The Wansdyke & District Forums

been thinking about these since the lidar thread. holloways, the really deep sunken lanes, worn down below the fields by centuries of feet and carts and water. theres one near me thats twenty foot deep in places, trees meeting overhead, proper green tunnel, and it just stops. dead ends in a field. where was it GOING? roads dont sink themselves into the ground going nowhere.

It was going somewhere, Gary; the somewhere is what has gone. A holloway that ends in an empty field is very often the road to a place that is no longer there, a farm, a hamlet, a mill, a chapel. The lane outlasts what it led to, because a deep holloway takes centuries to wear and longer to fill. You are looking at the ghost of a journey people stopped making. Follow its line on the old maps and you will usually find a name at the far end, even if there is nothing else.

thats a lovely and slightly sad way of putting it Mrs A. the ghost of a journey people stopped making. checked the old map and theres a Chapel Field marked right where it dead ends. so there WAS something there once. going back with the camera saturday.

Funny, my father called them the old ways, and would never let us play down the deep one near us when we were children. Said you could lose the day in it. I thought he meant get lost, but I think now he meant something else, that time went queer down there, all that green and quiet and the world up above going on without you. Children feel that sort of thing. He wasnt wrong.