Ley Lines

Ley Lines

 

Forty years ago I half read and skimmed Alfred Watkins’ The Old Straight Track which had been pressed on me by someone who thought I would be interested in it. The book suggested that Neolithic man navigated by walking straight lines along features that could be seen. The features included ancient monuments, standing stones, ridge-tops, pools, wells and streams. These ancient tracks or ways Watkins called ‘ley lines’. Some years later whilst reading W.G. Hoskins’ The Making of the English Landscape I had a vague recollection of Watkins ideas, in particular his ‘salt ways’, routes that peddlers of salt would travel. The ‘salt ways’ seemed even more interesting when I started reading about drovers and drovers ‘roads’.

There were several good reasons why, in 1974, I dismissed the book as being flakey. In the late 60’s early 70’s UFO’s, the lost world of Atlantis, astral projection, and other fantastical topics were popular. Abacus, who re printed The Old Straight Track, also printed a vast range of pseudo academic books based on these subjects which sold in large numbers. ‘Ley lines’, because of  the writer John Michell undertook a mystical transformation and ended up being cited by those whole believed in ‘out of body’ experiences or astral projection, as  the lines along which energy traveled. This case was strengthened by the belief that ‘ley lines’ were what guided those dowsing. Many of the hippies of Cheltenham (where I lived at the time) believed that Cleve Hill was where there was a ‘significant’ convergence of ‘ley lines’.

As the years went by and I did more and more walking, particularly in mountains, I started to ponder on how Neolithic man had moved about and why. I began to wish that I had read Watkins’ book more thoroughly and understood the theory of ‘ley lines’ properly. I just had a feeling that there was something to ‘ley lines’. I once asked a geologist how the Romans knew where to mine for coal, lead, silver and gold, did they have geologists who knew what to look for? He thought not, they probably just stole existing working mines. This made me wonder whether they also stole existing ‘roads’. It is certain that the Romans built new roads all over the country but did they survey them too. There are Roman ‘roads’ in some quite isolated and unusual places in the Lake District, Mid Wales and the Brecons.

It was quite an emotional moment when I found The Old Straight Track in the second hand book shop in Wenlock. The price of the book, a paltry £2, is a sad reflection of how Watkins’ life work is valued today. The reason for this is that some years ago a very bright young mathematician sat down and ‘proved’ that Watkins’ theory of ‘ley lines’ was essentially just chance and the archaeologist Richard Atkinson put another nail in the coffin with his ‘telephone box leys’ argument. This, in short, was that it would be possible to make a case for telephone boxes, or anything else come to that, being set out in ‘ley lines’. I am not convinced by these arguments, there are problems with both. I agree that when putting a meter ruler on a map it is possible to find any number of ‘significant’ features that ‘might’ indicate an ‘old straight track’. However, getting away from maps, anyone who has ever navigated on a compass bearing across a mountainside knows only too well that an obvious landmark is what you look for and walk to – a tree, stream, pond, rock, dip in a ridge. There is evidence that our ancestors used trees and rocks etc as significant track markers, what is not clear is whether they diverted tracks to trees and rocks or moved trees and stones to existing tracks. When there were few or no compasses, navigating by visible features would have been the logical option.

Watkins writes “The open air man in a new district will take the first chance to get on high ground to ‘see’ or ‘spy’ ‘the lay of the land’… it was ‘lay’ and not ‘lie’, as recent writers have tended to give it.” The expression he claimed meant to survey the land.  He goes on “The present words lea, lee, lay, ley (practically identical) have the same spellings in early records with many other forms as leah, leaz, lez,leye,lai etc and is defined as a ‘tract of cultivated or uncultivated land’.”  Watkins claims that the study of place names can also show where the old straight tracks existed.

There has been a renewed interest of late in natural navigation which is fascinating. As a lot of people can navigate by the sun and tell time, there are those that can do the same by the moon. Celestial navigation only requires the knowledge of 16 stars. There were native Indians in Newfoundland who allegedly navigated at sea in fog by feeling and tasting the water for temperature and salt. Most know from the shape of wind exposed trees that the prevailing wind on this island is Westerly. Neolithic man probably had heightened navigation skills but why did he/she want to move around? Does the reason for their movement effect how they moved? Did they go up and over hills just to keep a straight line? For all the criticisms Watkins’ book is full of questions and ideas that need much more consideration and study.