I’ve enjoyed reading @AlexJLanglands The Ancient Ways of Wessex & learned how #chalkstream #winterbournes & #springs have influenced our culture & cultural heritage - #Ridgeway paths that are now #NationalTrails

Perhaps old news to many, but new to me so here’s a short thread…

Our #ridgeway paths are a bundle of numerous routes which I always assumed followed the high ground for strategic purposes & avoiding the muddy clay vales. Timperley & Brill (1965) described our #ridgeways as literally high ways, although they could have called them “dry ways”.
Langlands (2019. p14) explains that #ridgeways or watershed-ways were used out of necessity to avoid #winterbourne streams, springs and wetlands lower down the escarpments & that in summer when the #winterbournes were dry travellers could use routes along the lower slopes....
Quoting Grundy (1918. p70-72; downloadable on Google), Langland calls these lower routes #summerways and suggests there are summerways parallel to nearly all of the great #ridgeways - twin summerways and ridgeways
Looking at the Downs near Whitehorse Hill, the B4507 road follows the escarpment at a relatively steady height just above the spring line - almost a dot-to-dot line linking spring heads and their #winterbournes - could that be the old #summerway I wonder?
Interestingly, there is another albeit minor footpath even lower down the slope, virtually in the Vale, that also parallels the B4507 and #ridgeway. That seems to link villages, despite having to cross numerous streams.

#LandscapeArchaeology
#summerways maybe a good example of how chalk #winterbournes & springs influenced contemporary culture - transport routes, landuse etc- our cultural heritage & modern recreational pursuits, albeit one that is not widely broadcast

#culturalecosystemservices #landscapearchaeology
Grundy (1918. p70) says that the ridgeway (watershed-way) owes its genesis to the necessity of avoiding streams. Have we mapped our #summerways across the Chalk & do our #ridgeway #NationalTrails & AONBs celebrate them? Could we do so & show people our amazing #winterbournes?
More about the #summerways of Hampshire on-line:

Hawkes, 1925. ‘Old Roads in Central Hants’, Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Arch Soc, 9, 324–33 ;

Grundy, 1918. ‘The Ancient Highways and Tracks of Wiltshire, Berkshire and Hampshire...’, Arch Jn, 75, 69–194
.@NationalTrails @sdnpa @ChilternsAONB @NorthWessexAONB @CranborneChase @AONBFamily
#NationalTrails #Ridgeway #summerways #LandscapeArchaeology #chalkstreams #springs
#winterbournes

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Great article from @AsheSchow. I lived thru the 'Satanic Panic' of the 1980's/early 1990's asking myself "Has eveyrbody lost their GODDAMN MINDS?!"


The 3 big things that made the 1980's/early 1990's surreal for me.

1) Satanic Panic - satanism in the day cares ahhhh!

2) "Repressed memory" syndrome

3) Facilitated Communication [FC]

All 3 led to massive abuse.

"Therapists" -and I use the term to describe these quacks loosely - would hypnotize people & convince they they were 'reliving' past memories of Mom & Dad killing babies in Satanic rituals in the basement while they were growing up.

Other 'therapists' would badger kids until they invented stories about watching alligators eat babies dropped into a lake from a hot air balloon. Kids would deny anything happened for hours until the therapist 'broke through' and 'found' the 'truth'.

FC was a movement that started with the claim severely handicapped individuals were able to 'type' legible sentences & communicate if a 'helper' guided their hands over a keyboard.

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