A YEAR of back-breaking work by parish councillors has seen a 400-year-old path in Gunthwaite restored.

Gunthwaite and Ingbirch-worth Parish Council members David Edmondson and Keith Batley led the way along with the help of colleagues George Hallos, chairman Charles Coupe and Tony Whitbread.

The five-strong team has spent the last 12 months restoring the surviving stretch of an old packhorse trail built hundreds of years ago from large stone slabs.

It is just over a third-of-a-mile long, sits to the east of Gunthwaite village and is near a grand 16th-century timber-framed manorial barn.

Coun Edmondson said: “It goes back to at least the 16th and 17th centuries and went all the way from Upper Denby via Cat Hill and on to Penistone.

“The causeway had deteriorated badly over recent decades and the project has been going on over the last year to try to restore it to its former glory.”

The councillors weren’t alone in their huge task as Barnsley Council brought in the Sheffield branch of the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers to relay the long downhill length of the pathway and improve drainage.

It was then up to Coun Edmondson and his colleagues to do the rest of the clearance work of the remaining length, much of which was overgrown and the stone slabs buried.