LEYLINES

NIGEL PENNICK

MYSTERIES
OF THE ANCIENT WORLD aie
OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

LEYLINES
NIGEL PENNICK

WEIDENFELD @ NICOLSON
LONDON
 eylines are defined as

human-made straight
LEYLINES

lines that run across the

land, regardless of the terrain.

Many people believe leylines to be

the remains of ancient holy roads

or tracks laid out by surveyors in

ancient times, while to others they

are channels of mysterious earth

energies and places of power.

Straight lines on the landscape have

been a feature of many ancient civ-

ilizations, and their remains can be

seen in many places.

he Avenue at Avebury gives a

good impression of the technical
skill of people in megalithic times.
Since the earliest times, straight tracks and roads were associated with the idea
that leadership is the ability to set people or things ina straight line. So, in Eng-
LEYLINES
lish ‘ruler’ means both a straight-edged measuring rod and a person with the
power to command. In the Bible, the ‘ways of the Lord’ are made straight, and
in ancient Babylon and Egypt ceremonial roads for kings, goddesses and gods
were straight. Ancient Greek cities, too, had streets that led straight to the main
temples. In Gerasa, for instance, the two main streets were straight. One ran

he British landscape
has numerous

ancient straight features

such as this cursus (left).

he largest standing
stone in an English
churchyard (right), at
Rudston, Yorkshire.

south-west, towards the temple of Zeus, the other, which ran northwards, was
aligned upon the temple of Artemis. The main street of Damascus in Syria
was called ‘Straight Street’; it too was aligned upon the city’s temple of Zeus,
which later became a Christian church and, finally, the Grand Mosque.
In the British Isles there are several different kinds of ancient straight lines
on the landscape. There are cursuses, usually straight features made of parallel
earth banks, which vary in length from a few metres to a several kilometres,
and date from as early as 3000 Bc. These often line up on other landscape fea-
tures, such as standing stones and earthworks. The Greater Stonehenge
Cursus, for instance, north of Stonehenge, is aligned upon the megalith, or
standing stone, called the Cuckoo Stone, the ancient temple site of Woodhenge
and Beacon Hill. The best-known of all stone circles, Stonehenge, has a track
called the Avenue, which runs from the circle towards the place where the sun
rises on the longest day of the year. Groups of megaliths were also set up in
what are called stone rows, the most impressive of which can be seen near
Carnac in Brittany. At Kerlescan, there are 13 parallel rows of stones, whilst at
Kerzerho there are 10 megalithic rows that once extended for 2 km. Other
 impressive rows exist at Kermario
and Le Menec. In Britain there are
LEYLINES
particularly good examples on
Dartmoor in Devon. The stone row
on Stall Moor connects a stone
circle with a cairn 3.2 km away. At
Merrivale, there is a row of stand-
ing stones on either side of a
stream that, strangely, flows along
the top of a ridge, marking it out as
a holy place.

T he midsummer sun rises above

the Heelstone at Stonehenge
defining the straight avenue that runs
from the centre towards the sunrise.

7 he Irish passage grave at

Newgrange was constructed so

that the sun at midwinter shines a beam

of light along its axis to the furthest end.

4 2 > A Zz 2 a
Roman and Medieval Lines
Throughout the Roman Empire, wherever possible, roads were made straight tevirnes-
and the landscape was divided up into grid-patterns by straight boundaries.
In the early medieval period (500-800 AbD) Anglian military engineers built
enormous earth walls and ditches across the Danish peninsula and in Eng-
land; wherever possible they too were straight. The best surviving examples
aré the Devil’s Dyke in Cambridgeshire and Wat’s Dyke in Shropshire. In
medieval Europe it was customary to design towns and cities around straight
lines or grids. There is evidence that at least some of them were built on ear-
lier straight lines on the landscape. Scotland has numerous examples of

T he stone rows

at Merrivale on

Dartmoor are a fine

example of megalithic
alignments.

jhe straight Roman

road, the Foss Way,
runs across the country
oblivious of the terrain.
 LEYLINES

T he straight Roman road,

Icknield Street (above).

4 ckling Dyke, Dorset (left),

a Roman road cuts

straight through the landscape.

