Standing on the highest part of Dinedor Camp earthworks, the towers of Hereford Cathedral and All Saints’ Church can be seen exactly in a line to the stand point.
The camp plans in past Transactions show signs of tumps in most camps. It is impossible to assume that leys (sighted between two mountains) should in the scores of instances exactly fall upon the earthworks of camps previously built on sites selected solely for defence. The leys came first, and the present camp was then merely the site of two or more tumps. There came a period of organised raids and war, and where a group of tumps gave the first elements of defensive works, they were joined by earthworks into a complete enclosure for defence. Here again sighting settled the sites of camps. Hereford Castle Green with Hogg’s Mount the only remaining sighting tump, others (as at the Russian gun) being now levelled, is an example. Many groups of tumps, never developed into camps but sufficiently near to be so, are to be found on the map.
I found Caplar Camp to have so many leys over it as to seem the Clapham Junction of ancient trackways in that district. It may be that in a few cases of lofty camps (as Croft Ambury and Herefordshire Beacon) they form terminals of sighting lines, but in almost all cases the leys pass over them.
CHURCHES.
These—if ancient—seem to be invariably on (not merely alongside) a ley, and in many cases are at the crossing of two leys, thus appropriating the sighting point to a new use. A ley often passes through a tump adjacent to the church, and a cross ley through both church and tump. In other cases a mark stone site became the churchyard cross, and a cross ley comes through both church and cross. In many cases one of the leys went through the tower only, and it is possible that tower and steeple were built to be used as sighting points, although on the other hand a large church did in fact block the road. I will make no surmises on these interesting points. The sighting system may have been in decay or the tracks abandoned when the churches were first built on the sighting points. I do not think it probable that leys were made to provide sites for churches. In almost every old town or village will be found examples of a church built on and blocking an ancient road although new roads (as at Weobley) are often made on one or both sides. I show examples of a number. Broad Street blocked by All Saints, Offa Street (a striking example) with St. Peter’s Tower dead on one end, and the Cathedral Tower dead on the other end. Other examples: Ledbury, Wigmore, Shrewsbury (Fish Street), Kington, and Madley, where tower, churchyard cross and village cross are on one ley, and tower, nave, chancel, and a mark stone in the village on a lengthwise ley.
At Warwick a chapel is over a town gateway, and in Exeter an ancient lane is also allowed to continue as a tunnel under the altar of a small church, two curious instances of the right of way being continued and the desire of the clergy to use the site also attained. Kenderchurch is a striking instance of a church perched on the apex of a sighting mound, and in other districts I can think of Bren Tor (Dartmoor), Harrow, Churchdown (Gloucester), and the two St. Michael’s Mounts, these last obviously terminals of leys, as is St. Tecla’s Chapel out in the channel below Chepstow, the termination of the beach ley which gives its name to Beachley Village.
In London St. Paul’s blocks the Watling Street and Ludgate Hill leys, and St. Clement Danes, St. Mary le Strand, and St. Martin’s in the Fields are all on another ley with subsidiary roads evolved on each side of the churches.
CASTLES.
Every castle in this district has a ley passing over it, and originated in a sighting tump, upon which the keep was afterwards built when some lord selected this as a desirable site for a defensive home. If a large tump, there were usually some excavations which were developed and extended into real defensive works.
The word castle is applied to many tumps (as in Moccas Park), where no building has ever existed, and to farms (as Castle Farm, Madley), where there are signs of a tump, but merely a homestead round it.