Beautifully illustrated, a book bearing the above as a title has been written by Mr. Alfred Watson, Fellow and Progress Medallist of the Royal Photographic Society (publishers: Watkins Meter Co., Hereford), with the object of showing that planned trackways existed in Great Britain before the Roman occupation. The West is especially interested in this subject.
To those interested in our roads, and with the advance of the motor car and the motor cycle, the number is continually multiplying, the subject of ancient British trackways should he a fascinating study. The general conception of the origin of our system of highways is that the Romans were responsible for it. We read and talk of the great Roman roads as though they were the first attempts in this country at road planning and construction, but Mr. Watson adduces evidence and a very considerable measure of proof that this was not so but that there were systematically planned trackways long before the Roman occupation. Moreover, it is claimed that his discoveries go far beyond this because they throw a flood of light on the evolution of defensive camps, on the sites of castles and churches, and on the meaning of place names.
Mr. Watson’s investigations were made in Herefordshire, and, while I do not propose to give the local details, names, &c., I will give his general line of argument on the main principles of his find, together with confirmation he quotes for Devon and Cornwall.
He points out that in regard to early trackways the antiquaries have alternated between a musty appreciation of hill-tracks and ridgeways and on implied depreciation of all trackmakers before the Romans came. In perhaps one moat in five they found a dwelling and agreed finely on the defensive importance of a ring of water; but as to the other four with no dwelling and in unexplained positions, they closed their eyes. Mr. Watson supplies the explanation, and, though he admits his deductions may be faulty, he claims that the facts are physical ones, and that anyone can test in their own district, whether moats, mounds, and churches do not stand in straight lines with a hill peak at one end and with bits of old tracks and antiquarian objects on the line.
Assuming the existence of a primitive people with few or no enclosures wanting a few necessities (as salt, flint flakes, and, later on, metals), only to be had for 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 in much the same way as a marksman gets the back and foresights of his rifle in line with the target. Thus we find that during a long period—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 the earlier examples) for natural mountain peak to mountain peak, usually not less than 1,000 feet. Secondary sighting points were planned and made on one straight line, being easily seen by the user standing at the preceding sighting point.
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, being the basis of Mr. Watson’s discovery. They were constructed either of earth, water, or stone, trees being also planted on the line. Sacred wells were sometimes terminals in the line, and sometimes included as secondary points. Between the sighting points the trackway ran straight except in cases of physical impossibility.
The sighting line was called the ley, or lay, and each ley or track was separate and distinct from other leys. Many leys acquired in after ages individual names for the use they were put to, and such names were transferred to the sighting points. Mr. Watson does not question that mounds were often used as burial grounds, and, perhaps, even built with that end in view, but the straight leys prove their primary purpose to be sighting tumps. Where a mountain ridge stood in the path of a ley, the surveyor, instead of building a tump as a sighting point, often cut a trench at the right angle and in the path of the ley. This shows as a notch against the sky, and makes a most efficient sighting point from below.
Water sighting points which might have developed from the tump and moats, are a similar arrangement on a larger scale. The trackways go straight for the island part of a moat. Practically all the small horse or cattle ponds in field or homestead, which are marked on a six-inch Ordnance map, have leys running through them, and examinations in dry seasons show signs of roads passing through them. “And when we cleaned the pond out we found it cobbled in the bottom” is a frequent report made by a farmer.
Mark stones were used to mark the way. They were all sizes—some long stones or menhirs. Ancient rough unworked stone bases of wayside crosses are probably the original stones marking a ley. Mark stones may be on one side of the track, but there also appear to have been sighting stones exactly on the ley so constructed as to indicate its direction. Sighting lines taken over successive pairs of stones in the Hereford district confirm this. These proved instances of sighting stones, together with the cases of stone rows on Dartmoor and sighting columns on Sutton Walls give the clue to the hitherto unknown purpose of many important ancient stone monuments.
Practically all the named historic trees stand on leys. 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. Existing trees are probably successors of the original ones.
Every camp seems to have several leys over it. It is impossible to assume that leys (sighted between two mountains) should in 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.
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 both 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.
It is not easy to realize that many British roads were as ancient to the Roman invaders as the Roman remains are to us. Mr. Watson’s general impressions from observed facts are that the Roman surveyors used the sighting system, that they utilized the old trackways, imposing greater width, and their far superior road surface and foundations; also that working during the degeneration of the ley system they did not appreciate the long distance primary points, but working on short distance hills and points, their roads are not so consistent and individual.
Source info: MS note by AW “Western Weekly News Aug 12 1922”.
In this review, Watkins is called “Watson” throughout.