11
medieval new towns, each laid out around a straight royal road called the
King’s Highway, including Arbroath, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Stirling. The
city of St Andrew’s, laid out in 1144 by Mainard, the Scottish royal surveyor,
has three straight streets that radiate from a high point on which is the high
altar of the cathedral.

. visual alignment is preserved ~ £ ainard the Locator laid out

«in Norwich (left) across St Andrews (above) on three

Tombland through the cathedral straight lines radiating from an

precinct to the west door. ancient Celtic holy place.

13
LEYLINES

Another medieval new town, Salis- O Id Sarum, Salisbury Cathedral

bury, was founded in 1220 to replace and Clearbury Ring are three
the settlement of Old Sarum, which P°###s on the line that defines the
: ° er location of the cathedral.
was inconveniently located inside an
Tron Age hill-fort to the north. Salisbury Cathedral stands on a line that runs
from the centre of Stonehenge, through Old Sarum and the cathedral, to the
hill-forts of Clearbury Ring and Frankenbury. It seems that the ‘locators’ of
Salisbury knew of this much older line, for as well as siting the cathedral upon
it they laid out some of the city streets parallel to it. This line was re-discovered
by Sir Norman Lockyer in the early 1900s.

Later Traditions
In the 17th and 18th centuries, straight lines became an important feature
of
landscape gardening as well as town planning, and many of the great
country
houses of the period had avenues leading towards picturesque landmar
ks, such
 LEYLINES

{ea Germany, as hills, mountain peaks and churches. Some

laid out in 1715 with of these lines followed earlier straight tracks
poeeravehy bes radiating that ran across country or through forests.
eum All over Europe there are still many fine
examples of straight rides and avenues. The great palace of the Louis XIV at
Versailles in France has lines running for many kilometres in every direction.
Similarly, the city of Karlsruhe in south-west Germany, founded in 1715, has 32
regularly arranged straight lines, radiating from the prince’s palace at its centre.
Not far away, near Stuttgart, an 18th-century French surveyor constructed a
straight road to connect a princely palace at Ludwigsburg with another called
Schloss Solitude, on a hilltop 13 km away. Like the temples of ancient Greece,
Schloss Solitude is always in front of the traveller who goes towards it.
In England the city of Bath also contains 18th-century straight streets,
which their architect, John Wood the Elder, designed according to what he
believed to be the mystical ‘druid’ principles of Stonehenge.

1D
 any turf labyrinths, European folk-tradition, too, tells of a number
such as this one, are
of different kinds of straight lines across the land.
Said tales oe ce nee: At certain times of the year, such as Walpurgis-
nacht (30 April) and Hallowe’en (31 October), witches, spirits of the dead and
the Devil himself are said to fly in straight lines across the country. In Ireland,
Wales, Cornwall, western England and Brittany, local Celtic lore tells of the
straight ‘fairy paths’ that connect ancient hill-forts and earthworks. At other
times, it is said, the ‘little people’ go in procession along their straight pathways,
and it is dangerous, even fatal, for a human being to be there at that time.
Similar to these ‘fairy paths’ are the ‘coffin roads’, footpaths or tracks that
lead to graveyards. These are the tracks that were used by the coffin-bearers to
take corpses to the local churchyard for burial. In lowland regions, they tend to
 be straight. Because of their association with death
these ‘coffin roads’ are believed to be inhabited by _____
evil spirits, who travel along them bringing omens of —_
death to those who meet them. Sometimes, the spirits
appear as the phantom lights called ‘corpse candles’.
These, too are omens of death. ‘Coffin roads’ and
‘death roads’ exist all over northern and central
Europe, and Oxford has a fine example that leads to
Christchurch Cathedral.

