Daniels, Seymour and Watkins, 1997. Tim Barringer, ‘Music and Vision: Landscape, History and Empire in Elgar’s Caractacus’, paper given at AHRC framework seminar ‘Land, Air and Water’, University of Nottingham, 2 July 2006. I was prompted to return to it by the appearance of some photographs by Alfred Watkins in the 2005 A Picture of Britainexhibition at Tate Britain and by current academic interests, in a number of disciplines, in visual representations of antiquity. 7 Piper, G. H. (1888). "Arthur's Stone, Dorstone". Transactions of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club 1881–82: 175–80. Adam Stout, Choosing a Past: The Politics of Prehistory in Pre-War Britain, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wales, Lampeter 2004, pp.191–3.

This is fascinating. I didn’t even know that ley lines were a name coined by a single person, rather than having always been known. Mr. Watkins must have been a wonderful man to spend time with. And what was the theory that emerged from these purposeful wanderings? Being a practical man of the world, Watkins decided that these alignments represented ancient thoroughfares, routes along which goods such as salt, and craftsmen like flint knappers, traversed the countryside. He does speculate that the ley-men, surveyors using twin poles to lay out their routes across the landscape, were seen as seers of some sort because of their near-magical powers (he imagined the famous chalk Long Man of Wilmington to be an image of a ley-man) and that superstitions built up around way markers as the paths themselves fell into decline. But at heart, this practical man of means insisted that ley lines were a crucial element of pre-Roman British trade, tentative first steps on the journey to the mercantile empire in which Watkins grew up. The setting in England was familiar but foreign, I’m sure for someone reading this and coming from or really knowing the areas mentioned (i.e. Herefordshire), it would be even more magical to read.Priced initially in 1892 at 2s 6d, about the cost of a Gillette Safety Razor, it sold in its thousands for nearly fifty years to both amateur and professional photographers, with US dials for those using Kodak cameras. It was famously used by Herbert Ponting in his iconic polar photographs of the Scott’s 1910 Antarctic expedition published in The Great White South (1921). From the 1890s Watkins issued popular manuals (successfully competing with those of camera manufacturer Ilford) which publicised his own devices and in 1911 published the first of many editions of Photography: Its Principles and Applications. Watkins became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1910 and was awarded the society’s 11th Progress Medal for his research work. The following year he completed his all-embracing reference work Photography; its Principles and Applications — the ‘bible’ for amateur photographers for a couple of generations. In later life he experimented in colour photography and had a hand-turned cine camera. This paper will explore the way the ley-line idea is shaped by Watkins’s photographic theory and practice, a popularising one which was part of a broader survey movement in topographical representation which emphasised access to landscape and its history for an educated public. 8 Out from the soil we wrench a new knowledge, of old, old human skill and effort, that came to the making of this England of ours.” How early it was that the beginnings of the ley system came must be a surmise but if it came as soon as man began to import flint or flint implements, it could not well be less than 25,000 B.C., that is, long before the Neolithic period commenced in Britain.” Well, this certainly corrected my completely inaccurate knowledge that humans had only been around for a couple thousand years!!

Michell repeated his beliefs in his 1969 book The View Over Atlantis. [24] Hutton described it as "almost the founding document of the modern earth mysteries movement". [1] Here he interpreted ley lines by reference to the Chinese concept of lung mei energy lines. He proposed that an advanced ancient society that had once covered much of the world had established ley lines across the landscape to harness this lung mei energy. [25] Translating the term lung mei as "dragon paths", he reinterpreted tales from English mythology and folklore in which heroes killed dragons so that the dragon-slayers became the villains. [26] Hutton later noted that Michell's ideas "embodied a fervent religious feeling, which though not Christian was heavily influenced by Christian models", adopting an "evangelical and apocalyptic tone" that announced the coming of an Age of Aquarius in which ancient wisdom would be restored. [23] Michell invented various claims about archaeological evidence to suit his purpose. [27] He viewed archaeologists as antagonists, seeing them as the personification of the modern materialism he was railing against. [23] Watkins was a member of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, an authority on beekeeping and a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society. He was also involved in the preservation of Pembridge Market Hall in Herefordshire.Hutton, Ronald (2013). Pagan Britain. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-197716. In his 1961 book Skyways and Landmarks, Tony Wedd published his idea that Watkins' leys were both real and served as ancient markers to guide alien spacecraft that were visiting Earth. [21] He came to this conclusion after comparing Watkins' ideas with those of the French ufologist Aimé Michel, who argued for the existence of "orthotenies", lines along which alien spacecraft travelled. [22] Wedd suggested that either spacecraft were following the prehistoric landmarks for guidance or that both the leys and the spacecraft were following a "magnetic current" flowing across the Earth. [22]

