The main industry, other than farming, was shoe and clog making. Sailors of the Royal Navy wore shoes or slippers from Ancroft. The naval specification required footwear with no metal parts - an obvious precaution to avoid sparks in a wooden ship loaded with gunpowder and tarred rope! Boots were also made for the British army - the Duke of Marlborough's troops marched to victory shod in Ancroft boots. A village tradition claims that each of the one hundred trees on the southern skyline represents a cobbler. Several of the local settlements originated around coal mines, an industry which is being redeveloped in today's open cast sites. The Devil's Causeway passes the village less than to the east. The causeway is a Roman road which starts at Port Gate on Hadrian's Wall, north of Corbridge, and extends northwards across Northumberland to the mouth of the River Tweed at Berwick-upon-Tweed.