Alfred Watkins
and Leylines
The name ‘ley’ was first used by Alfred Watkins
(1855-1935), who popularized the idea of ancient
straight lines across the land. Although quite a few

SLHE
LEY ae | Ifred Watkins,
| HUNT ER 5
‘prolific inventor,

MANUAL = and originator of the

word ‘ley’.
 LEYLINES

4 lfred Watkins’s own picture of people before him claimed to have

Tre Fedw, a mark-point on one of discovered straight lines in the

his early leys in the Welsh borderlands.
British landscape, it was Watkins’s
book, The Old Straight Track, that
T hese enigmatic artificial straight
gained him a following, which con-
lines on a hillside near Llanthony
Ebeeaid Wales (left), appear to have tinues today. At midsummer in
no utilitarian function. 1921, on a visit to Blackwardine in
his native Herefordshire, Watkins

first noticed on his map astraight line connecting ancient places. This passed
over hilltops, and appeared to have been deliberately made in the distant past to
connect religious sites, such as churches, chapels and crosses, as well as standing
stones, stone circles, fords across rivers and artificial mounds. All were linked to
hilltops, some of which were beacon hills, where fires were lit at midsummer
and at national celebrations. After his discovery, which came to him ‘ina flash’,
Watkins spent his spare time following lines across the landscape.
By 1925 Watkins had developed a whole theory of leys. He saw them as a
LEYLINES

ilbury Hill,
Wiltshire,

visible from all

parts of the
local landscape,

is the reference
point for local
ley hunters.
LEYLINES

he Queen Stone near Symonds Yat,

<= an example of Watkins’s technical

excellence as a photographer.

‘any holed stones, like the Cornish

. Men-an-Tol here, are said to show

the direction lines take through them.

‘fairy chain’ stretching from mountain top to

mountain top, linking in ridges, banks and
hillocks. Between these higher points, were
ancient circular earthworks and clumps of trees,
and in the valleys, at the lowest level, the lines
crossed over mounds with water-filled moats
around them. Ponds, too, were made on the lines,
whilst along the tracks, large standing stones stood
at intervals. All of these features, Watkins

2
 believed, were the remains of an age-old landscape, which, through close study,
could once again be revealed.
Alfred Watkins claimed that his leys were the remains of trackways first
made by ancient Britons in the Neolithic period (the New Stone Age) — the Old
Straight Track. These tracks were used continuously from around 2000 Bc
until well after the Roman occupation (AD 43-410). Leys were straight, line-of-
sight features that led travellers through difficult country. He thought that the
earliest lines may have been up to 100 km long, but that later ones were much
shorter, only a few miles long. Because they had fallen into disuse so long ago,
only remnants could still be found, short lengths of straight track on which
more recent paths and roads had been made. These can easily be found on

24:
 raditional English maps, and may give clues to the existence of leys.
ploughmen used From the names of places on his tracks,
5 Pees
sticks called ‘dods’toline == Watkins deduced that they had been used by
up their straight furrows. : : ong
traders carrying various commodities across the

countryside. Thus there were salt tracks and coal tracks. From his study of
place-names connected with leys, Watkins believed that they had been sur-
veyed by men called ‘dodmen’, a name that he coined from alocal Hereford-
shire dialect word. According to Watkins, these men, carrying staffs called
‘dods’, travelled the country making straight tracks. More recent studies have
shown that Watkins was mistaken, for the word ‘dod’ is connected with plough-
ing straight furrows and not making tracks.
 Watkins also hinted at a more ceremonial function for the
Old Straight Track. On dark nights, when bonfires burned
LEYLINES
upon the beacon hills, then the water in the moats, ponds and
streams banked up into ‘flashes’ would reflect the light, making
the ley into a line of light across the countryside. Then the
‘fairy chain’ was made visible. Later, he found that some of the

tracks were lined up on certain important sunrises, such as May

Day and Midsummer, thus reinforcing their ceremonial nature.
In his lifetime, Watkins was a controversial figure, and uni-
versity archaeologists attacked his ideas in their journals as
‘damned nonsense’. Unde-
“Y he hill-figure of the Long . ?
terred, Watkins set up his
Man of Wilmington,
]
whom Alfred Watkins identified aoe never
with his mythical dodman’. studied maps, went ‘ley-
hunting’ and circulated
their discoveries by post. The club survived his death, but was
inactive during the Second World War and finally closed down
in 1948. Although Watkins’s followers vigorously defended his
ideas, he made serious errors. In his last book, Archaic Tracks
Round Cambridge, he described 62 lines; in 1979 these were stud-
ied in detail by the Institute of Geomantic Research, which
found that only 9 out of the 62 were really alignments of sites,
the rest simply did not line up.

