Why do people believe in Ley Lines?

Those featured:

Welcome to this weeks video. I have long since wondered why people have an urge to believe in something... not tangible, not evidenced in any way. To be clear this is my lack of understanding of those things, not a slight on those people. So I set about understanding the biggest landscape oddity I knew... Ley Lines and such. I wanted to better understand what attracks people to those topics.

Disclaimer.
As per video. We are all different, we all have things that give us comfort, so this isn't a grumble at you, if you love ley lines and earth energies (As per Marq).

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Usual notices:
1. We are not historians. We enjoy researching and learning, and with that we enjoy sharing our journeys with you. That said, sources for information often listed below with credits.
2. Corrections. Whilst we make every attempt to not include any errors, research, and piecing stories together from dozens of sources sometimes leads to one or two. I will note here if any are found:

Errors
1.

Credit and thanks for assets

Hadrians Wall Drone clips: Michael de Greasley
Filter: Snowman Digital and Beachfront
B-Roll Maps: Google Maps and Google Earth Studio
Maps: National Library of Scotland Maps:
OS Maps. Media License.
Stock Footage: Storyblocks
Music: Storyblocks, epidemicsound and artlist

Credit for images/footage:

Leyline image one: antiponey
Alfred Watkins: herefordshire dot gov
Ley Line Michael: Enryonthecloud

Sources:

I normally stick a bunch of sources here, but this week,.... well there isn't really a huge amount to offer you, which will probably be clear from the video. Either way, thanks for scrolling this far down the description!

[gchecosse]

In the words of the late great Jeremy Hardy, Ley Lines connect points of equal gullibility.

[robertgivens]

As a walker/rambler over many years, I noticed that in parts of Sussex, one would find features that lead to a belief there was something of interest happening. Whilst studying the local OS maps I noticed that heading from the Long man of Wilmington heading towards Worth Saxon church at Crawley there were repeating features. Firstly farms called Coldharbour each about a day's walk apart. the next feature was ponds with islands in the middle of them. Also, many of the churches along the route were churches with spires and not towers; allowing that back in Saxon times most of Sussex was a forest large one can assume that the spire would act as a guide. Personally, I don’t think many of these features we see have anything to do with ley/energy lines but the result of many centuries of people moving about the countryside.

[CDeBeaulieu]

The problem with drawing straight lines on maps is that the earth is spherical. Map makers use various techniques such as Mercator's projection (1512 -1594) to replace the curved surface with a flat one around a tube. This means, in essence, that maps are distorted and inaccurate over distance. If Ley lines were magnetic force-fields then they ought to curve outwards from the poles of the earth, rather like iron filings around a bar magnet. As far as I am aware, claimed Ley lines don't look like that.

[kitcanttat]

In defence of Alfred Watkins, didn't he conclude that the old straight tracks he identified were simply a way of navigating a landscape that was more heavily forested in earlier times, trade routes and the like? The mystical baggage came much later and from others.

[psarj]

Great episode.
I was aware that Greggs has a spiritual significance for many, but was unaware that this was taken into account when the company chose their locations.

[Ezullof]

I think it's rather simple. People want to find meaning, hidden meaning is even better. Historical isn't enough, and personal meaning isn't respected enough, so they want magical meaning.

If we respected more what people see in old monuments and landscapes, what it looks like to them, what it evokes to them, then I'm certain that we'd have suddenly a lot less magical beliefs. Something is sacred or special because of people, and we tend to forget that.

I think it's still important to not that charlatanism isn't just about believe in ley lines, it's also about exploiting naive people. I don't think it's fair to just present this belief as something perfectly genuine. There are people who sell their beliefs. It's not about mocking the naive people, it's about condemning the people who exploit them.

[frogandspanner]

When I did my PhD I had to give regular progress presentations to departmental staff on my progress. I was modelling molecular interactions, and presented a paper on how the two results I had so far produced fell on a straight line; then at a subsequent seminar at _the Fenton_ I explained why the third measurement was an outlier.

[ianjeffery]

Growing up on a farm, i accepted dowsing to find water pipes/ springs as fact. Because we used it to do our work and it saved me countless hours of pointless digging as we found the original pipes, springs or buried leats first time. It was only when I got to university that I realised others didn’t use it or questioned it.

[davidgould]

Many years ago¹, when the internet was all text, I read a paper about ley lines². It was a mathematician who admitted that he wanted it to be true, so wrote the paper to show how unlikely these straight lines between old structures would be. His conclusion, as you found with Greggs and Matt with (IIRC) old Woolworth's shops, is that straight lines pop up all the time amongst a random collection of points.

Great video - keep up the good work!

¹ I nearly started "once upon a time" but that might have suggested that I made this up.
² I have tried to find it again but without success - too many newer ley lines posts, I suppose. Or it might well have disappeared at some time in the last 20-odd years.