The wayfarer’s instructions are still deeply rooted in the peasant mind today when he tells you – quite wrongly now – “You just keep straight on”.” Williamson, Tom; Bellamy, Liz (1983). Ley Lines in Question. Tadworth: World's Work. ISBN 978-0-43719-205-9. In photography, as with food, Watkins went from local to national attention. He founded the Herefordshire Photographic Society in 1895, one of many such local societies. Elected a member of the Royal Photographic Society, he became a fellow in 1910 and that year was awarded their Progress Medal for his researches into photographic theory and practice, a number of which were published by its journal.On photographic survey see Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Commemorating a National Past: The National Photographic Record Association, 1897–1910’, Journal of Victorian Culture vol.10, no.1, 2005, pp.123–31. On survey and educated access more generally see David Matless, Landscape and Englishness, London 1998.

Aerial archaeology was valued precisely for its modern, moneyed glamour, carrying the subject away from the control of old men like Watkins, the very figure of the antiquarian. Crawford was in his thirties, Piggott early twenties, as were Piper and Nash. Crawford was financially supported in civilian archaeology by Alexander Keiller (also in his thirties) who enjoyed a substantial private income from the family marmalade business. Their jointly authored Wessex from the Air (1928) is much more conscious of the heritage of archaeology than anything in Watkins’s works. One photograph of the Stonehenge Avenue (fig.10) also reveals in the form of a large white spot, surrounded by a darker band, a round barrow opened by the eighteenth-century Wiltshire field antiquarian, Sir Richard Colt Hoare; it is as much about the archaeology of archaeology, and its role in regional identity, as about that of the landscape itself. 38 Progress medal, Royal Photographic Society, archived from the original on 22 August 2012 , retrieved 2 August 2011 Some of his derivations were fanciful, to say the least. In the lecture, delay becomes de-ley, meaning to be diverted from the straight path, and he finds himself explaining away places where a line clips the edge of a mound rather than running through its centre. But overall he builds a clear, logical and internally consistent case. The paper was not printed in full because, as the report stated, Watkins had ‘elaborated and published his thesis in a book’ of this title. This was issued in 1922 as a slim but finely produced and well illustrated volume, priced at 4s 6d, and aimed, in his words at ‘the average reader’, under the imprint of the Watkins Meter Company (which issued his manuals on photographic exposure) and distributed by a London publisher Simkin, Marshall, Hamilton and Kent. 18

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The air – playing down from the Forest – is like wine all over Radnor Bottom, and folk from the more relaxing plains of Herefordshire come for a brace-up to quarters such as ‘The Eagle’ or ‘King’s Arms’ at New Radnor…” Crawford founded Antiquity in 1927as a new kind of publication between a learned journal and the popular press to publicise serious research and scholarship, with high production values, classy typography, accessible writing and high quality illustrations, especially aerial photography. Antiquity particularly appealed to a literary and artistic audience, inspiring modern-minded artists with a taste for the primordial Britain, notably John Piper and Paul Nash. 36 Watkins patented various affordable light meters which, as much as cheap cameras, made photography a mass pursuit. These were developed in a workshop adjoining the flour mills, the Meter Works (which also made other measuring devices for sale including calibrated metals rules and dough meters for domestic and trade baking). 10 The Malvern Hills in the United Kingdom, said by Alfred Watkins to have a ley line passing along their ridge When Alfred Watkins was riding around the Herefordshire hills in the early 1920s, he pulled up his horse to gaze across the landscape, and he had a sudden revelation.