The Old Great Track

On the Leek to Macclesfield road in the county of Cheshire you pass through a small village called Fools Nook, on the hillside above Fools Nook can be found a farm called the Great Oak, this farm and also Fools Nook have strong ties to the Druids. Great Oak farm has unsuprisingly a great oak growing close by to it on a tumuli or burial mound. Below the farm can be seen a field as can be seen in the photograph above, in this field can be seen a depression which is thought to have been created by thousands of pairs of feet weraring the earth away and forming a track that can still be seen. It is thought that in the past this may have been used as a processional way, whether this was worn away by people climbing the hill to venerate the sacred oak tree over the years no one can be totally sure. On the opposite side of the hill to the Great Oak there used to be a small sacred grove (nemetia) until it was unfortunately cut down in the 1980s.

It is thought that Fools Nook village at the bottom of the hill was used by the Druids for their rituals amongst the thick oak woods which these days are not so numerous. At the time the Druids were occupying this area most of the country had become Christianised, it is therefore thought that the local clergy would have been under pressure to stamp out the rituals performed by the Druids. This is where the name Fools Nook would have originated as the Druids would have been refered to as the Fools in the Nook.