How the trackways Began

Sometimes on a calm evening as the sun goes down I will sit and ponder on how the place I live might have once been long ago compared to how it is now. I think about how we travel around so easily in our cars, never thinking too much about how we pass over miles of land while just popping out to a local shop or visiting a place we like. How different it would have been say 600 years ago, or even 2000 or 5000 - and yet how similar and familiar some aspects would be. I can only imagine sometimes how someone would have sat exactly where I now sit and look out over the Devon hills and watch the sun set. Perhaps they wondered about who might sit where they did some distant day in the far future and what they would think.

I can imagine what Devon might have been like long ago in part by the shape it is today and the topography of the landscape - the underlying geology and how it has been eroded for millions of years is what gives us the canvas upon which civilization has evolved. I hear the sound of rivers, and that of the sea shaping the coastlines which have echoed through time unchanged, also the soft summer breeze that cools the air after a long hot day and the howling of a gale whistling through the cracks in the rocks on a high Tor. But long ago there would be no loud noise as we know it today - the endless toil of car engines with horns hooting, motorbikes, trains, aircraft passing overhead. Yet there would have been more familiar human cries and cheers, laughter, the sound of horses, cows and sheep, and of course birds and other wildlife. Also the sound of wood, metal and stone being shaped, and the cry of turmoil in times of war. I imagine a way to think of Devon long ago might be to compare this land with that of a wilderness in our world today, although there are few of them left but thankfully some.

Let's imagine Devon as it might have been a few thousand years ago when it was less populated. It was much the same as it is today in some ways but there would have been many more trees of course and meadows full of flowers. Wild animals would roam too and fro just as they do today in those wild places on earth. People and animals have basic needs such as food and water, and shelter from harsh climates and there would have been special places where animals congregated with predators watching over them. Indeed we know that Devon has a rich history of such from the evidence found in old caves in the region which have revealed the bones of Lions, Mammoths, Woolly Rhino and Hyaena to name a few. These creatures and the passing through of hunter-gatherers would have been the first to have created pathways through Devon's landscape and it is from those early routes that perhaps some of the layout of Devon's present roads would have come about, maybe still in use today.

In such a primitive landscape there would have been some special features that stood out. To early people living in the region, places would have been familiar to their every day life like the sights and sounds of nature around them, the cliffs, the rivers, the sea, and the trees. There would have been also places of joy and fear, of respect, places of rejection, places that people related to emotionally just as we do today. There would have been caves leading into the bowels of the earth, springs where essential water came from the earth, Tors and other rock clusters that stood out above the tree tops almost as God-like beings. And of course those awesome aspects - the sun and the moon and the stars.

Photo: Hound Tor on Dartmoor and I can see the face of a bearded man in the rocks who looks out over the land.

In an effort to try and understand the very basic ancient routes in the Westcountry I used a topographic map of England and drew on some lines. The map here is what I came up with and I have not taken into account sea routes and I have not used known Roman roads - all I wanted to do was understand the topography and see what might come to mind. Obviously also there would have been various tribal settlements which would have influenced routes and I have not taken these into account either.

From my basic findings I have concluded initially that there was a main spine route that ran the length of Cornwall (much as it does today) and that it followed a course around the north of Dartmoor past Okehampton and headed towards Wellington in Somerset. Another branch crossed north Devon skirting the south of Exmoor. Another branch would have passed through Exeter then found a way around the south of Dartmoor to Ivybridge and Plymouth (again as it does today). Somewhere in the region of Wellington routes would have split and gone to Dorchester, Salisbury and Bath to the east.

Map: Shows what I think would have been the really basic routes in bold red.

Image: A satellite view showing animal and human tracks and the typical patterns they form over an open landscape on Dartmoor just south of Hexworthy - the ancient routes of Devon would have been formed in this way too. This kind of pattern is the same in every corner of the world!

When we go for a walk across an open moorland we will often choose the easiest way, the way with a view of where we are going - the way that leads to something in the landscape that we are curious about, or have been told is there. As we travel up a hill we might take the easiest route up a valley rather than straight up the steepest side of the hill to get to the top. When coming down from a high point we might take the quickest way to where we are going, to where we can see or to a place we know. Sometimes we might have no choice and have to get from A to B in the best way we can because there is no other way or because the alternative is a much longer journey.

Image: Another satellite view showing the pattern of trackways made by holiday makers heading through sand dunes from a camp site to the beach in Cornwall. These look familiar, again those same patterns found in every corner of the world.

