Packhorse Tracks, Drove Roads and Lost Lanes |
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Drove Roads |
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Stock was moved in great quantities and over enormous distances, from the north and west of Britain to the south and east. During 1864 for example over 1.5 million sheep were driven into central London to Smithfield market All varieties of animal were driven and larger animals could generally travel around 10 miles a day. Sheep were driven in combined flocks of up to 5,000. Pigs could only manage 6 miles a day, and turkeys, which were driven in large flocks to London for Christmas from East Anglia, could manage even less and had to begin their journey in August !
This is a drove road which runs along the top of the Quantocks. Like packhorse tracks such roads kept to high ground and avoided settlements where possible Unlike packhorse tracks they were wide so as to allow the passage of flocks and herds, grazing as they walked. The modern day hardcore track takes up just a small part of the original drove road which extends to the banks on either side Enclosure in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries led to hedged boundaries being created along the sides of these routes but even so the roadway could still be very wide as illustrated by this stretch of road on the B3225 near Water Farm Even where the B3225 seems like a regular road, as in the picture on the left below, it often hides a secret past – the picture on the right is taken from the other side of the tarmaced road's boundary hedge
There is a second parallel, grassed roadway on this side of the hedge. The hedge is believed to have been a later addition.
The heyday of droving was in the early C19th but it disappeared rapidly with the advent of the railways. Local droving survived however into the C20th as stock was moved to the local rail head. It finally died out with the axing of local railways in the 1960s
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I met these sheep in the lanes early one glorious May morning. Nowadays such an encounter is an unusual occurrence but until recently this was the normal, and indeed only way of moving animals about the country to market and to table. The movement of animals between summer and winter pastures, for example from Exmoor to the Somerset Levels, is an ancient practice and was certainly undertaken by the flocks of Glastonbury and Cleeve Abbeys in the middle ages. As towns developed this became a big business involving the national movement of hundreds of thousands of animals annually.
A drover was more than just an hillbilly with a stick. They acted either on their own account as merchants in their own right, or as agents for farmers who entrusted them with their valuable livestock for which they were responsible for negotiating the price and delivering the payment. Before banks they were the main agent for transmitting money around the country as well as the usual means by which letters were sent. .
This section near Will’s Neck shows how drove roads originated as unfenced routes over open land. It also shows how such routes often split when faced with steep hills.
Drovers’ rest stops survive as solitary inns about ten miles apart. They provided rest and nourishment for both drovers and their animals. The now defunct Friendship Inn is 7 miles away from Ralegh’s Cross Inn pictured here – about right when we consider the ascent onto the Brendons this journey entails.
©Duncan Taylor 2009
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