CHAPTER I.

A BASIS FOR INVESTIGATION.

I do not begin with a conclusion, but no pioneer ever worked with a blank mind, and the framework for this enquiry is something as follows:

That early man, sighting his way across country from or to hill-points, laid down as guide-marks for his fellows, in that straight line which was decided with the edict “Let there be light,” a line of sight-marks.

These, mounds or tumuli, moats or moated mounds, unusual-looking unworked stones, and hill-notches.

That these marks, like the “high places” of the Old Testament, became gathering points for an expanding civilization. That at many of them are now churches, castles, and ancient homesteads.

That blended with the alinement system fixing such man-made sites, came alinements to sunrise or sunset, cross-country dials to give seasonal information.

That beacon-lights, associated with special seasons, were used in conjunction with an organised plan, of which much record remains in place-names, in folk-lore, in old customs, and even in children’s games.

The above framework, like the scaffolding of a huge building, was not there at the beginning of my enquiry, but has grown with accumulated evidence.

MOUNDS.
Mounds (tumuli) are dateable archæologically. If they aline on a straight track established by evidence beyond possibility of accidental coincidence, the track must be at least as old as the mound. A “commanding position” on a ridge or hill (so often noted) confirms their use {12} as sight marks, and their proved use for burials does not clash with a dual primary purpose as a sighting-mark. They are the one great means of dating tracks.

I have to adopt a view concerning the great mound of Cambridge Castle, which is at variance with most authorities. I see ample proof that it existed (perhaps as a mound of smaller size), on its present site in prehistoric times, long before any Normans came. It is obvious that the straight line of the Huntingdon Road (No. 2), was laid out by sighting on the mound, which was therefore there at least as early as the track. Those present-day authorities, who assume that this and other straight roads were engineered in the Roman period, are on the horns of a dilemma, for they also assume. that the mound, which they classify as a “Norman Motte” was not there when the Normans landed. No. 19 also shows the Chesterton Road to be alined on the mound for a distance. I devote a chapter in The Old Straight Track to the ample evidence that all over Britain the Castle mounds .now classified as “Norman Mottes” belong to an earlier period. In many cases there are traces of a mound having also existed at the knuckle-corner of the vallum of a camp or castle, and that tracks aline to this. Pleasant Hill is an instance of this.

MOATS.
While a few moats may be entirely mediæval, the majority, I feel sure, originate from a prehistoric moated enclosure, perhaps akin to an island in a small lake, or a moated flat mound.

CHURCHES.
These are a stumbling block to objectors, as the origin of the building is clearly later than prehistoric times. But the evidence that practically all ancient ones are built on “Pagan Sites” is overwhelming.

Mr. Walter Johnson, in his Byways in Archæology, devotes a long chapter to this, and I do the same in The Old Straight Track. Plentiful evidence in the Bible shows the continuity—chiefly on “high places”—of such sites from paganism to Christianity. In No. 13 alinement, five churches are precisely in line within sixteen miles; there is only one church in each parish, so it seems beyond a possibility of accidental coincidences, especially as there is evidence of a man-made alinement in the fact that it is precisely east and west.

MARK-STONES.
In my own western border-land, a few ancient stones are marked on the map, but for each one of these I find by field-survey four or five others. In the Cambridge maps I find none marked. I have not the slightest doubt that some are to be found if looked for, even in the towns and large {13} villages. They can often be found on a track followed up on foot, and Mr. W. A. Dutt (who wrote a pamphlet on the Mark-stones of East Anglia) reports instances of this.

CROSS-ROADS.
The crossing-point of two ancient tracks seems often to continue as a cross-road of present day, even when the rest of the old track has vanished. Where a cross-road comes into alinement it is corroboration, not counting so highly as say a mound, but if it has an ancient place-name, or is crossed by a second alinement, it counts as a good point. Road-junctions have a similar value, counting, say, as half-points.

HILL-NOTCHES.
These—formed by a track being cut deeply on a bank—are common in hilly districts, and may be found by frequent examination of the skyline. The notch can only be seen when standing in the right alinement. Crackhow Farm indicates one, somewhere near, or in view of, its site. “Nick,” “Scar,” and “Bwlch” (the Welsh form) are other names for hill-notches.

STRAIGHT ROADS.
These are exceedingly plentiful in this rather flat district, and probably most of them are comparatively modern. After all, the nearest way between two places is a straight line. The most unsafe way to look for ancient tracks is to extend present straight ones; the right way is to see whether a sufficient number of good mark-points (mounds, stones, &c.) aline. Then if a bit of straight road falls on the line, it is extra proof. But still, on this map, as other chapters will show, a good many straight bits of present road have good mark-points beyond their ends, and are therefore proved to be on ancient tracks.

CAMPS.
Continued map and field work on numerous camps (not in this district) has shown close relations between tracks and camps, the latter having clearly originated where the interspaces between crossing tracks occur on high ground. It is impracticable to do real work on camps without the 6-inch Ord. maps, and except for Cambridge Borough, I have consulted none for this district. So investigation remains to be done.

The straight archaic tracks usually touch the edges of camps they approach. This is fully illustrated in the Ley Hunter’s Manual.

The two Arbury Camps, the almost destroyed camp at Cambridge, one above Great Shelford, and Vandlebury Camp“Vandlebury Camp” is Wandlebury Ring, a circular earthwork 4 miles SE of Cambridge. The spelling with V (from an imagined connection with the Vandals) was still accepted by the Ordnance Survey in Watkins’s time, but is now disused., are thus outlined in my plans.

{14} Another example, not marked on the plans, can be found by a line through Boxworth Church, Knapwell Church, and Coldharbour Farm, as between the churches it falls on the vallum (earthen walls) of a small camp. Unrecorded camps will often be discovered by the alinements in this way.

Vandlebury Camp seems to have evolved (it is an exceptional case), from a stone circle, for in addition to one track edging it, I found, unexpectedly, two others going through its centre.

TRACKS OUT OF SIGHT.
All original archaic tracks are now out of sight, buried a foot or two below the surface. Darwin has demonstrated how the earthworms have seen to that, the rate of raising the earth surface being somewhere about an inch each century. So the old tracks have to be dug for to be seen. I find them from 18 inches to two feet below the surface, deeper in river-flood areas, and far less on open hills. At the Queen Stone in a Wye meadow, the Bronze Age surface was at least three feet below the present.

Even if a straight footpath is now on the old site it is an overlay, and the same with surviving bits of modern roads seen in my maps on the lines. Roman roads were so splendidly engineered that even if out of use they survive and can be traced, but more feeble tracks disappear quickly. These facts are the reasons why the surviving mark-points are the means of detection.

Writers on topography seem all to have fallen into the error of regarding those tracks now to be partially or faintly seen on the land as being the earliest organised ones, thus going back only hundreds, instead of thousands, of years.

Natural human needs led (at some period) to paths along high ridges, and the fact of pre-historic mounds being often grouped along the same positions has been wrongly interpreted as proving the antiquity of Ridgeways. But the mounds were not mark-points for these, but for older tracks crossing the hill. A present-day track naturally runs along the Malvern Hill ridge, and alongside it are a couple of tumuli. Standing on one of these I have seen in the Worcester plain below two separate lengths of converging road alining to the mound. These are on sites of tracks far earlier than the ridgeway.