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
Each ley or track was as separate and distinct from other leys as each
animal or tree is an organism distinct from other animals or trees.
As they crossed each other, no doubt users often transferred from one
to the other at the crossing, and struck out in an altered direction,
hence the place name element “turn.” But the way thus travelled was a
route, not a road. It is an absurdity to speak of a sighted road having
branches, or bending. Each individual track was “a long lane that has
no turning.”
Previous writers, treating, say, of Roman or of mediæval roads, not
knowing of the existence of the ley, assume that they are speaking of
original primary structures, when they are only describing a route
evolved from a number of the leys I describe, retaining the sighted
structure in the case of Roman roads, but losing most of it by mediæval
times.
Many leys acquired in after ages individual names from the use they
were put to, and such names were transferred to the sighting points.
I find in several cases a group of leys with sighting points passing
quite close to, and taking no notice of, quite a distinct group of leys
with other sighting points, the two sets being either of two different
periods, or part of separate systems made by different sets of ley-men
living in different districts.
A most surprising fact is the enormous number of leys.
MOUNDS.
The mounds whose many names I have mentioned are artificial. I do not
question the fact that they were often used as burial mounds, and
perhaps even built with that end in view; but the straight leys on
which I find practically all in this district line up (in connection
with other sighting points) prove their primary purpose to be sighting
tumps. Arthur’s Stone, a dolmen, which was probably the core of a
burial tump, is on two sighting lines.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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