Just Finished Reading: The Old Straight Track - Its Mounds, Beacons, Moats, Sites and Mark Stones by Alfred Watkins (FP: 1925)

This book was not at all what I expected. As one of the foundation texts to the New Age movement in the 1970’s and beyond I expected at least a healthy dollop of mysticism, myth and speculation. Whilst speculation did make its way into the narrative, how could it not, it was tempered with reason, logic and a fair bit of scepticism. But I’m running ahead of myself.

The author had a rather strange idea. Although he wasn’t the first to have it he might have been the first to properly systemise it. The strange idea is that prehistoric man, in England and in other places too, produced dead straight paths across the landscape and marked these tracks with stones, mounds (often burial mounds), pools of water and clefts in hillsides which enabled travellers – once on the path – to navigate across great distances with comparative ease. But this is not an idea the author plucked out of the air. Firstly there is the undoubted existence of burial mounds as well as single standing stones (as well as clusters of them) scattered across the English landscape. That can be taken as fact. But the leap the author makes is that these items are not scattered across the landscape in a random fashion – indeed far from it. Using maps extensively throughout the book the author shows that straight lines can be used linking not only two or three such items but four, five and more. Lower numbers might just be coincidental but extended links over miles of the countryside cannot, he maintains be accidental. There are man-made and with a purpose and existed long before the Romans arrived with their straight roads. I was actually very impressed by his logical reasoning. Not only did he discover previously unknown standing stones using his method – Lay Hunting – but he also had very reasonable explanations of oddities like paths that actually go through (rather than around) pools of water – the pools reflect both sunlight and moonlight allowing a walker or rider at ground level to navigate in poor lighting conditions.

One of the things I found particularly fascinating is how both place names and family names reflected the nature of the paths in that area and what they were primarily used for – transporting salt, clay or other items. The men themselves – experts in navigation as well as able managers of the numbers needed to erect the larger stones and arrange them in meaningful ways – gave their profession names to future villages as well as family names (or the bastardised versions that have made it down to us) that still exist today. I do love the meanings and origins of words and it was really interesting to see where names I know well came into existence.

But making his case for Lay Lines was not enough for the author. Although he had discovered many in his home country and in nearby regions he had also collected evidence from other hunters of lay lines far and wide. The field of lay lines was still, in 1925, a new one. To amass the evidence he needed he wanted others – readers of his books – to go out and discover their own lines in their own localities and gave them detailed instructions of how to find them. I imagine, in those far gone days, that it would have been quite an adventure for a local rambling group to spend a day or a weekend looking for prehistoric footpaths long before urbanisation and our incessant road building destroyed them. I suspect that away from civilisation they are still waiting to be found and walked along as they must have been long before the Roman Empire existed. I’m almost tempted to go find one. Who knows where it would lead? An interesting off-the-wall read and unexpectedly evocative of ancient times written by someone with a real passion for his subject. (S)