XXIX.—Sketch showing débris at bottom of cattle-tracks on Willersey Hill, Worcestershire
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Perhaps nowhere in England are the cattle-ways so clearly visible as on the chalk downlands; but the evidence of the age long traffic of the herds by their accustomed routes is perhaps more clearly shown where their feet have worn down—not chalk, but a hard rock, over which they must have passed for an unknown period.
On the borders of Gloucestershire and Worcestershire stands Willersey Hill, on whose wind-swept top the trenches and embankments of a neolithic encampment can clearly be traced.
An almost unfrequented road leaves the London Road on Broadway Hill, and passes over Willersey Hill to Saintbury and the village of Willersey, which lies in the valley some two to three miles away from the encampment.
After leaving the encampment it may be noticed that the grass waste land on the northern side of the road is deeply furrowed, and that the furrows have a tendency to run parallel to the road, and all lead up to the encampment at the top of the hill, which is skirted by the road.
On this waste land a few inches of rich humus lie {105} on the top of the hard oolite formation below. The local stone for all building operations has been for centuries this oolite stone, and the homely Cotswold Tudor houses in all the villages testify to its enduring properties. In this waste land at the side of the road the parish of Willersey has opened up a stone quarry, and the face of the quarry cuts directly through these furrows.
Here in section we have a view of these furrows. Had they been a natural formation, then we should have seen the strata of the rock formation curved to follow the contour of the surface; but here, instead, we find that the furrows cut through the strata. These furrows are most certainly cattle-tracks, and lead to and from the encampment at the top of the hill to the grazing grounds below.
On a close inspection of the section of the cattle-tracks, we find that the herds have worn down the rock to a greater depth than is apparent in the undulating grass-land on the surface. The undulations on the surface may perhaps measure about six feet from the general level of the ground to the bottom of the grass-grown depressions, but, when we examined the section of the rock, we found that below the grass surface of the depressions an accumulation of loose stone had collected, and that the original depth of the depressions had once been perhaps four feet more. The depth therefore of these cattle-tracks must have been about ten feet, and this depth, it must be borne {106} in mind, has been worn out of the solid rock. Owing to their position on the top of the hill, the effect of water running along their channels must have been quite inconsiderable. We do not like to hazard a suggestion as to the time that would be required for the feet of the herds to wear down this hard oolite stone even by one inch, and one can only realise that, to measure the age-long traffic over these rocks by centuries, must be to underestimate their antiquity; the age must be measured by thousands of years.
On the busy pavements in the city of London, where an artificial stone has been used, the surface has only worn down an eighth of an inch in twenty-five years; at this rate it would take one hundred years to wear down the surface half an inch.
The oolite stone is very hard; but if we allow two inches in one hundred years as the result of the wearing effect of the horned hoofs, it would take six thousand years to trample out these cattle-ways on Willersey Hill.
Then for long centuries the slow process of gradual accumulation of broken stone must have been in progress—since the time when the trenches were used as cattle-tracks—and now the surface of the broken stone is covered with soil. We do not think that we are overestimating the antiquity of these trenches, and the encampments to which they lead, when we assume that they probably may be ten thousand years old.
An hereditary instinct of the herds themselves has {107} a curious bearing upon the subject. Even at the present time both cattle and sheep if left to follow their own devices will leave the rich and sheltered pastures of the valleys and wander off in the evening to the bleak and windy heights for the night.
This natural and indelible fear of the plains during the night goes far in support of our theory that the marshy
lowlands were in early neolithic times uninhabitable for either man or beast.
XXIX.—Sketch showing débris at bottom of cattle-tracks on Willersey Hill, Worcestershire