Early British trackways, moats, mounds, camps, and sites — John Shaqi
Early British trackways, moats, mounds, camps, and sitesWatkins, Alfred
History
Early British trackways, moats, mounds, camps, and sites
Watkins, Alfred
Great Britain -- Antiquities; Leys -- Great Britain; Megalithic monuments -- Great Britain; Mounds -- Great Britain
I see evidence that at one time such trees were called the “stock.” The
site of the wayside cross at Winforton is known as the Stocks, and a
marking tump in the lane for Bowley Town (or Court) has an ash on it,
and is called by the same name, as are farms at Wellington, Almeley
Woonton, etc. The highest point (a hill near the Three Elms on the
“Roman” road from Kenchester to Lugg Bridge) is marked on the map as
Bobblestock Hill. I have known it as Bubblestock, but have no doubt
it was Baublestock, the tree or stock (we still buy apple stocks in
the market) where men who peddled necklaces and other baubles met the
buyers. To-day, if you ask in a shop whether they keep such goods, you
will, perhaps, be told that they have a good stock of them.
I think that the pole (Layster’s Pole, Yarpole, Lyepole, etc.) was a
form of sighting point, lingering on to recent times as the May pole.
Every considerable avenue of trees (as in parks of country seats) which
I have tested has a ley down its centre.
Monnington Walks, a Scotch Fir avenue a mile long (Plate XIII.), is
sighted through Monnington Church and the Scar Rock, Brobury, which
last can be seen central in the picture. I found the ancient track
still on the ley at the Scar, and alongside appeared to be an enclosed
camp with defences of a mild type, such as seem to be alongside many
other sighting points, as Longtown and Bridge Sollars Churches. Other
avenues on leys are at Trewyn (two), where the house, central with
the Scotch Fir avenue, has been proved to be on a burial mound, at
Llanvihangel Court, where tradition also asserts the house (central
again) to be on a burial mound; at Oakley Park, Ludlow (The Duchess
Walk); and at Longworth. A feature in most of these avenues is that,
as far as present roads or tracks go, they “lead to nowhere,” and the
discovery of the ley solves this puzzle. A striking instance can be
seen from the Castle Mound at New Radnor, from which Harpton Court and
Old Radnor Church are in line, and the eye looks up the centre of an
avenue of trees climbing to the church. That beautiful avenue (half its
beauty gone since two recent gales) with the ancient name Green Crise,
which lines a public road out of Hereford, is on a ley which comes down
the County College Road, over Putson Ford, and passes through Aconbury
Church.
One sure sign of a ley is a long straight strip of wood marked on the
map, as from Franchise-stone to Litley, and towards Breinton Church.
The word “park” had a meaning different to its present usage, but was
probably connected with woodland, and certainly with leys, which pass
through each of the innumerable Park Woods and Park Farms.
The Scotch Fir or Pine is the tree which seems most characteristic of
a ley, for a group of them are almost always (I notice) signs of a
sighting point, as at Constable’s Firs, Hampstead Heath.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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