Discuss: Going to Ground: Britain’s Holloways

Having just returned from my first, eye opening visit to the UK, Robert Macfarlane added to my wish list for my next trip which includes hoping to find an uncovered Roman Rd.

As a boy in Jackson, MS in the 1950’s, I loved to walk on original, sunken sections of the Natchez Trace.  Their cool was a blessed relief from the humid, heat.  My imagination reveled as I walked where so many had trod homeward bound before me.

Here in Black Mountain,NC, the oldest 2 roads “up the mountain” (Royal Gorge and Old Field Gap) are happily only available to hikers.  The later Bridle Path Rd. was cut by Davy Crockett and friends to avoid the toll imposed on the Royal Gorge Rd. and so named because those who used it had to walk their horses holding their bridles.  It has been lost under an all weather gravel road called Crooked Creek.

North of Mt. Airy, NC, I have walked part of the original road cut “down the mountain” from Fancy Gap, VA.  Called the Good Hope Rd., the top portion is preserved in the Devil’s Den Nature Preserve.  It was supplanted by US 52 just east of it and, now, I-77 to its west so it lives on.

Because the areas surrounding these roads are being preserved, they provide the means to access re-appearing islands of wildness both natural and of human history using the well worn footprints of those who came before us to minimize our impact on that wildness.

I hope that others will write to tell us of old roads and trails they’ve enjoyed.

I lived my sub-teen and early teens in the countryside of Maryland. Life on the farm was often busy and yet there was time to play and explore and there were hundreds of small places full of charm and wildlife. A ravine might have formed from erosion but then fenced off from plowed fields became sanctuary for birds and rabbits. I moved to California and was awestruck by the immensity of mountains and deserts and I loved that but never felt the same joy and pleasure as experienced along small creeks seeking frogs and feeling dappled light filtered through tree leaves. It still seems amazing to me that a feeling of total wilderness existed in microcosm a mere 60 miles from the nation’s capital.

Our farm crowned a large flattened hill but where the land fell downslope were woods, deciduous at first with pines nearer the swamp. Small creeks flowed toward a larger creek and boggy areas made home for snakes and frogs. Evidence of long gone beaver ponds displayed as meadows grown on silt. Each part of the landscape had virtues. Quail whistled from grassy fields and rabbits burrowed under growths of brambles and wind blown weeds along fence lines. Squirrels climbed in the black walnut trees and deer peeped from the edge of wooded areas.

I read many, many books and relived the adventures in these woods and saw pirates burying treasure and imagined the experiences of the Swiss Family Robinson. Everything was there, partly in my mind, but greatly enhanced by the wilderness I savored.

I’ve walked the sunken lanes of Gilbert White’s Selborne, though before I read this article I’d never heard the term “holloways.” It’s an eerie feeling to have the twisted roots of trees beside you and even above your head, and the branches closing out the sky. And I loved the author’s mention of Geoffrey Household’s “Rogue Male” and the main character’s hideout from a Nazi killer—it’s one of the best thrillers ever written.  When he goes to ground in the holloway, we think he really has a chance to survive Hitler’s seeker.
This was a lovely article and one that makes me eager to go back to England one more time!

I heard a radio interview with Robert Macfarlane, talking about his book, The Wild Places last October, and was utterly captivated - not only by the subject matter (including the Holloways), but also by Robert himself. He paints a rich picture with beautiful prose (”... so tall the sides of the holloway, that light penetrated its depths only in thin lances…” that is always informative and illustrative, but never impenetrable - unlike some of the Holloways.

My wife was unable to buy me a copy of the book a few months ago, so settled for Robert’s first book Mountains of the Mind, which I am currently absorbing. Based on this article, I simply have to obtain a copy of Wild Places; whereas Mountains seems to require some effort, reflecting the subject, Wild Places looks like a book I would devour in no time at all.

When I next return the Britain, a visit to the Holloways will be one special item on the to-do list.

I would love to make that map of the little wildernesses everyone encounters!
As an ex-pat Brit living in Indiana and Arizona, I understand the contrasts yet similarities between the smaller and larger wild places.

In the inner suburbs of Washington, DC, pretty much every square inch of soil has been developed. A landscape that was once colonial farmland, and centuries earlier open woodland, is now subdivisions and shopping plazas. But between the developments you can sometimes find easements that had been left alone for whatever reason.

One such sliver of nature existed near my home in Camp Springs, Maryland along a stream named “Tinker’s Creek”. Hardly anyone ever ventured into this remnant of the wilderness. People were afraid of being attacked, or robbed, or something. It was actually much more likely they would be mugged outside the local supermarket. I think it was really the untamed nature that scared them; the unpaved paths and so forth.

But what a wonderful thing to have near your house, this little reserve. I would go down quite often to clear the trails myself, and walk under the canopy of hardwoods, startling a deer, or a nesting owl in the early spring. Owls that would venture into our backyards on nighttime hunting excursions. We even had beavers build a dam across the creek and maintain a lodge there for a year or two. So refreshing to the soul to walk along that creek for an hour or two, and it was right under our noses. I was secretly glad that people were afraid of it, so that I could have the quiet paths to myself.

How far off course have we gone in societal evolution that we’ve lost our appreciation for the sublime subtleties of nature’s beauty? Living our entire lives in bunkers of concrete and steel; walking through shopping malls instead of forests? Listening to the roar of highway traffic instead of the rush of a woodland stream? Never seeing a single star at night? What a strange world we’ve created.

“Holloways” was a new term for me too, and I’ve been actively in the business of finding old roads, trails, and paths for a good many years.  A point to remember is that there was in England after 1555 a royal specification for public roads.  They were to be no less than ten feet across the running surface and they were to be excavated to a grade of 5% or less.  So, many of the deep cuts were not erosion produced (though perhaps erosion enhanced) but rather were the result of poor folks paying taxes with sweat.

As a general rule (varying with soil type) erosion cuts a “V” shape while excavation leaves the bottom flat or slightly concave.

Neat article.

I was interested to hear of Britain’s Holloways.  My grandfather was Charles Henry Holloway from Hampshire.  He was a trained gardener as was his father I think, and worked all his life for the big houses of Hampshire ie The Wakes, Selbourne and Head Gardener at Buriton House (Bonham Carters) and also at Tidworth House and Carisbrooke Castle. showed flowers etc at Chelsea and was requently the recipient of prizes.  The origin of Holloway fits.