Sunken lane
Encouraged by the lengthening evenings and a really warm, sunny day, I head off for a short walk before sundown. I remember a similar walk some years ago, when the Resident Wise Woman pointed us in the direction of some earthworks that are all that remain of the medieval village of Pinnock, high in the Cotswold sheep country. Leaving the car at a wide place in the road, I walk along the tarmac until I come to a gap in the hedge and find this sunken lane leading downhill towards the earthworks. Here in the country, it's noisy, as usual, but the noises are appropriately rural: larks singing as they rise from a nearby field; the occasional pheasant erupting with a noise of flapping wings and clanking call; the ceaseless baaing of sheep and lambs.
Sunken tracks like this are not unusual. One theory of their formation is that they mark the ancient edge of two landholdings, and that each landowner marked the boundary by an earth bank. Digging the earth to make the banks left a dip in the middle which formed an access track, and, as rainwater flowed down the slope, more soil eroded away and the track became still deeper. Hedges and trees on either side grow until they almost cover the path. Their roots and the stony ground make the way uneven and hard on the feet.
As I come to the lumps and bumps that mark the site of the deserted village I realise that, of course, the light is quite wrong to photograph them. To catch their shadows in the grass I need to point my lens right into the low evening sun. The whole site would naturally be clearer if I could get above it in an aircraft. So as the light begins to fail, I climb back up the sunken lane, thankful at least for the rural tranquility and the glimpse of this atmospheric and ancient route between the trees.
* * *
Just after writing this, I discovered that Robert Macfarlane, superlative chronicler and analyst of all things to do with places and our routes into and through and across them, is about to publish Holloway, about his journeys along sunken lanes in Dorset with late and great Roger Deakin and Macfarlane's subsequent visits to the same places after Deakin's death. I'm sure that Rogue Male, Geoffrey Household's novel in which the hero hides in a Dorset holloway, will loom large in Macfarlane's book. It was also on my mind as I made my own walk, as was another, less well known, novel by Household, Watcher in the Shadows, which comes to its compelling climax in Gloucestershire, a few miles from where I was walking.
6 comments:
yep Im after a copy of holloway!!
I really liked this post Atmospheric, the top photograph captures the spirit of the place. I've often wondered just how old many of our lanes actually are. Do you think this one is Medieval, or much much earlier?
Worm: Yes. It seems to be a slim volume, but still essential, I reckon.
Luke: Thank you. I'm not sure of the track's age - it could be possibly prehistoric, as there are some very early field patterns around there. If I were more of a scientist, I'd have been counting species in the hedges...
I'm not sure always about the boundary theory - the trees and hedges could be quite recent. A tarmac road I used to walk along in 1979 now looks a lot like this. At Hellingly in E Sussex the church guide makes much of the "raised circular churchyard", but what I saw were sunken roads passing round the churchyard boundary - before surfaces were put on, a dirt road would naturally be reduced by water every winter - with the outer banks of the roads at the same level as the churchyard. Some tracks and paths marked on the OS map in the 1970s have completely disappeared - not even a bank or mark in the ground - in a field with cattle in, for instance, the ground can be pretty well puddled all over - which is presumably why some churches appear to stand in a field, though they must at one time have had a track for funeral processions at least. Examples: Cefnllys, near Llandrindod, Llanstinan near Fishguard, the ruins of Lancaut in Gloucestershire near Chepstow. Yesterday I observed some tussocky ground made by anthills - soft mounds of soil inside lumps of long grass - these could reduce a holloway to nothing in quite a short time, methinks.
Joseph: Yes, water can shift a lot of earth very quickly. On the other hand, in this particular location, the general soil level is very thin indeed - you soon get down to stone if you dig anywhere. So it may be that the banks were constructed deliberately.
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