This area of secondary woodland overlies the partially legible landscape traces of surveyed enclosure boundaries which probably date from the Parliamentary Award for Upper Hallam, dated by English (1985, 62) to 1805. The first stage of the regeneration is shown on 1891 map data where the area is shown as 'Rough Ground'. The origin of the moorland landscape is uncertain though this area is likely to be moorland by the Roman period (see Bevan 2003 for discussion of environmental evidence).