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In Autumn 2004 a helicopter was used to carry stone from Brownsett farm onto the Roaches to re-build the wall along the north edge of the wood above Five Clouds.

The helicopter was used for most of the day doing a round trip in 5 minutes or so. The stone was carried in the type of big bags you see sand delivered in.

This must have cost a fortune especially to rebuild such an obscure wall. It may have been the classic end of financial year 'spend the budget' project to which so many organisations succomb. Especially as the television series 'Dalziel and Pascoe' had just used the Roaches for an episode and presumably had paid for the privilage.

Perhaps someone else knows better and would like to enlighten us all. Send me a note if you do. Webmaster

There have been a number of aircraft crashes on the Roaches, most as a result of low cloud and the aircraft flying lower than their flight plan dictated. The book-"'Peakland Air Crashes - the South" by Pat Cunningham details the aircraft involved and the reasons for the crashes.

If you travel along the road from the Winking Man pub to Roach End about half a mile from Roach End down the hillside to your right you will see a lone large Rhododendron bush. This was planted at the crash site of a bomber which crashed on the night of May 8th 1941 by a grief stricken German mother of a crew member. The bomber had been hit on a raid over Liverpool Docks. The crew were preparing to bail out when Roach End thwarted their plan.

The mother returned to the spot a number of times in the early years after the war. You can imagine how uncomfortable this could have been with anti-German feelings running high post war. Frank Belfield's Dad gave her a lift back to Leek the last time she came and they discussed how nobody in their families had wanted to fight each other. She said she could not afford to come again. Not surprising when travel then probably cost the same in Pounds(or Marks) as it does now.

The aircraft was a Junkers Ju88 a-5 which was a medium bomber.

On November 17th 1940 a Spitfire crashed into a field near Windgates Hall Farm just below Hen Cloud. Evidently the plane was off course in low cloud and had struck a tree on Ramshaw Rocks which did not cause catastrophic damage at that time but did affect the controls so the pilot circled hoping to find a break in the cloud so he could crash land. Unfortunately the plane broke up and crashed almost vertically into the field. The crash site was cleared at the time by salvage workers but they could not get the engine because it was embedded too far down in the mud. It was subsequently removed in 1978 from about 8-10feet down.
About ten years ago I was having a chin wag with Geoff Robinson at Windygates when a young lad about 12 years old approached us and asked Geoff if he could go and see the Spitfire crash site. He was given permission and off he went. After a while we heard the drone of an old aircraft and overhead appeared a historic Spitfire on its way to a local airshow. The yound lad came back from the crash site absolutely flabbergasted at this amazing coincidence and we could not believe how weird this event had been. You don't see a flying Spitfire every day never mind when you just happen to be discussing a 55 year Spitfire crash prompted by the young lad.

On the 3rd Jan 1945 a Lancaster bomber crashed near the summit of the Roaches, it was on a training sortie. The post crash inquiry could find no malfunctions of the plane and concluded that the pilot had disregarded the pre-flight orders to fly no lower than 4000ft with disasterous consequences. In Sheila Hine's book "Around Meerbrook" Joe Day, who was then a fifteen year old, recalls how he went up to the wreck with a few friends and found two bombs. They thought it would be a good idea to take then to the cliff edge above Rock Hall and throw then over to see if they went off! Luckily they found them a bit heavy to carry all that way and sanity prevailed so they left them under a wall. Presumably the bombs were recovered by the military - but you never know!