to the northerly and easterly directions. Trees now obscure the views in other directions, including views of the Wrekin in Shropshire to the south; The Cloud near Bosley and Mow Cop (where the Cheshire Plain meets the Peckforton Hills, Beeston Castle, and the Delamere Forest) to the southwest; and west to the mountains of North Wales. History The Edge was described as a dreary common till the year 1779, when it was enclosed together with all the other waste lands of Alderley. Some hundreds of Scots pines were planted on the highest points by Sir James and Sir Edward Stanley, between 1745 and 1755; before that time, it does not appear that a single tree grew on it. In 1882, George Ormerod in his book The History of Cheshire described the Edge as "an abrupt and elevated ridge, formerly the site of a Beacon, which bears the appearance of having been detached by some great convulsion of nature from the range of the Macclesfield hills, as Helsby and Beeston seem to have been from those of Delamere and Peckforton. Near the summit, "cobalt ore, lead, and copper have been got in small quantities. The sides are varied with cultivated land, wood, and rock; and the entire mass presents a striking object to all the surrounding district, over which it commands a most extensive prospect." Alderley Edge mines The escarpment in Alderley Edge has long been a site of copper mining. Archaeological evidence indicates that mining took place here during Roman times and the Bronze Age, and written records show that mining continued here from the 1690s up to the 1920s. Many of the mines are owned by the National Trust and have been leased from them by the Derbyshire Caving Club which maintains access and continues to explore and search for areas of mining that have been closed for centuries. From the 1860s onwards, there have been many thousands of visitors to the mines. However, many other visitors, especially between 1940 and 1960, were ill-equipped and unprepared. This led to a series of accidents that gained the mines a notoriety which still haunts them today. The West and Wood Mines were finally blocked in the early 1960s (Jones, 1961). In 1969, the Derbyshire Caving Club obtained permission from the National Trust (the owners) to re-open Wood Mine and since then much has been found by excavation and exploration and thousands