TRADITIONAL WELLS.
The ley brings to mind or discovers many of these, for a straight track went to or past all of them. There are Holy Wells at Dinedor, between Blakemere and Preston, and under Herrock Hill. As children, living close by, we used to call the Coldwell at Holmer the Holywell, and found our way by stepping stones to the ancient stone built well now destroyed. It was much like the Chamber well near the mill at Weobley. The Golden Well near Dorstone is on a ley running through Arthur’s Stone, the Gold Post (a mountain cot), and terminating in Pen-y-Beacon. The two “golds” on one track indicate a trader’s way. Leys go straight to, and not beyond, many wells in the Malvern ridge—St. Ann’s, Holy Well, Walms (there is a Walmer Street named from a ley in Hereford and a surname Walmsley), St. Pewtress, and one (whose name I do not find) near the Chase Inn, above Colwall, which village itself is the Cole’s—or magic man’s—well.
I have photographed in Cornwall the pointed “beehive” stone structure covering a Holywell, surmounted by a cross; the whole obviously suited for a sighting point. Here and there, as at the Flintshire Holywell, a chapel has been built over the well. Our local example is at Marden, where the well, in the west end of the church, central with the nave (and the ley), is connected with the tradition of St. Ethelbert.
There is an ancient well in Goodrich Churchyard, with a trackway obviously passing over it, but not through the church.
PREVIOUS DATA.
A number of observers have recorded confirmatory facts.
Mr. G. H. Piper (“Woolhope Club Transactions, 1882,” p. 176) says: “A line drawn from the Skerrid-fawr (mountain) northwards to Arthur’s Stone would pass over the camp and the southernmost point of the Hatterill Hill, Old Castle, Longtown Castle, and Urishay and Snodhill Castles.”
Mr. Thos. Codrington (“Roman Roads in Britain,” 1903) says: “Between the extreme points there are many straight pieces not quite in the same line, generally pointing to some landmark. There are several instances where a barrow or tumulus was the landmark, the road passing round it on nearing it. Silbury affords one example, and Brinklow, on the Foss, another.”
Mr. James G. Wood (“Woolhope Club Transactions, 1910,” p. 146) says: “The origin and purposes of these tumps associated with Roman roads will well repay investigation. I have traced a line of such works across South Monmouthshire and West Gloucestershire from Caerleon through Caerwent into the Forest. All of these are so placed that each is in sight of the next in either direction. Again, we find that such roads were in many cases ranged or laid out in line with small camps or such tumuli—being, in fact, surveying stations.”
The Rev. S. Baring-Gould (“Book of Dartmoor,” 1900) says: “The stone row is almost invariably associated with cairns and kistvaens. They do not always run parallel; they start from a cairn and end with a blocking stone set across the line.”