Notes on the Herepath

Herepath is an alternative name for sections of The Ridgeway: it is Anglo-Saxon for Army Road. The greatest military activity near the trail in historic times was indeed at that period – the Romans seem to have preferred their own strategic highways. Later this...

A Cockney Clerk’s Enchantment

(An article by Maurice Mendoza, first Chairman of the Friends, reprinted from Aspects of The Ridgeway) I was first enchanted by the Ridgeway over forty years ago. I had just started as a clerk in what was then the Ancient Monuments Secretariat of the Office of...

Coal on The Ridgeway

A colourful Ridgeway anecdote recounts  its use for the delivery of coal. The source is Highways and Byways of Berkshire  (1919). “There are men living in the Vale of White Horse now who remember the days when coal came from South Wales along the...

Ballooning on the Ridgeway

1) George Graham I’m open to informed contradiction on this, but I believe the first manned flight over The Ridgeway took place on July 16th 1824 at around 19:45. It was the first perhaps the only entirely successful flight of an accident-prone aeronaut, George...

The Ridgeway and Alfred

(reprinted from Aspects of the Ridgeway) From the hills south of Oxford, from Boars Hill and Wytham, the dark line of the Downs marks the horizon. Between it and the river lies the ancient borderland between Wessex and Mercia. The way that runs along the ridge of the...