My attention has been called to a striking bit of evidence which supports the new theory propounded by one of our leading Hereford antiquaries, Mr. Alfred Watkins, on Ancient Trackways.
In the face of what I should regard personally as very discouraging apathy on the part of people usually interested in such matters, Mr. Watkins has courageously stuck to his guns, and it looks as if he is going to be justified in the long run.
I find such authorities as Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell, authors of “Everyday Life in the New Stone, Bronze and Early Iron Ages,” acknowledging Mr. Watkins’s theory as containing an idea of the greatest interest. They have put it to a practical test, not in this part of the country where the idea originated on data available to the anyone capable of discerning it, but in Berkshire and roundabout.
What they say must be very gratifying to Mr. Watkins. His book “Early British Trackways’ was, I may tell you, inspired by the discovery that a straight line on a map appeared to pass through a certain class of objects. Exploring in Herefordshire he found that this line consisted in parts of old trackways which at one time had linked up places on the line.
Taking the one-inch scale Ordnance map he selects barrows or tumuli, castle mounds or camps, standing stones and menhirs, churches and wayside crosses—he is a great authority on wayside crosses—and sticking a pin in the map, the game is to see how many places can he found on a line.
He has discovered quite a number on “lines” in Herefordshire. And now the Quennells, by putting his theory to the test in another part of England, have satisfied themselves that there is “something in it.” On a “line” of 40 miles they picked up many interesting points.
In a phrase that seems to have a curious disregard for syntax, they say: “It can hardly be coincidence, which, though its arm be long, could scarcely stretch for 40 miles and put so many points on the same straight line.” And they point out that it is just one more illustration which goes to prove that when we think of pre-historic men as just so many roving barbarians we are hopelessly out of touch with truth.
We shall probably now find many investigators taking up the hunt in the wake of Mr. Watkins. Even so it will not be the first time that in the great quest for knowledge he has led the way. Up till now I rather think Mr. Watkins has been a little bit misunderstood. Many people have regarded his enthusiasm as a sort of dogmatism. This is doing him an injustice.
As I understand it his attitude is simply this: “I propound a theory, and place before you such evidence as I can find, for you to form your own conclusions upon. I not dogmatise.”
Source info: MS note by AW “Hereford Times Wed. April 2nd 1924”.