Ley Lines: The Greatest Landscape Mystery

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One ley lines enthusiast, Philip Heselton, established the Ley Hunter magazine, [23] which launched in 1965. Ley lines have been the subject of heated debate between ley hunters and archaeologists ever since their discovery by Alfred Watkins in the 1920s. Looking back on the book's reception in 2000, Williamson noted that "archaeologists weren't particularly interested, and ley-line people were hostile".

Bel Jacobs explores the history and meaning of ley lines, and talks to the artist they have inspired. The result is a broad-minded and inclusive poetics, a vision of creative work as a constituent of personal and civic life. The ley hunting movement often blended their activities with other esoteric practices, such as numerology and dowsing. If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on BBC Culture, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter .He put forward his idea of ley lines in the 1922 book Early British Trackways and then again, in greater depth, in the 1925 book The Old Straight Track.

From dialogues on poetics to meditations on how one continues to create in a country (world) of non-stop war, these elegantly curated triads reverberate with collective insights. Fidler has established ways in which a standing stone can be 'charged' with energy and then permanently 'fixed'. In 1961, Tony Wedd put forward the belief that leys were established by prehistoric communities to guide alien spacecraft.For six days, tan jones moved through urban and rural landscapes, on the way encountering several holloways – roads or tracks that are significantly lower than the land on either side, and not formed by recent engineering – and The Harrow Way, said to be the oldest road in Britain. Still in print, the book speaks from a more innocent age: blending a love of rural and historic Herefordshire with quotes from WB Yeats and George Borrow, and a charming openness about his own assumptions. Independently of Watkins' ideas, a similar notion—that of Heilige Linien ('holy lines')—was raised in 1920s Germany. I've always been interested in the opposition between the natural and the artificial, the sacred and the un-sacred," explains tan jones. Thom lent the idea of leys some support; in 1971 he stated the view that Neolithic British engineers would have been capable of surveying a straight line between two points that were otherwise not visible from each other.

To assist this growing body of enthusiasts who were looking for their own ley lines in the landscape, in 1927, Watkins published The Ley Hunter's Manual. Ley hunting welcomed those who had "a strong interest in the past but feel excluded from the narrow confines of orthodox academia". The water fountain in the centre emits healthy negative ions, which, presumably can be carried down that energy ley. Hutton noted that this pulled along "a potential fissure between rationalism and mysticism which had always been inherent in the movement".His obsession with leys was a natural outgrowth of his interest in landscape photography and love of the British countryside. Danny Sullivan rightly admires Watkins' original text and does a good job of bringing it back to our attention (I read it immediately after Ley Lines). Ley hunters often differed on how they understood the ley lines; some believed that leys only marked a pre-existing energy current, whereas others thought that the leys helped to control and direct this energy.

Part of the popularity of ley hunting was that individuals without any form of professional training in archaeology could take part and feel that they could rediscover "the magical landscapes of the past".Watkins presents a methodical and thorough exposition of his theories of ley lines, following an earlier much shorter publication, "Early British Trackways" (1922).