In “Everyday Life in the New Stone, Bronze and Early Iron Ages,” the second of the “Everyday Life” series, written and illustrated by Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell, a portion of the last chapter on pre-historic man in Britain is devoted to some comments on a theory on ancient trackways, propounded by Mr. Alfred Watkins, of Hereford. The authors, whose opinions must carry weight as authorities, say:—
“Just as we were finishing this book we came across ‘Early British Trackways,’ by Mr. Alfred Watkins, and we recommend this to our readers as containing an idea of the greatest interest. The book came about because Mr. Watkins’s attention was attracted by a straight line on a map which appeared to pass through a certain class of objects. On exploration it was found that this line consisted in parts of old trackways which at one time had linked up places on the line. Having got the idea Mr. Watkins proceeded to test it wherever possible. Taking the one-inch scale ordnance he selects barrows or tumuli, castle mounds or camps, standing stones and menhirs, churches and wayside crosses, and sticking a pin in the map on one the game is to see how many places can be found on a line. When there are not less than four the actual country is surveyed, when, more often than not, a piece of modern road may, farther along, become a grass track and then be lost in ploughed land, to re-appear beyond as a footpath. This at once fired us, and out came our maps. We found that from where the Ridgeway and Fairmile descend the Berkshire Downs, and come down to the Thames by the ferry at South Stoke, if a straight line is drawn on the map, from the trigonometrical station of the Ordnance Survey on White Hill 293 above the Ferry, to the camp at Ravensburgh Castle, in the parish of Hexton in North Herts, about 40 miles away, it picks up many interesting points.
“There is another trigonometrical station on Harcourt Hill 610, then Whiteleaf Cross cut in the chalk near Monks RizboroughRisborough (as in OST) and the mound on Pulpit Hill. From Beacon Hill above Aston Clinton you look down on the moat at Pilstone as a reflection point at a lower level, and to the north-east can see Icknield way coming over the shoulder of Beacon Hill at Ivinghoe. Then again the Five Knolls tumuli by Dunstable point the way to Ravensburgh Castle, and Icknield Way meanders along the escarpment of the Chilterns sometimes on the line, and sometimes a little below it.
“It can hardly be coincidence, which, though its arm be long, could scarcely stretch for 40 miles and put so many points on the same straight line. With some experience of land surveying, we think we should find it a very difficult matter to lay out such a line, up hill and down dale, over 40 miles of country of so diverse a character as the Chilterns; yet this is what these old road surveyors seem to have done. If this was the case, then we have to accept the fact that long before the Romans there were men laying out roads by very much the same methods as the Royal Engineer surveyors of the Ordnance Survey; so much was this the case that when we came to make our own survey we accepted the view-points of pre-historic man as being suitable for trigonometrical stations.
“It is just one more illustration which goes to prove that when we think of pre-historic men as just so many roving barbarians we are hopelessly out of touch with truth.”
Source info: MS note by AW “Hereford Times Wed. April 2nd 1924”.
Watkins used part of this passage from the Quennells’ book in The Old Straight Track, pages 193–194. The Quennells cut out the reference to Watkins’s theory in later editions.