So we can see how these pathways would have been a compromise based on getting from one place to another, the juggling of hill top ridges and gentle valleys. These paths were dictated in most part by the topography of the land and how early people and animals found it best to move across it but we also have to remember that at times in ancient history that much of the land was covered with trees so getting a view of what was much further ahead might have been tricky at times! Not to forget also that people could only really travel back then during daylight or a well moonlit night. Think about how in remote jungles or deserts of the world today how people rely on guides from tribes to advise them of the best way.

Image: The satellite view shown here is not Devon, it is in the middle of Africa today and shows again the pattern of animals and humans through a landscape that is part wild and partly cultivated. It would have been the same in Devon long ago.

Image: Another satellite view shown is in the middle of Africa today and shows again the pattern of animals and humans and settlement along the route.

People that were not settled in one place would have travelled well established paths for many centuries and know them intimately through their own yearly experience and because of knowledge passed down from their ancestors. There would have been special places along those ways where people stopped as well as sacred places and memorable features that marked the route. During the seasons some of the paths would have been almost impossible to take due to flooding, thick mud, other hazards.

Those in settlements would have marked up boundaries, some folk would get along together and some would fall out and the boundaries got even more defined because of it. There would have been gatherings in special places to talk and dance and share knowledge and trade, not forgetting family events of partnership, birth and burial.

Image: The ditches and ramparts of an Iron Age hill fort at Woodbury in East Devon.

We do know so well human nature is never always fair. People do not always get along and when this happens it can cause long-term division, the concentration of effort into boundaries and a loss of respect for others which can lead to a crisis. In times of War it would have been important to know your area well. You would have needed to know where to make a stand, how to protect your people from the attacker, who your neighbours were and how well you got on with them. 

In Devon the landscape varies considerably and there was plenty of scope for fast ways to move from one place to another when needed. A number of areas such as Exmoor, Dartmoor and the South Hams display a network of hills with deeps valleys between them, one wishing to travel far and fast would likely have taken the higher ridge paths for getting news and information quickly from place to place. There were of course many shorter valley routes which had more ups and downs as well as rivers or estuaries to cross.

Image: The River Dart is wide and deep and leads from the rugged sea cliffs at Dartmouth all the way inland to Totnes 10 miles up river. It has been an important trade route since prehistoric times.

There were also many sea ports around the coast which allowed access to difficult locations inland and faster trade. In the Bronze Age tin and copper were traded over sea and I imagine cattle were too. In the Iron Age when the Roman's invaded the entire South West region which included what is now Cornwall and Devon and parts to the east was the dominion of a collective of tribes known as the Dumnonii. At that time the landscape and river routes would have been well known locally and the Roman's would have been keen to use them.

Over the centuries the forming of trackways would have been a bit like the patterns created when a spider weaves a web but the continual wear and tear of the landscape by generations of people, changes of use, changes in culture and land ownership would have gradually fragmented the layout.

From my observations of maps it looks like the Roman's would have resued many older existing tracks and upgraded them as well as making their own new roads which fit in with the topography based on their own techniques and planning. The more modern courses of railways and main electric pylons sometimes seem to also coincide with the routes of ancient Roman roads in hilly terrain.

After the Roman times in Britain we pass through various stages in history with Viking, Saxon, Norman, the Medieval, Tudor and more modern times. There were huge changes over many hundreds of years. The Saxons had methods of managing the land with small strip fields and the Normans had more open square plots of land. From the 19th century the opposite occured and many hedges were ripped out to make bigger fields. My studies suggest to me that field systems laid out in the Bronze Age (known as reeves) were likely still used as boundaries and the later settlements were knitted in over the top of these.

Over time the shaping up of the land and the routes passing through it would have been subject to land ownership that passed from Kings, Baron's and the Church. This would have affected the rights of ordinary people to travel along certain paths or even to be allowed on certain land and would account for some ancient routes changing - being lost completely or some becoming more important.

Image: A 20th century iron mine on the edge of Dartmoor with a very long tunnel.

Since pre-Roman times we know that metals were found in the region such as tin and copper, iron and lead which were mined and traded oversea. Also the natural geology has provided all kinds of stones suitable for building such as granite, limestone, chert, sandstone, volcanic stone and slate. Access to these resources would have created very localized trackways through time in those areas.

