The UK's Oldest Road.

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Back in October 2019 we walked an 18 Mile stretch of what is believed to be the oldest road in the UK. Thats difficult to prove of course, but why no join us on our walk, taking in the sights along the way.

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Credit and thanks as follows:

Maps: OS Maps - Media License.
Maps: Adam37 - Old Way - Harrow Way Map.

Paul Whitewick

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Courtesy of GK Chesterton

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.

I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.

His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.

My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.

cogidubnus

I thought I was the only weirdo totally into old roads until I found your site.

beckysharpe

RE: Seaton in Devon. There is a road called Harepath Way, which drops down from the Lyme to Exeter road and heads towards the sea, parallel, though about half a mile or so distant from the estuary and the supposed Roman port (and some say where the Fosse Way started/ended). Harepath, comes from Hereapath, or Army Path in Saxon. If the Harrow Way came down into Seaton, it could well have been used and then remembered as a Herepath. The route would have presumably avoided the flood plain of the River Axe which would have been much wider and deeper in those days to allow for a busy harbour. Interestingly, the modern Harepath Rd is much closer to the Roman Villa site and the site of the Seaton Down hoard than the harbour would have been.

neilhenty

Love spotting track ways of our yesteryear folks, I've recognised plenty in my area, ten feet sunken from the land! Keep up the great work, it is always amateurs that truly find out. Peace and goodwill.

martinwarner

Parallel trackways are supposedly formed when the first path became too slippery so the herd walked on the dryer land to one side. This still happens on brand new footpaths although as it's people's feet rather than animals that cause the erosion the tracks are thinner and closer together.

andyalder

Another great informative video thank you. On a lighter note I was telling my friend that Amesbury is considered one of the oldest settlement in southern England, I could see by his face that he was thinking and after a little while he replied "it can't be cause you'd have to go through Andover first to get there"

kenthetuner

One reason old roads or paths wander so much is that they were often much broader or even just a general direction of travel and drifted around avoiding potholes etc until farmers enclosed, restricted them or moved them around the edges of fields.

lordwessex

I live in America and there is an old road called the Natchez Trace that ran along ridges from Nashville, Tennessee to Natchez, Mississippi. It was important in the days before steam because one could travel down the rivers boat to from Tenn to New Orleans, walk back to Natchez and then to Nashville without having to cross any major rivers. It had been an Indian trail for thousands of years and there are often multiple sections. When trees would fall and block the path, people would go around them and create a new path. This is exactly like you show in the video.
I learned in archeology class in college that the trails were originally created by animals, specifically the megafauna (mammoths, mastadons, etc) and predate humans. Large animals like elephants do the same thing in forested regions today.

JasperFromMS

4, 000 years is a bit young for a British trackway. There are many routes that pass by 5, 000 + year monuments that were located to be beside a preexisting track. Some must date back to 10, 000 when southern Britain was extensively re-occupied after the last ice age.

MrNas

Great vid as always. At about 8:40 Paul mentions Pilgrims Way and suggesting it is more recent. I doubt this. The PW runs (mainly) along the top edge of the North Downs just north of where I live. (Redhill, Surrey) This is a natural line for a track, well defined, less tree growth, good ground - chalk drains well and it's reasonably easy going along the gradient. On the lower ground it's clay, wet, sticky and densely overgrown - the rest of the land further south all the way to the south downs was similarly difficult ground and heavily forested - the Saxons called it the 'wild' - today we call it the Weald although it is very different now - the oak forests are largely gone and the ground drained and opened for agriculture.

The Romans drove a few roads though it N-S but otherwise left the central area alone - they too would intially have used the local trackways - so these long term E-W 'main roads' along the N+S Downs scarp edges would have been key to the regional road network before nd after the Romans..
When the Romans started their road network they took a different approach and engineered fairly straight-line 'shortest distance' routes between cities/key locations. But the ancients took the natural paths that the landscape offered, and followed the contours and good ground - avoiding steep or soft terrain. The Roman 'brute-force' a solution - building the Pevensey-London + Chichester-London (roughly the modern A29/24 and A22) roads must have been a project from hell.

I suspect the Pilgrims Way - and the Harrow Way, the Ridgeway and quite a number of other similar trackways are as old as there have been people in Britain - at least 5K years. And mainly defined by the geology.

Also - when looking at parallel tracks it's sometimes the case that ploughing banks can indicate an older boundary/edge too. And more modern (last 150 years or so) tracks are more generally straighter (or more evenly curving) than the older tracks which are more likely to follow the contour more closely. All very subtle but these clues add up.

AndyBsUTube

Another great day out, from the arm of my chair. Lovely.
Bob

carolbage

You ask if ancient trackways are deliberately preserved. When I worked for East Hampshire District Council, about 30 years ago, we had a policy of preserving these features in any new development, as did most Hampshire Councils.

These policies are now contained in the South Downs National Park Planning Policy document

We worked closely with English Heritage and local archeological groups to define the routes along with (as another contributor suggests) the number of hedge and tree species lining the routes plus the depression into the chalk substrate as a test for authenticity. We also tested for 'unusual' plants as these were frequently transmitted by animals being herded along the routes as 'droppings' (they ate in one area but defecated in another)

I hope this is useful

ianjenkinson

Very interesting, I've often wondered about all these old and possibly forgotten roads and tracks, how people used to get around.

HobbiesAndSunshine

There is a "rule of thumb" method of ageing a hedge line beside a trackway, and that is how many different species of hedge or tree type there are, over a given distance... Might be useful if there are two parallel paths, and you want to establish the older of the two..

johnLee