The winding country lanes of England

Visitors to England, and in many cases those who are lifelong residents of the country, are often surprised while traveling through the countryside by the seemingly illogical and erratic way in which highways and country lanes twist and turn at all times. addresses. You may be traveling in a particular direction one minute, only to find that a moment or two later you are traveling in the complete opposite direction for no apparent reason.

However, the answer to this riddle is actually quite simple and lies, like so much else in England, in the country’s rich storied past.

In the days before England adopted the lovely mosaic of fields that is common in today’s landscape, the countryside was densely forested, dotted here and there by isolated farming communities. It was for this reason that people rarely traveled the lowlands and preferred, whenever possible, to use the highland trails, where they would be relatively safe from robbers and wild animals.

One such footpath, The Ridgeway, which has been in existence for thousands of years, runs from Overton Hill in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe in Buckinghamshire, covering a distance of 87 miles, and is still in use today as a popular destination for walkers from all over. the world. world eager to follow in the footsteps of their prehistoric ancestors.

In the Middle Ages, the countryside had been opened up to agriculture and the basic network of roads and paths linking cities and towns had been established.

Since many field patterns had already been created, and the right to walk through the fields was somewhat restricted, people had no choice but to follow the field boundary line to reach their destination. The result of this formed the basis of what is now the English country lane.

But since most things in life are never simple, other human activities intervened to alter the shape of the rails.

Always in need of more land, farmers regularly encroached on byways, thus altering their shape. It only required one farmer to ‘take’ part of a lane on one side, and another farmer further along on the opposite side to do the same, and a permanent ‘S’ shape would be created in what might otherwise have been been a pretty straight lane

Depositing a dung heap, disused agricultural machinery, corrals for cattle or making a pile of firewood on the edges of a road would also, over time, alter its shape.

As people were forced to make a wider berth to get past such obstacles, the result would be a curve in the road as the opposite side gradually eroded, or the road became narrower. The course of the diversion would become permanent as the centuries passed, long after all traces of the original obstruction had completely disappeared.

However, it cannot be said that farmers were solely responsible for changing lane contours.

As early as the 16th century, it was not uncommon for people to build ‘squatter’ huts on the side of a road. This initial action would invariably be followed later by the planting of gardens and the construction of outbuildings, drastically changing the course of a lane. Evidence of this type of activity has been recorded near Chalkney Wood in Essex. Four domestic buildings, three of which date from 1598, existed in a particular lane.

But the buildings were not the only obstacles. Travelers also had to pick their way around fallen trees, navigate muddy areas, and avoid animal carcasses, holes, and piles of trash, all of which gradually altered the route of a detour.

However, not all of the many twists and turns on country roads are the result of human activity. Nature itself has played its part by presenting humanity with obstacles such as hills, valleys, rivers, marshes, and lakes; all of which have to be negotiated.

But surely, as even a cursory glance at a large-scale map of a section of the English countryside will show, man has wrought the greatest changes on the landscape; altering the original, relatively direct course of the English country lane to the meandering contours we see today.