[ScR-jbth]

As a digger driver, my divining rods are as important in my tool box as my grease gun. Mine are very similar to the rods that you were using, accept mine are just two bent bits of fence wire. For over forty years now, I will walk a grid pattern with my rods across the area were I have been asked to dig. What I think I find is "ground disturbance", because it doesn't matter what I find, weather it be an old wall foundation, a water pipe, a drain or a phone/electric cable. I always find whatever it was that I detected, although I never know what I have detected until I dig it up, with one exception, I sometimes can guess walls if I find corners. Don't for one second think that I am dissing your guest, far from it, I once watched a guy use a hazel twig to find a suitable site for a well, and then he turned round and told me how deep to dig, he was accurate to about a foot. Incidentally I tried to divine the underground water source and couldn't find it. Divining fascinates me, as I can do it and I can trust it, but I have no idea how it works.

[ShaunieDale]

“An experiment can be considered a success if you have to discard no more than fifty percent of the data points in order to achieve correlation with the desired results” or something like that.
Also “correlation does not imply causation”.

[belperflyer]

I used to work for Rolls-Royce (aero-engines!) before I retired and back in the late 1980s I was involved in a big rig test at the Hucknall airfield site that was to use a very big electric motor that had been installed during WW2 and not used since. There were no records of where the power lines ran underground - understandably, as there were other priorities at the time. I attended regular progress meetings and was astonished when the sub-contractors said they were using a diviner to find the underground cables so they weren't damaged during the construction of the rig. These are two very serious engineering companies, RR and the sub-contractors, and not noted for woo or magic. They found the cables, so I assume the diviner did his job! We experimented ourselves in our lab using rods like the ones Paul used with intermittent success. I remain a sceptic, so far.

Loved the Greggs example! It shows you have to be careful trying to draw conclusions without a LOT of research.

[WildwoodTV]

Co-incidentally, out of curiosity I'm reading Watkins' 'Old Straight Track' - the cosmic energy stuff wasn't 'til the 60s. Yesterday our neighbour said he'd just found a water leak (underground) - he works for Severn Trent, often as a dowser. We tried it as kids and I could do it, much to my brothers' annoyance, having found various drains & water pipes. Were beacons lit on the hills to guide travellers? smoke by day, was the light reflected in 'dew' ponds along the way. Churches built on earlier sacred ground, yew trees, yet tumuli often found on the edge of a parish boundary. I'm enjoying finding out about such places, visiting the Carnac alignment was much more impressive than Stone henge - I'm old enough to know I won't know why somethings just don't add up, keep an open mind...

[charliemansonUK]

Bizarrely as you held up the map in the car, I said to myself...Greggs shops...
Im now looking at setting myself up as a psychic, a new life and business awaits me!

[donerskine]

Wayland Smithy is my favourite Simpsons character.

[Zebred]

Here in western Canada, dowsing is a commonly used method of locating underground water for drilling wells. I've seen it myself and heard quite a few stories verifying its use.

[tweedyoutdoors]

This was a good, balanced look at the subject. Good work Paul!

I've read Alfred Watkins' The Old Straight Track and I didn't get the sense he was trying to assign any mystical or paranormal meaning to the fact that ancient points of interest sometimes had routes between them which were straight lines. The central thesis to me seemed to be simply that in an era when there wasn't much concern over land ownership, it made sense to take the most direct route between two points (barring, occasionally, significant obstacles in the landscape). That notion is uncontroversial for Roman roads, so it doesn't seem so contentious to me that civilisations a bit before that may have come to the same conclusion.

The more mystical side to it came, as you pointed out in the video, with people like John Michell in the 1960s. I actually thought Watkins came across as a pragmatist though. Perhaps he was occasionally a bit over zealous in looking for those patterns once he got that bug, but the core idea he espoused really didn't seem to be anything more far fetched than the idea that if you need to get from A to B, the shortest route is a straight line.

[WCUKProductionsLtd]

Hedley Thorne has taken over YouTube today! Three videos!

I wasn’t aware there was another resurgence in ley lines, but I do get quite frequent comments about them on my videos. Typically people complaining that I didn’t consider them.

If I remember correctly, Watkins didn’t talk about energy lines - he was of the view that ancient sites were connected by straight routes. In his day, the critics debunked his arguments based on the huge discrepancies in the ages of the linked sites. A Medieval church and a Neolithic henge, for instance.

I struggle with Watkin’s routes and I struggle even more with the energy lines concept.

[paulwillis]

Fun Fact 2: The Old Straight Track is the second studio album by the British folk rock band Jack the Lad, released in 1974. Jack the Lad was formed by former members of Lindisfarne after that band's initial split, and they carried on a similar blend of folk and rock influences, with a more pronounced focus on traditional British folk styles.

The album's title references Alfred Watkins' 1925 book The Old Straight Track, which discusses ley lines—ancient, straight trackways said to connect various historical and spiritual sites across Britain. This theme aligns with the band's interest in British history and folklore, often reflected in their lyrics.

[bugnut]

As an experiment, you could take a compass back to where the rods moved, and see if the compass needle would move when you walked to the spot that the rods moved.