A walk with Romans and ghosts on the Great North Road
Tracing part of an ancient highway in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire – now the A1 – proves rich in stories going back 2,000 yearsAfter a while it is clear that someone, or something, is following us. A figure, some distance back. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t appear to draw any closer, or get further away. It seems to remain, matching our pace, just at the edge of vision – at the edge of the dusk now descending over the grand Lincolnshire parkland surrounding Burghley House. When we stop, the figure vanishes. When we set off again, it returns. A shrouded shape; a shadow stalking our steps.Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. The old Roman highway we’ve been intermittently tracing from Water Newton to Stamford is a nine-mile track layered with history. Now overgrown and concealed, it was once a bustling leg of a great north-south thoroughfare that has run, in some form or another, like a backbone through the body of Britain for at least 2,000 years. A unique assemblage of ancient trackway, Roman road, medieval path, pilgrim route, coach road and motorway. Today, hereabouts, its modern incarnation – the A1 – loops west, leaving, as it does in many places, forgotten, discontinued ghost highways to their own devices. Continue reading...
Tracing part of an ancient highway in Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire – now the A1 – proves rich in stories going back 2,000 years
After a while it is clear that someone, or something, is following us. A figure, some distance back. But here’s the thing: it doesn’t appear to draw any closer, or get further away. It seems to remain, matching our pace, just at the edge of vision – at the edge of the dusk now descending over the grand Lincolnshire parkland surrounding Burghley House. When we stop, the figure vanishes. When we set off again, it returns. A shrouded shape; a shadow stalking our steps.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise. The old Roman highway we’ve been intermittently tracing from Water Newton to Stamford is a nine-mile track layered with history. Now overgrown and concealed, it was once a bustling leg of a great north-south thoroughfare that has run, in some form or another, like a backbone through the body of Britain for at least 2,000 years. A unique assemblage of ancient trackway, Roman road, medieval path, pilgrim route, coach road and motorway. Today, hereabouts, its modern incarnation – the A1 – loops west, leaving, as it does in many places, forgotten, discontinued ghost highways to their own devices. Continue reading...
