stones, only five remain today. It is situa ...

is an unusual square Bronze Age burial cairn on Harland Edge (between Gibbet Moor and Beeley Moor). Thomas Bateman excavated the barrow in 1853 and discovered a stone

cist A cist ( or ; also kist ; from grc-gre, κίστη, Middle Welsh ''Kist'' or Germanic ''Kiste'') is a small stone-built coffin-like box or ossuary used to hold the bodies of the dead. Examples can be found across Europe and in the Middle East ...

containing cremated remains. It has been a protected national monument since 1882. Until 1824 Gibbet Moor was common land and then the

Enclosures Act The Inclosure Acts, which use an archaic spelling of the word now usually spelt "enclosure", cover enclosure of open fields and common land in England and Wales, creating legal property rights to land previously held in common. Between 1604 and 1 ...

allocated the land of Gibbet Moor to the

Duke of Rutland Duke of Rutland is a title in the Peerage of England, named after Rutland, a county in the East Midlands of England. Earldoms named after Rutland have been created three times; the ninth earl of the third creation was made duke in 1703, in who ...

. In an exchange of lands, the

6th Duke of Devonshire William George Spencer Cavendish, 6th Duke of Devonshire, (21 May 1790 K. D. Reynolds, ‘Cavendish, William George Spencer, sixth duke of Devonshire (1790–1858)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; ...

acquired the 652 acres of Gibbet Moor to extend his Chatsworth Estate to the east. Gibbet Moor became "Open Access" land for the public, following the

Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 The Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 (c. 37), known informally as the CRoW Act or "Right to Roam" Act is a United Kingdom Act of Parliament affecting England and Wales which came into force on 30 November 2000. Right to roam The Act imp ...

. The

Peak District Boundary Walk The Peak District Boundary Walk is a circular walking trail, starting and finishing at Buxton and broadly following the boundary of the Peak District, Britain's first national park. The route was developed by the Friends of the Peak District (a ...

runs along the track on the west side of the moor. The area can be accessed by a track from the

A619 road List of A roads in zone 6 in Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island ...

References

{{Reflist Mountains and hills of Derbyshire Mountains and hills of the Peak District Moorlands of England