The Story of Alderley: Living with the Edge

Alderley Edge is a sandstone ridge rising above the Cheshire plain, a dozen miles south of Manchester. Beneath lie copper and lead mines and, according to legend, a sleeping king and his knights ready to save England in the last battle of the world. The Edge itself is now owned by the National Trust and the village below, formed by the railway as a commuter dormitory for Manchester cotton-kings, has become a honeypot for Mancunians. The story of Alderley begins in 1953, when the schoolboy Alan Garner rediscovered an old wooden shovel found in the mines. Nearly forty years later - and by now a world-famous author - he presented the shovel to the Manchester Museum in the University of Manchester, inspiring a research project that called on every discipline of the museum and more, attracting specialists of the highest calibre. The Alderley Edge Landscape Project, a joint venture by the Museum and the National Trust, set out to study every aspect of Alderley's story. Its first report in 2005 was The Archaeology of Alderley Edge. This second volume, The story of Alderley, covers everything else, from the natural world to the story of the mines, from social history to conservation. It includes the discovery of two new species of bramble and a retelling of the legend by Alan Garner that takes the story back into prehistory - and his shovel was radiocarbon-dated to the Bronze Age.No other book provides such a detailed story of the village and its landscape setting. It will appeal not just to landscape and local historians but students and scholars in all those disciplines and to all those interested in any aspect of history and the countryside.