Some few weeks back a correspondent pointed out that the assumption frequently made that the first roadways in this country were the work of the Romans was far from accurate, and that excellent means of communication, considering the stage of progress, had been developed by very early inhabitants. An interesting contribution to the study of these early roadways has just been made by Mr. Alfred Watkins in the course of a paper read to the Woolhope Club at Hereford, though some of the points he raises carry the process of track-making into much more recent times. Naturally the author’s remarks refer more particularly to his own county. It is necessary first, he says, to clear the mind of present ideas of roads from town to town, or with enclosed hedges, also of any assumption that orderly road planning was introduced by the Romans. Presume a primitive people, with few or no enclosures, wanting a few necessaries, only to be had from a distance. The shortest way to such a distant point was a straight line, the human way of attaining a straight line is by sighting, and accordingly all these early trackways were straight, and laid out by a sighting method.
During a long period, the limits of which remain to be discovered, but apparently from the Neolithic (later flint) age on past the Roman occupation into a period of decay, all trackways were in straight lines marked out by experts on a sighting system. Such sighting lines were (in earlier examples), from natural peak to peak, such points being terminals. Such a sighting line (or ley) would be useless unless some further marking points on the lower ground between were made. Therefore secondary sighting points were made, easily to be seen by the ordinary user, standing at the preceding sighting point, all being planned on one straight line. These secondary and artificial sighting points still remain in many cases, either as originally made, or modified to other uses, and a large number are marked on maps. They were constructed either of earth, water or stone, trees being also planted on the line. Between the sighting points the trackway ran straight, except in cases of physical impossibility, but did not of necessity go as far as the primary hilltops. Earth sighting points were chiefly on higher ground, and now bear the name of tump, tumulus, mound, twt, castle, bury, batch, bage, cairn, garn, tomen, knowl, knap, moat and camp. Another style of earth sighting point was in the form of a notch or cutting in a bank or mountain ridge which had to be crossed by the sighting line. Water sighting points seem to have evolved from the excavations made for the tumps or moats. Almost all are on low ground, to form a point or ring of reflection from higher ground, and are now known as moats and ponds. Stone sighting or marking points were natural (not dressed) blocks, sometimes long and upright. Sighting lines were (in earliest examples) up to 50 or 60 miles in length, later on rather shorter, down to a few miles. Sighting points were used for commerce and for assemblies of the people.
When troublesome times came and stronger defences were wanted, the groups of two or three sighting tumps which came near together (especially on the top of a hill) had defensive earthworks added to make a fortified enclosed camp. These trackways of successive ages grew so thick on the ground as to vie in number with present-day roads and byways. In time homesteads clustered round the sighting points, especially the ponds. The moats and tumps were often adopted in after ages as sites for the defensive houses or castles of wealthy owners.
Mr. Watkins’s remarks were the outcome of personal investigation, and his paper was illustrated by local examples. The sighting line, he pointed out, was called the ley or lay. Numbers of farms and places on sighting lines bear this first name, viz., the Ley Farms, Weobley, Grafton, Stoke Edith, and many other places, Wyaston Leys, Monmouth, Tumpey Ley and Red Lay, near Letton, and another in Cusop parish. There were cleverly planned high level mountain tracks which, although on an average sighting line, could not (being on the side of a mountain ridge) keep straight, but took a serpentine course, in round the cwms, and out round the headlands. But viewed edgeways they are a straight line as keeping a uniform level or slope. Such are found high on the Malvern ridge, the road (on three leys) through Oldcastle to Blaen Olchon, the lovely Bicknor Walks near Symonds Yat, the Precipice Walk near Dolgelly.
Where a mountain ridge stood in the path of a ley, the surveyor, instead of building a tump on the ridge as a sighting point, often cut a trench at a right angle and in the path of the ley. This showed as a notch against the sky and made a most efficient sighting point from below. The sighting cuttings were also used in passing over banks in lower ground. Mr. Codrington, in his book on Roman roads, describes the method used by Roman engineers “well known to surveyors for laying out a straight line between extreme points not visible from each other, from two or more intermediate points from which the extreme points are visible. By shifting the intermediate points alternately all are brought to lie in a straight line.” This method was evidently used for all the leys. I have suggested how thesei.e. water sighting points (see EBT p. 15) might have developed from the tump, and shown where pond and tump were used together. Moats are a similar arrangement on a larger scale. The trackways go straight for the island part of the moat. I find practically all the small horse or cattle ponds in field or homestead which are marked on a 6in. ordnance map have leys running through them, and examination in dry seasons shows signs of the road passing through them. “And when we cleaned the pond out we found it cobbled at the bottom” is a frequent report made by a farmer.
When there is a large central island on a moat I surmise early dwelling houses—a subject for spade research. There evidently came a wish for roads not running through the water, and a pair of ponds or lakes with a causeway between is frequently found on the map, and is the sure indication of an ancient trackway. Probably the square moats are later than the circular ones. The causeway to the centre of the moat evidently suggested their use (many ages after they were made) as a defensive ring of the house of a rich owner. I think that the word lake, now used for large sheets of water, was originally applied to small reflecting sighting ponds as well.
