The stone I found in my local woods recently is typical of the thousand-odd millstones scattered around the Peak District – and are used as a symbol for the National Park. Clearly fashioned from the gritstone of the ‘edge’ behind me, this example raises some intriguing questions: who made it? why was it abandoned? how was it transported?

Both wind and water mills used pairs of millstones to grind grain between them; the stones were about 1.8 metres wide and each weighed nearly 2.5 tons. Millstone grit from North Derbyshire was considered the best material for these, and in the late seventeenth century a pair would cost about nine or ten pounds, reflecting the skill and effort required to make them. Most production seems to have been small-scale; perhaps providing winter work for farmers, and may have been concentrated in the Hathersage area and along the ‘edges’, but there is also documentary evidence of manufacture at Alderwasley, Crich and Holloway. However, in the eighteenth century, with rising standards of living, demand for white flour increased and milling this needed finer chert millstones. Quite suddenly, the traditional stones were unwanted, and this may account for the numbers that were abandoned – although some may have cracked or had other defects.

One minor mystery is how such heavy, valuable objects were transported, given that they were sold all over England and exported to the Continent. The sites of the quarries were often remote from the nearest road, so they may have been rolled in pairs, fitted with a wooden axle, until they could be craned onto a cart. In 1676 a miller at North Elmshall paid seven shillings and sixpence for carrying his new stones 22 miles. At Baslow there were complaints about loads of millstones weakening the bridge over the Derwent, and fines for offenders, which suggests fairly heavy traffic. As with lead, Bawtry was the main inland port for shipping millstones, both for export and to other English regions. But perhaps the biggest mystery is how the semi-amateur masons were able to produce such precisely cut stones with the crudest of tools.