DANE (The), a river of Cheshire. It rises in Macclesfield forest, near the Three-Shire-Mere; runs 4 miles southward, to the boundary with Stafford; then goes 3½ miles westward along that boundary; then proceeds 13 miles westward, past Congleton and Somerford, to Middlewich; then runs 5½ miles north-westward to the Weaver at Northwich. The North Stafford railway crosses it on a twenty-arched viaduct, 1, 254 feet long and 106 high.

(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))