A Walk through time

Since the Neolithic period, inhabitants of Wiltshire have trekked this pathway across the Marlborough Downs and through thousands of years of England’s history.

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by Jim Hargan

Less than two hours west of London via the modern M4 motorway, the oldest road in Europe wanders along empty, open ridges over Wiltshire’s Marlborough Downs. Fifteen centuries ago invading Saxons gave this ancient track its present name, ‘The Ridgeway’, but even then it was old beyond all memory. Fifty centuries earlier, Stone Age traders probably followed this track to barter stone axe heads with farmer folk in the valleys. These Neolithic merchants picked up The Ridgeway at the Thames River ford at Goring, then followed it westward and southward along the crest of the Downs, into what would become the counties of Berkshire and Wiltshire in the times of the Wessex kings. Since those first Neolithic peddlers, 200 generations have found their own good reasons to tramp along The Ridgeway track.

The Ridgeway neither looks nor acts like a modern road. None of it is paved, or even gravelled. Any given section tends to look like a farm track, a wide lane between fields for tractors and animals. Today, that is one of its main uses: a simple track from road to barn. But normal farm tracks wander aimlessly to disappear in isolated fields or farmyards while The Ridgeway marches for 60 miles in broad sweeps across the North Wessex Downs. The Ridgeway is a track with a purpose.

The Ridgeway’s other modern use is recreation. The Countryside Commission, the English agency responsible for recreational access in the countryside, has designated The Ridgeway as one of England’s National Trails (formerly known as ‘Long Distance Footpaths’). Although they have waymarked it with their characteristic acorn blazes, the Commission did not create something new. The Ridgeway track has always been a public right-of-way, one of the straightest and longest of the maze of footpaths and byways in England and Wales. When the Countryside Commission waymarked The Ridgeway, they were simply acknowledging its ancient claims and making it easy for all to follow.

The Wiltshire sections of the Ridgeway follow the Marlborough Downs, a range of dry hills formed on deep layers of chalk. In the Stone Age, dense forests, thick brambles, and treacherous swamps choked the valleys. But on the Downs, traders could walk more easily through grasslands and light forests, keeping their bearing by following the steep escarpment that forms their northern and western edge. The Ridgeway still follows that escarpment to its termination near the north edge of the Vale of Pewsey; its spectacular views, a guide to the early traders, are an inspiration to the modern walker.

Archaeologists speculate that farming folk entered the Marlborough Downs about 4200 BC. Over the next two centuries they probably hacked out family farms of one to two square miles, clearing valley forests with flint axes and building rectangular log houses in the centre of their lands. Marriage and kinship would bind neighbouring families into a clan or tribe, and these clans would meet and mingle at great annual fairs. These fairs may have allowed families and clans to trade, settle disputes, and arrange marriages. The largest of the fairs were held in special camps built for that purpose, in which a bank and ditch protected the fair and proclaimed the power of the clan. One such Neolithic camp survives at Knap Hill, near the southern end of the trail. These fairs probably attracted traders who transported their wares along the ancient trackway.

By 3600 BC, each family compound had its own long barrow. These houses for the dead were rectangular, like farm houses, but much larger. Powerful families fronted their barrows with forecourts of multi-ton sandstone blocks, using the ’sarcen stones’ (named later from a medieval word for devil) that naturally litter the surface of the Downs. A number of long barrows still exist along The Ridgeway, possibly indicating that families intentionally placed these structures within site of heavily travelled paths. Two barrows are especially notable. At the northern end of the Marlborough Downs, near the village of Ashbury, sits the huge barrow the Saxons called Wayland’s Smithy, the smithy of Odin. Flanked by sarcen stones the size of upended lorries, it faces The Ridgeway as a declaration of family territory and power. And just a short distance beyond the southern boundary of the National Trail, across from Knap Hill, sits Adam’s Grave, commanding wide views over the Vale of Pewsey. A third long barrow, West Kennet Long Barrow, sits a short distance off The Ridgeway on a small hillock a mile south of Avebury. The stacks of bones in its open crypt paint a vivid picture of the ancient rites once performed in this sacred place.

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