INTRODUCTION.
I have read of a lad who, idly probing a hill-side rabbit hole, saw a gleam of gold, then more, and in short had found a royal treasury. And he could not show all to those interested, but only samples, and he made mistakes in describing the dates and workmanship of the coins, vessels and jewels. But the treasure was there all the same.
I knew nothing on June 30th last of what I now communicate, and had no theories. A visit to Blackwardine led me to note on the map a straight line starting from Croft Ambury, lying on parts of Croft Lane past the Broad, over hill points, through Blackwardine, over Risbury Camp, and through the high ground at Stretton Grandison, where I surmise a Roman station. I followed up the clue of sighting from hill top, unhampered by other theories, found it yielding astounding results in all districts, the straight lines to my amazement passing over and over again through the same class of objects, which I soon found to be (or to have been) practical sighting points.
For the sake of clearness I will give an outline of the whole method before furnishing proofs and examples.
It is necessary first to clear the mind of present ideas of roads from town to town, or with enclosed hedges, also of any assumption that orderly road planning was introduced by the Romans, and that my paper is to explain the Roman roads.
Presume a primitive people, with few or no enclosures, wanting a few necessities (as salt, flint flakes, and, later on, metals) only to be had from a distance. The shortest way to such a distant point was a straight line, the human way of attaining a straight line is by sighting, and accordingly all these early trackways were straight, and laid out in much the same way that a marksman gets the back and fore sights of his rifle in line with the target.