Alfred Watkins, Archaic Tracks Round Cambridge

Simpkin Marshall, London, 1932

This is Alfred Watkins’s last book, published when he was 77. It was the result of a few days’ visit to his son Allen in Cambridge, and was written in two months. Although Allen Watkins writes that the author “might have lived in the district all his life”, Alfred Watkins admits that this book, unlike his earlier ley books, is based more on mapwork than on local knowledge.

In this book Watkins drops the word “ley”, which he had coined eleven years before, and uses instead “track” or “alinement”.

The digitized version contains the following Web pages:

TEXT
Prelims  (Contents, Introduction, etc.)
Chapter I  A Basis for Investigation
Chapter II  Accidental Coincidence
Chapter III  Cambridge Borough Map
Chapter IV  Cambridge District Map
Chapter V  Pre-Historic Origin of Great Roads
Chapter VI  Seasonal Alinements
Chapter VII  Cardinal-Point Alinements
Chapter VIII  Place-Names
Chapter IX  Confirmation and More Tracks
Chapter X  Notes
Appendix A  Table of Azimuths for Cambridge
Appendix B  Azimuths of Alinements on Maps
Index
Books by Alfred Watkins
IMAGES
Front cover
Title page
Plan I  Cambridge Borough Map
Plan II  Cambridge District Map (folding)
Plan III  Origin of Ermine, Akeman and Other Streets
Plan IV  Origin of Icknield Way
Plan V  Grid of Cardinal-Point Alinements
Fig. VI  Rubbing of Cup-Hollows, Llanerch Farm, Radnor
Plan VII  Cardinal-Point Alinements, Radnor Forest
Fig. VIII  Cup-marked stone, Llanerch Farm
Plan IX  Two Zig-zags on a Four-Church Alinement, Cambridge
Tail-Piece  The “Long Man of Wilmington,” a Pre-Historic Surveyor
EXTRA
Foreword by Paul Screeton (© 1980)
Review in The Times Literary Supplement
Extract from Alfred Watkins of Hereford by Allen Watkins
Charles Graves on alinements of sites in Ireland