“Out of what appeared a tangle, I got hold of the one right end of this string of faces and found to my amazement that it unwound in orderly fashion and complete logical sequence.” Thus writes Mr. Alfred Watkins. The substance of Mr. Watkins’s find is that long before the Romans came to this country there was a well-defined system of roadways and tracks along which the Britons carried out their trade and other intercourse. If such a statement is established and proved, it will go far to explain many things that are not understandable on previous data. The work deals with the various means by which “sighting” was carried out in the designing of roads, and the author says: “My deductions may be faulty. But the facts are physical ones, and anyone can test in their own district whether moats, mounds and churches do not line up in straight lines with a hill peak at one end and with bits of old tracks and antiquarian objects on the line.” If the reasoning be true, it not only reveals a systematic planning of prehistoric trackways, but throws a flood of light on the evolution of defensive camps, of the sites of castles and churches, and on the meaning of place-names.
Source info: Cuttings agency.
This seems to be a shorter version of cutting 16a.