Early British Trackways, Moats, Mounds, Camps, and Sites. A Lecture given to the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, at Hereford, September 1921. By Alfred Watkins. Pp. 41 + 20 plates. (Hereford: The Watkins Meter Co; London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., Ltd., 1922.) 4s. 6d. net.
In this little book the author attempts to show that during a long period, going back at least to neolithic times, all trackways were in straight lines marked out by experts on a sighting system. Such sighting lines went from mountain peak to mountain peak with secondary sighting points on the lower ground. It is fairly obvious that long distance roads in primitive times would tend to lie in a more or less straight line between prominent peaks. This scarcely needs verification, and Mr. Watkins’ case must rest mainly on his intermediate points. These he finds in mounds, moats, tumps, churches (occupying the site of an earlier mark), stones, trees, and camps, holy wells, and the like. Place-names are also called in to support his argument. Without entering into a detailed examination of his evidence, which the reader may do with the aid of an ordnance map, it may be said generally that in some cases the so-called sighting marks were the objective of the road as in the case of a holy well or a ford, and that others, such as a burial mound or an encampment, owed their position to the previous existence of a road.
Source info: MS note by AW “Nature August 1922”; checked in library.