“early british trackways.” by alfred watkins. (watkins meter company, hereford.) 4s. 6d.
All who are interested in the traces of any history which can be picked up in the landscapes of the West Midlands, will be grateful to Mr. Alfred Watkins, of Hereford, for the valuable clues he gives in this book. He rightly claims that “it provides a new objective for field ramblers and Scout-masters.” A line on the map cutting through an old mound, a camp and the peak of a hill near the Welsh border gave him his first idea, and tracing these and many similar lines over the county of Hereford, he was soon hot on the scent of pre-Roman tracks or “leys.”
Presume a primitive people, with few or no enclosures, wanting a few necessities (as salt, flint flakes, and, later on, metals) only to be had from a distance. The shortest way to such a distant point was a straight line, the human way of obtaining a straight line is by sighting, and accordingly all these early trackways were straight, and laid out in much the same way that a marksman gets the back and far sights of his rifle in line with the target.
Once having got this hint of the sighting idea, Mr. Watkins soon arrived at a working theory of the place in the ley occupied by tumps, cairns, moats, old ponds, gaps in ridges, old stones and trees; and one can readily appreciate how fascinating the following of an old trackway thus becomes.
The relation of the older ley to Roman roads has yet to be investigated. Its influence on place-names Mr. Watkins touches upon, although his conclusions on that head may be disputed by some philologists.
One cannot praise too highly the photographs with which his book is illustrated. Work such as he has done brings its own reward. Many field ramblers and topographers in other countries will, we are sure, find keen pleasure in tracing other leys, and building up a new knowledge of road-beginnings in pre-historic times on the framework Mr. Watkins has set up.
Source info: MS note by AW “Birmingham Gazette Mar 24 1922”.