UFOs and Energies

The whole idea of leys might have died out entirely were it not
for Tony Wedd, a former pilot in the Royal Air Force and an
inventor. In 1961, Wedd claimed that there was a connection
between the Old Straight Track of Alfred Watkins and

27
 ‘orthotenies’, the supposed straight lines along which Unidentified Flying
Objects had been seen in France in 1954. Wedd believed that UFOs were alien
LEYLINES

spacecraft whose crews used leys to navigate by.

Wedd also said that there was a vortex of energy near his house, from which
he could trace straight lines that ran, like Watkins’s leys, through ancient sites.
However, the lines were seen now as made of energy rather than being actual
trackways. At the Warten Wedd and his friends communicated psychically
with an invisible entity whom they said was a UFO inhabitant called Attalita.
From this contact, he received the design of Coffoostyn, a ‘cosmic coffee pot’,
the always-warm ‘Wenceslas Boot’ and other ‘alien machines’ that he spent
much time and money unsuccessfully attempting to construct.
The new subject of ‘earth mysteries’ grew out
¥ he Saintbury Ley in
of this Ufological background, and the name Gloucestershire was
‘leyline’ tended to replace the older word ‘ley’. one of the best attested
John Michell’s books, The Flying Saucer Visionand _leylines of the 1970s.
The View Over Atlantis greatly increased the inter-
est in earth mysteries. Out of this new popularity came The Ley Hunter maga-
zine and other ‘underground’ publications, which promoted the hippie
world-view in the late 1960s. One earth mysteries ‘fanzine’ later summed it all
up as: “UFOs and Leys: the twin pillars of Earth Mysteries’. It was a time when
every idea was published uncritically, no matter how little hard evidence there
was. One instance was the creation of a legend around Alfred Watkins. As the
‘founding father’ of the new subject called earth mysteries, Watkins’s 1921
journey to Blackwardine seemed far too mundane for a mystic visionary, and
was re-told in a more mythical form. Instead of being in a car in a valley, he
was sitting astride a horse on a hilltop, where, in a sudden mystic revelation, he
saw a vision of glowing lines of energy radiating across the country. Although
a
complete invention, this was a perfect mystical image for the New Age,
and
many believed it.

28
 ete
Set
cae.
 LEYLINES

¥ lastonbury
Tor, holy
mountain of the
Celtic god Gwynn
ap Nudd, is
believed by many
to be the focal
point of the local
leylines.
 Believers in Atlantis, UFOs, free energy,
ancient astronauts and psychic channelling all
—— put forward their theories about leylines, while
19th-century ideas about magnetic currents in
the earth were rediscovered. Most of the theories
contradicted each other; the only point of agree-
ment was the unproved theory that leylines are
lines of energy that have remained fixed on the
earth’s surface unchanging for thousands of
years. How and why this could be was left to
others to work out.

owsers (above) have claimed to

detect many strange energies,
patterns and lines around stone
circles and along leylines.

\ xperiments into the physics of

<< standing stones, such as the
‘Dragon Project’ (left) have produced
interesting but inconsistent results.

32
 Soon, these new speculations about energy lines attracted dowsers — water
diviners — and others who use pendulums and divining rods to find unseen
things. Through the use of dowsing, many more theories about leylines came
into being. Some dowsers did not even need to see lines on a map or even on
the ground, preferring the movements of their divining-rods. What they were
looking for was clearly not the same as the ancient straight tracks, holy roads,
coffin paths, rides and avenues that exist in the landscape. Eventually, the
dowsers’ theories grew into claims that there are vast energy grids that cover
the entire planet, including the oceans. Unfortunately, different individuals

33
LEYLINES

V he ley hunters Paul Devereux and Cornish

Ian Thomson promoted current Celtic cross.
leyline theories in their 1979 book, The
Ley Hunter’s Companion.

supported the existence of different grids that were

incompatible with each other, and much futile argument
resulted. It continues to-day.

