By topic: 148
Notes and Queries, 18 November 1922, ser. 12, 11, 415
In book: 78b
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Place names and Roman roads (AW)

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Place Names and Roman Roads (12 S. xi. 330).—I found (in Herefordshire) the site of an ancient pottery which made crude red ware to line up in straight lines in several directions, with “red” place names, the presumed ancient tracks on these lines being confirmed by other evidence. For example, one such line passed through Redborough, the pottery site (Whitney Wood), the Red Lay (a cottage); it then lay for two miles on a straight, reputed “Roman” road, through a Red House, and over the Wye at an obviously ancient ford. But I do not know that all the word elements mentioned by the querist (Rea, Re, etc.) are “red” names. The Red Dial mentioned is interesting. The “Dial Stone” on a ridge of the Black Mountains is an upright stone marking a trackway, and I find elsewhere “Dial Post,” “Dial Hill,” and “St. Dial’s Farm, all I think indicating points on trackways.
Alfred Watkins.

 

Source info: MS note by AW “N & Q Nov 18”; checked in library.