An attempt was made to recover identifiable spider sub-fossils from peat cores taken from a post-glacial basin mire in Cheshire, north-west England. Although the features normally required to identify specimens to species level in taxonomic keys were rarely preserved, carapace morphology and cheliceral dentition allowed unequivocal identification to species level in many cases. Current lack of knowledge of the autecology of wetland spiders prevents any conclusion regarding the paleoecological conditions, but the technique could reveal insights into the post-glacial development of the spider faunal assemblage of mires.