Mark stones were used to mark the way. They were of all sizes, from the Whetstone on Hargest Ridge to a small stone not much larger than a football. Some were long stones or menhirs, but few remain upright in this district. In studying wayside crosses, I was puzzled to find several with ancient rough unworked stones as a base. I am now certain that these bases are the original stones marking a ley. The Pedlar’s Cross, near Pen-y-lan Farm above Llanigon, has been chipped into a rude suggestion of a cross without taking down, and a flat mark stone on which Archbishop Baldwin is said (by tradition) to have preached when on his tour with Giraldus in 1188, has had a cross inscribed on it. It stands close to St. Ishaw’s Well at Partricio. There is a striking marking stone on the Rhiw Wen route in the Black Mountains. The Dial Carreg in the same district is an upright sighting stone.
Where a natural hill came under a ley it was often made a sighting point by the planting of a single tree, hence the numerous “one-tree” hills. Places called “The Grove” seem to be on a ley, so a small group of trees was also used to mark a sighting point. Existing trees are probably successors of original ones. I see evidence that at one time such trees were called the “stock.” The site of the wayside cross at Winforton is known as the Stocks, and a marking tump in the lane for Bowley Town (or Court) has an ash on it, and is called by the same name, as are farms elsewhere. The highest point (a hill near the Three Elms on the “Roman” road from Kenchester to Lugg Bridge) is marked on the map as Bobblestock Rill. I have known it as Bubblestock, but have no doubt it was Baublestock, the tree or stock where men who peddled necklaces and other baubles met the buyers. I think that the pole (Layster’s Pole, Yarpole, Lyepole, etc.) was a form of sighting point, lingering on to recent times. Every considerable avenue of trees (as in parks of country seats) which I have tested has a ley down its centre. Monnington Walks has Brobury Scar (along which I found an ancient glade) as its nearest sighting point. A long straight strip of wooded enclosure, as from Franchisestone to Litley, and towards Breinton Church, is always on a ley. The word “elm” occurs repeatedly in place names on leys, and the same with the word “park,” which had not then the same exact meaning as now.
I find that every camp seems to have several leys over it, and that these usually come over the earthworks, not the camp centre, as with moats. Also that camps almost always show signs of part of their earthworks being tumps. At Sutton Walls are four unmistakable tumps, in one of which an interment was found, and in another are the bases of two masonry columns of Roman construction, the use of which seemed a mystery. I feel certain they were columns built by Roman surveyors for exact sighting. The camp plans in past transactionsPresumably means Transactions of the Woolhope Club show signs of tumps in most camps. It is impossible to assume that leys (sighted between two mountains) should in the scores of instances exactly fall upon the earthworks of camps previously built on sites selected solely for defence. The leys came first, and the present camp was then merely the site of two or more tumps. There came a period of organised raids and war, and where a group of tumps gave the first elements of defensive works they were joined by earthworks into a complete enclosure for defence. Here again sighting settled the sites of camps. Many groups of tumps, never developed into camps, but sufficiently near to be so, are to be found on the map. I found Caplar Camp to have so many leys over it as to seem the Clapham Junction of ancient trackways in that district.
Churches, if ancient, seem to be invariably on (not merely alongside) a ley, and in many cases are at the crossing of two leys, thus appropriating the sighting point to a new use. A ley often passes through a tump adjacent to the church, and a cross ley through both church and tump. In other cases a mark stone site became the churchyard cross, and a cross ley comes through both church and cross. In many cases one of the leys went through the tower only, and it is possible that tower and steeple were built to be used as sighting points, although on the other hand a large church did in fact block the road. The sighting system may have been in decay or the tracks abandoned when the churches were first built on the sighting points. I do not think it probable that leys were made to provide sites for churches. In almost every old town or village will be found examples of a church built on and blocking an ancient road, although new roads are often made on one or both sides. At Warwick a chapel is over a town gateway, and in Exeter an ancient lane is also allowed to continue as a tunnel under the altar of a small church, two curious instances of the right of way being continued, and the desire of the clergy to use a site also attained. Kenderchurch is a striking instance of a church perched on the apex of a sighting mound, and in other districts I can think of Bren Tor (Dartmoor), Harrow, Churchdown (Gloucester), and the two St. Michael’s Mounts, these last obviously terminals of leys, as is St. Tecla’s Chapel out in the chancelRead ‘channel’ (the chapel is on an island in the Bristol Channel) below Chepstow, the termination of the beach ley which gives its name to Beachley Village. In London St. Paul’s blocks the Watling Street and Ludgate Hill leys, and St. Clement Danes, St. Mary-le-Strand, and St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields are all on another ley with subsidiary roads evolved on each side of the churches.
Every castle in this district has a ley passing over it, and originated in a sighting tump, upon which the keep was afterwards built when some lord selected this as a desirable site or a defensive home. If a large tump, there were usually some excavations which were developed and extended into real defensive works. The word “castle” is applied to many tumps, where no building has ever existed, and to farms where there are signs of a tump, but merely a homestead round it. But where the word “castle” is part of a genuine place name, there was a sighting mound.
The paper, of distinct interest throughout, is printed in full in the “Hereford Times,” from which our digest is taken.
Source info: Cuttings agency.
This is not so much a review as a digest of Early British Trackways. Almost all the text of the article can be found in the book.