Straight Thinking
Not all the new ley hunters were looking for secret ener-
gies, however. Some continued the studies of Alfred
Watkins into ancient alignments. In his 1974 book, The
Old Stones of Land’s End, John Michell published his study
of Cornish lines of standing stones. He found that

34
 although they are few, unlike the
numerous stones in stone rows,
LEYLINES

many stones still stand in lines that

lead to stone circles. Because
Michell had studied all the stones in
a particular region mathematicians
made an early computer program to
test the probability that the lines
were deliberate. Some of Michell’s
lines came out better than could be
expected by chance. This was strong
evidence that there was truth in
Alfred Watkins’s ley theory, at least
with regard to standing stones.
Some years later, a more refined
study was made onaleyline discov-
ered at The Devil’s Arrows, close to
Boroughbridge in Yorkshire. The
Devil’s Arrows are three huge stand-
ing stones that make a line that con-
tinues for 17.7 km through four
Neolithic earthworks, Nunwick
Henge and the three Thornborough
henges. Mathematicians Michael
Behrend and Robert Forrest, who
had developed a more advanced

he Devil’s Arrows standing

stones in Yorkshire are part of
a mathematically verified leyline.

36
LEYLINES

38
mathematical test for randomness, ran 400 computer simulations and con-
cluded that chance is not an adequate explanation for the Devil’s Arrows align-
LEYLINES
ments. Since then, computer studies of other alignments have been made, and
some of them have been shown to be better than chance, that is, deliber-
ately lined up by human beings.
Thus, while some lines are scientifically tested, and found genuine,
most cannot be proved or disproved by mathematics or archaeol-
ogy. So should all the historic lines be called leys, or only those
that are proven statistically? Clearly, Watkins did not have a
complete view of leys or other lines on the landscape. Nor
have more recent ideas about leylines drawn a much
clearer picture; the new beliefs and superstitions simply
reflect the fears and hopes of modern life.
Nevertheless, ancient straight lines do exist in the land-
scape, and on them are places that still have the power to
interact with human beings. Each age needs its myths,
and the ‘fairy chain’ of Alfred Watkins has provided one
of the most powerful and enduring of modern visions of
a hidden, spiritual, landscape beneath our feet.

| he old fair maze

at Boughton
Green, Northamptonshire
(left), destroyed during
World War I.

an of the maze

formerly on Ripon
Common (right).

39
Fg PHOTOGRAPHIC ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cover Fortean Picture Library [FPL];

pages 2-3 FPL/ Janet & Colin Bord [JCB];
LEYLINES
p. 4 FPL/Dr G.T. Meadows; p. 5 FP:/JCB;
pp. 6-7 FPL; pp. 7, 8 Michael Jenner [MJ];
pp. 9, 10 Barnaby’s Picture Library;
pp. 11, 12 MJ; p. 13 Zefa; p. 14 FPL/JCB;
p. 15 AKG London; p. 16 Barnaby’s Picture
Library/ Pat Timmons; pp. 171, 17r FPL;
p. 18 FPL/JCB; p. 19 FPL; pp. 20-21 FPL/JCB;
p. 22 FPL; pp. 22-3 FPL/JCB; pp. 24-5 Zefa;
p. 26 FPL/EC. Taylor; p. 28 FPL/Paul Devereux;
pp. 30-31 FPL/JCB; p. 32 FPL/Paul Devereux;
p. 33 FPL/Paul Broadhurst; p. 34 FPL/Paul
Devereux; pp. 34-5 MJ; pp. 36-7 FPL/JCB;
pp. 38-9, 39 FPL.

First published in Great Britain 1997 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
by George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd from the British Library
The Orion Publishing Group ISBN.0 297 82306 X
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA Picture Research: Suzanne Williams

Design: Harry Green

Text copyright © Nigel Pennick, 1997
The moral right of the author has been asserted Typeset in Baskerville
Design and layout copyright © George Weidenfeld
and Nicolson Ltd, 1997

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights

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40
 MYSTERIES
OF THE ANCIENT WORLD

Ancient empires rose and fell, new worlds were conquered and lost.
Who were the people, and how did their civilizations unfold? In this
exciting new series, the reader travels into the past, re-examining the
forgotten civilizations to discover lost worlds. In a dramatic
re-evaluation of man’s history, using the high-tech tools of modern
archaeology, geology and astronomy, the mysteries of the ancient
world are explored and explained.

Straight lines on the landscape are features of many

civilizations, and their meanings remain mysterious. Are
these leylines the remains of ancient holy roads or tracks,
laid out by surveyors in ancient times? Or are they channels
of mysterious earth energies and places of power?

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AUS $4.95 CAN $4.99

ISBN 0-297-82306-X

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