Image: A hollow way in Exeter where rock was cut. Originally likely formed in medieval times along a trackway that already existed, perhaps a packhorse route. It might have also been a boundary and its deepness meant it was suitable to be used as an air-raid shelter during WW2.

We often hear the term "Hollow Way", a well trodden route that had literally eroded the very ground and bedrock in some cases into a trench that passed along the hills and valleys of Devon. In order to maintain them loose material would have been dug up or pushed aside and piled up on each side of the lane making it appear even deeper than it actually was and any good stone encountered was dug out and used. Some of these lanes are very narrow and could only have allowed the passing of one or two horses whereas others appear to meander more and have wider spaces where large crowds of sheep or cows could mill around. Sometimes these routes run for a long way then suddenly stop - this is sometimes because only certain portions were managed or because the land use changed but sometimes looking at the maps you can see the lane might continue along its original course further away from where it now stops.

Map: An example of a lost ancient route at North Bovey in Devon. Today you have to travel north by taking the road following the solid red line to Bovey Cross. In the past there was a quicker more direct route. The road now follows a line until it comes to the red arrow (shown on the map) then suddenly turns left, but originally it would have gone up the hill towards Bughead Cross shown by the red dots.

Some hollow ways are still in use today in Devon, having still been important enough to keep them in use even after modern road surfaces and motor vehicles were invented. Some have been lost due to road widening but we can still see plenty of clues as to their original routes if we know how to puzzle them out from the tangle of modern roads and slightly older turnpike roads of the last few centuries. These lost routes are a fascinating insight into how Devon life grew, some revealing villages that have gone missing from our history books, and they can indicate priority of places in a past setting by showing us where they once went and why. They might even reveal a few surprises in the future as we rediscover them.

Back to the Raw Map Data

The purpose of my study over the years was to grasp an understanding of the ancient framework that makes up my own county, Devon. It is said that Devon had more roads than any other County in England! They were put there by hard working people for a good reason, even if the majority of them are mere fragments of what they once were.

At first I scanned modern o/s maps of the area I wanted to study then traced over the contours but as you can imagine it was exceedingly time consuming. What I needed was a map of the whole of Devon but which showed only the contours and the coastline. Thankfully recent technology and the Ordnance Survey were able to help by supplying me with "Opendata" which allowed me to then formulate the very map I was always needing to work from - a clean canvas upon which I could mark my own ideas and not be influenced by what is actually there on the ground. The map shown here was my first basic layout which shows the entire landscape of Devon as a contour only map upon which I added a number of very basic routes that I felt might have been used in ancient times to get around Devon. Initially I thought it would work well to study smaller areas but as I did this I realised I needed to zoom out more and more in order to see the big picture.

This map is zoomed in on the previous one and shows purely contour information for the area covering the Bovey Basin, Newton Abbot, Teign Estuary and Torquay. I had to take dozens of small contour maps like this and stitch them all together to get a complete map of the whole of Devon which took many hours.

Another part of the overall study of Devon routes I chose to do was to mark up the contour maps to show three main systems which were: Ridge routes, Valley routes and Cross-Link routes. This was just to form a simple framework based on the natural topography of the County and using this to try and see if there was any pattern to it and whether what I guessed actually did play out in real life on the maps.

The problem I then had with this was that while in many instances I could identify ridge top and valley routes I began to see that this method would not work quite so well as I had first thought! This would be especially the case where terrain was much flatter and it was not so easy to determine where routes would have gone. So I then decided to enbark on another branch of this project by stitching together all the Historical O/S Maps 1:25,000 series.

USING 1:25,000 O/S HISTORICAL MAPS

Having first used maps containing just the contour information for Devon I then decided to move on to using Historical O/S Maps 1:25,000 series that were available online. These maps were very helpful in that the contours are clearly shown and the other features are all marked on them in a simple way that was easy to see, not being cluttered with too many colours or fancy shading and because the maps are mainly pre-WW2 the modern roads and features are not shown. I used these maps and stitched them together to form much larger regions of Devon onto which I could then apply the previous knowledge I had gained from the simpler contour maps. This proved to be very useful because although the roads and fields were shown on them already I could actually see in my minds eye certain patterns that had arisen because of the topography. I could also see how my best logical guesses compared to the actual real maps which record what is in the landscape.

Having prepared the maps of Devon I drew in the finer details of every possible  track no matter how trivial it seemed. I used green lines for this as in this map of the Merton area in North West Devon. This begins to highlight certain patterns (like that of a broken spider web) and with your mind you can see where the original lines might have been. 

