Dams Lane

One of the oldest roads in Allostock is Dams Lane which runs from Middlewich Road across the brook and onto Townfield Lane (by Old Mill Farm). Michael Mooney’s “A Brief History for the Passer-by” and “The Salter’s Way” by John Merrill both attest to the antiquity of the road as part of a medieval salt trail which went from Witton, along Penny’s Lane (the name deriving from the toll charged) and ran via Snig Hall, Hulme Hall, Dams Lane, Townfield Lane, Boots Green, Fuller’s Gate and beyond as far as Macclesfield.

The Allostock Inclosure Award of 1815 declared Dams Lane to be “the public highway from Hulme Hall to Over Peover”.

The brook is now crossed by a wooden footbridge but years ago there was a ford, Near Old Mill Gate Farm is a rather startling notice “Public Highway” pointing across the fields to Dams Lane, a relic of a dispute as to the legal status of the Lane.

Fullers Gate

The farm house is on the boundary of Allostock and Goostrey and on the ancient salt trail and peddlers’ road from Dams Lane. The late Charles Bentley suggested that wool on its way to the Black Princes’ fulling mill at Macclesfield may have been subject to a charge when passing Fullers Gate Farm.

New Platt Lane

This road was named after the new “platts” or plots of land made available after deforestation.

Bakers Lane

The small piece of land at the junction with Middlewich Road may have been the site of a village green or even the site of a manorial bake house. There is a reference in a statement made by a local resident in 1688 to Sir Peter Leycester of Tabley, a local historian, that an ancient cross which stood at the road junction opposite Bradshaw House had been destroyed (this may have happened during the time of the Commonwealth).