File:Cobblers Pits - The ancient track looking towards the disused canal - geograph.org.uk - 1310396.jpg

English: Cobblers Pits – The ancient track looking towards the disused canal From the Information Board

"Before you is a mystery. Guarded by an ageing hedge weighed heavy with old man's beard, and shrouded by a dark evergreen canopy of red-barked pillars of yew, lies a series of long abandoned pits. This old sunken lane is now cut off by the Wendover Arm, but cut off from where? One suggestion is that the lane was part of a trade route linking the Upper and Lower Icknield Ways, but perhaps it was merely a local track to carry marl from the pits down to the canal." The above explanation from the information board fails to mention two rather obvious facts. The first is that when the local parishes were laid out perhaps a thousand years or more ago, each was a long narrow strip with the village on the fertile soil in the Vale of Aylesbury and common land on the less fertile hills of the Chilterns. In each case there would have been a track between the village and the common lane. For instance there is "The Holloway" leading south from Drayton Beauchamp SP9012 towards Drayton Manor SP9010 while Buckland Common SP9206 is a long way from Buckland SP8912. The track through Cobblers Pits would almost certainly have been the track between Aston Clinton and Aston Hill Farm SP8910, which still continues as a modern road south of the Upper Icknield Way.

The second is that if the track was later used to transport material from the quarries at Cobblers Pits it could also have been used to carry the stone from the near Aston Clinton Rag Pits SP8810 which lie alongside the line of the old track. However there is no built up edge to the south bank of the canal to suggest that there was ever a wharf accessed from the south, which suggests to me that the quarries are older than the canal.