The green lines took many weeks to do for the whole of Devon and having done this I then moved up to a red colour for what seemed to be more obvious main routes, then finally I did the really important routes in blue. This was all guess work based on logical thinking but I always knew the reality might differ. The resulting map (shown here) revealed what I believed at that time of my study to be the very basic routes used in ancient times to get around Devon. This was not however the end of my study by any means, there was far more in store in coming months and years and I had to revise my ideas again as I discovered more.

Continuing with my studies of these maps I was able to conclude that most of the roads and ancient lost lanes of Devon do appear in most parts to follow certain patterns which I will begin to reveal below. In particular these patterns are naturally more obvious on the hilly terrain which lends itself to repetitious events in settlement and movement. On the lower landscape where the terrain is flatter some patterns are revealed but often almost anything can happen which is fairly obvious really.

One important discovery I have made is that there were far more older routes than we could almost imagine - even now with Devon reputed to have had more roads than any other County in England what we see is only a fraction of what was once used in past times. Almost every cluster of fields contains a whole series of micro-paths running across it which in fact define in a lot of cases the layout of the field systems themselves. You see the same patterns forming again and again all over the place.

There are typical patterns that appear to repeat due to human habit and I am going to reveal a few of these in the examples that follow. These patterns can appear over an area of the size of a field or are observed over miles too.

EXAMPLE 1. The Ridge-Top Route

This is fairly typical all over the region where you get any high hill ridgeway. The example shown here is just west of Exeter near Whitestone. The main route follows the ridge top, meandering its way along, sometimes skirting around the higher knolls and then splits off in a series of triangular patterns which cross at junctions. I would imagine these have been in existance since prehistoric times as there are often many prehistoric features such as Cairns, Camps and Tumuli along these routes. They would have served as ways to drive herds of animals for long distances as well as a fast means of getting from one place to another. On Exmoor for example some of these routes run the whole length of the land from the coast at the west end for tens of miles inland towards Minehead in Somerset. In the South-Hams they run all the way from the southern tip of Dartmoor heading south to the coast at Bigbury.

EXAMPLE 2. Junctions on a Flat Top Hill

Where you get a meeting of several routes at a junction on a flat hill top such as in East Devon shown in the picture here you get some quite complicated triangular patterns where the routes branch off to go to all the others. These patterns are then revealed at times in the field systems that follow later on or are obliterated by them leaving only small fragments. Some lanes head off from the junctions along another ridge route while others go down into a valley but each lane arriving on the hill top seems to have branches that fan out to all the other junctions. Just a few obvious ones are marked on this example but you can see other hints in the field lines. With this arrangement it can sometimes be possible to work out which might have been the most important original ones.

EXAMPLE 3. Routes up the Steep Hillside

Again a good example here used from East Devon just north of Wilmington where you have a whole series of routes approaching the hill from the side slope. As they go up and up the hill gets steeper and the pattern then changes into a series of zig-zags and "Y" shapes in order to make the way up easier. Note also the feature that at intervals up the hillside you also get routes that run along the hill at one level or several of them which sometimes connect. You also get boundaries that just go straight up the hill.

EXAMPLE 4. Valley Head Farms

For this example I have shown several farms at one location to make a point. This is a pattern that is quite noticable when studying lots of maps where you often find at the top of a small valley a spring with a farm and a water well marked. The locations are often having Saxon sounding names (ton, combe, etc.) and are usually surrounded by a typical pattern of lanes that lead to them. Where a ridge top route is involved you often get several lanes that run down from the main route to the farm. One lane will run through it while others will then follow the stream down the valley. I would imagine that this example clearly demonstrates that people settled often at the head of a valley with the farm just tucked into the valley for shelter. The natural spring gave water and frequent wells are indicated here. In many examples of valley heads where a dwelling is no longer marked on the modern map you can still see a well or water course marked and the same layout of fields that define the lanes that all seem to follow the same patterns - revealing the site of a long lost farm. Some of these more important settled sites later became towns with a church, and a lot of holy well sites are found next to them.

EXAMPLE 5. Small Triangular Features

The example shown here indicates where a route divides into two. These are common on old maps and are a good clue to the location of suspected old tracks. In this example the first part of the old junction of the track has been lost but you can still see it shown by the yellow arrow.

