It is regarded as the first-ever published rock climbing guidebook for the Peak District National Park.
Herford went on to climb the famous Central Buttress route on Sca Fell and was killed at Ypres in 1916, shortly after the book's publication.
Some of the major climbing venues in the Peak District were omitted, such as Stanage Edge and Wharncliff Crag, due to access restrictions at the time.
If this be the boulder I have in my mind, it is also known as the Buckstone and Robin Hood's Stone and, in addition to presenting several attractive little problems, possesses a peculiar historic interest all its own.
This extended the simple 4-grade system published in Owen Glynne Jones 1900 book Rock Climbing in the English Lake District.
It also disseminated information, publicized recent new ascents, and allowed the next generation of climbers to develop newer and harder routes.
For example, it was in the hands of Piggot, Wood, and Wilding in 1920 when they made the first ascents of Lean Man's Climb, Sand Buttress, and Lone Tree Gully at Black Rocks.
This in turn started the trend for increasingly regular regional climbing guides, both in the Peak District and elsewhere in the UK.
This led, after the Second World War, to the first series of guidebooks to cover all the gritstone crags in the Peak; a publication pattern that continues to the present day.
[19] These and other guidebooks used the format, grading system, and approach of Laycock's original Peak guide, but with a more succinct style.
Like the original book, these later guides acted as a 'snapshot' of their generation, and a basis for the next advances in rock climbing standards in the Peak District.