Looking at the 1840's tithe maps you will often find more tracks shown which are missing from the late 19th century maps so it is good to check the tithe maps to confirm the older tracks were there and make even more discoveries.

Observations of the Field Systems

During early 2017 I began to realize that some of the patterns in the landscape that had previously seemed to make some sort of sense but also did not, finally made complete sense to me. It was like I was seeing through the lines on the maps that were familiar to me but seeing some other patterns below them.

Originally when I was much younger I had this idea that much of the field systems for a lot of land had been created in the 18th and 19th century from empty land but now I was realizing that even those were set out on much older patterns - I will try to explain here. The "flow" of field systems that survive seem to give away hints of the earlier landscape and when you can spot these lines a lot of things begin to make sense. Often fragmented parish boundaries fall on these lines because the boundaries are much more ancient.

This flowing system of lines reminded me of the Dartmoor reeve systems which were studied in recent decades by archaeologists. I remember reading that it was thought these later Bronze-Age reeves (boundaries and other divisions) would likely have continued down from the moor into the lower lands but that they were likely to have been obliterated by later field systems. However I am beginning to think perhaps they are more visible than I first thought.

Map: Easdon Down on Dartmoor, an extract from the Devon Historic Environment Database which shows in part the linear pattern of Bronze Age reeves passing through the landscape but also as seen the modern local fields still carry this pattern within them.

Map: Shows the rough east-west flow pattern of field systems (possible reeves) through the landscape near Honeychurch. There are also rough north-south flows as well, not shown here for clarity.

At this stage of my study I began to think more about reeves and I checked them out on various maps and lidar images. They seem to occur as long strips flowing through the landscape as parallel lines. They can run on for many miles across Devon and oddly they seem to pass over valley's at strange angles ignoring the topography as if it were flat ground. This puzzled me more and more until I realised that the reeves seem to be set out based on the more dominant topography in the landscape and are set out relative to that which is why they ignore and cross over small valleys in this way.

So it seems that during the Bronze Age, a good deal of Devon's landscape would have been set out like a massive grid across the landscape, and with reeves being stoney banks, walls and mud banks this must have been a massive undertaking that would have taken generations to achieve. And from what I can now see a large percentage of trackways that developed later were all knitted into this old pattern of reeves. The reeves reveal a grid, like a net, crossing the entire landscape which was laid out relating to the main flow of the topography of the larger areas of land!

Map: Shows how I followed the field system flow based on the Bronze Age reeve idea I had and you can see how I coloured the map to make it easier to see how even older passage across the landscape might have been set out.

During 2018 and onwards I decided to do a whole new mapping layer across the Devon landscape based on this reeve idea and this really did open my eyes and a lot of things I had previously not understood suddenly made sense. I began to focus more on the flow of fields across the landscape rather than the tracks because in part they held a lot of the older web of patterns. In order to do this I first drew them all in using a single colour but I could not then work out which ones went where and which ones might be important so I did it all again taking many weeks using coloured groups of lines and this helped a lot. I did most of Devon though I never completed the Exmoor area nor the centre of Southern Dartmoor.

Map: Satellite image shows how I mapped the now open landscape of the whole of Northern Dartmoor tracing off any lines I could see in the landscape including modern routes, footpaths, animal tracks and traces of old routes revealed in the landscape by vegetation growth.

I also decided that if I was to see the whole picture of Devon that I would somehow need to work out what might have been routes across the open landscape of our modern Dartmoor long ago. I had no idea whether this would work but using thousands of joined satellite images I was able to visually see and draw on every mark and line. And to my amazment I could see the same layout of tracks over the bare moorland that followed the same pattern of the reeves even though they were absent. I was able to draw in what I believe to be the original paths over the moor through time and it did fit very well into the more detailed maps around the moor.

Map: A more realistic ancient route pattern for the whole of Devon revealed.

During 2022 and 2023 Ifinally got to the stage where I could simplify the coloured maps I had done to try to reveal a larger more structure grid of possible trackways around Devon which I think might have been set out mainly in the Bronze Age. I might have a few of these wrong but this map seems to make good sense as people could travel in very long lines for many miles and each intersection would create a cross road which would be good for navigation too, not forgetting Devon does have many ancient cross roads too.

So here we are in 2025 and my project is ongoing and will likely continue until I am well and truely into old age. If you have found my topic of interest do please write to me and share your thoughts. I might be able to send you a local map of your area which might reveal some ideas showing the routes of ancient trackways.

studiodevona@gmail.com