The Society of Leyhunters are taking a field trip to Ireland from Saturday 18th September to 25th September. This will be their first expedition across the Irish Sea to explore mythic Ireland.

They will be at Newgrange for the Equinox and plan to visit Loughcrew and many other ancient sites. They are running a bus from Bournemouth to Holyhead, and they are already booked-out. Lawrence Main of Machynlleth, Wales, is the coordinator.

Ley lines are alleged alignments of a number of places of geographical interest, such as ancient monuments and megaliths that are thought by certain adherents to dowsing and New Age beliefs to have spiritual power.

In September 1870, William Henry Black gave a talk to the British Archaeological Association in Hereford titled Boundaries and Landmarks, in which he speculated that “Monuments exist marking grand geometrical lines which cover the whole of Western Europe.”

Their existence was again suggested in 1921 by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, who coined the term ‘ley’ or ‘leylines’ in his book ‘The Old Straight Track’.

The believers in ley lines think that the lines and their intersection points resonate a special psychic or mystical energy. To some, this is verified experience; to others, pseudo-science.

Watkins described the straight alignments of ancient sites across country. Such sites included prehistoric standing stones and stone circles, barrows and mounds, hill forts and earthworks, ancient moats, old pre-Reformation churches, old cross-roads, river crossings, fragments of old straight trackways, and prominent hill tops.

A close examination of Watkins’s leys reveals that he was perceiving a number of different kinds of alignment. A small number were simple alignments of prehistoric sites, but many were what we would now call ‘church lines’ (a phenomenon fully accepted by German archaeologists), ‘corpse ways’, ‘church paths’ and ‘coffin lines’.

It is clear from his writings that Watkins also included straight Native American paths or ‘roads’ too, and such ancient tracks have also been discovered in Ireland.

These lines appear in many different cultures and periods and manifest themselves in varying forms. Ley lines can be the product of ancient surveying, property markings, or commonly-travelled pathways.

Many cultures use straight lines across the landscape. In South America, such lines often are directed towards mountain peaks; the Nazca lines are a famous example of lengthy lines made by ancient cultures.

Straight lines connect ancient pyramids in Mexico. Some Mexican shamans believe that on December 21, 2012, there will be a complete alignment between a window at the ball court at Chichen Itza pyramid complex, the earth, the sun, and the centre of the galaxy, with unknown consequences.
Watkins’s theories have been adapted by later writers. Some of his ideas were taken up by the occultist Dion Fortune of Glastonbury, who featured them in her 1936 novel ‘The Goat-footed God’.

Since then, ley lines have become the subject of more than a few magical and mystical theories. Two British dowsers, Captain Robert Boothby and Reginald A. Smith of the British Museum, have linked the appearance of ley lines with underground streams and magnetic currents.

Guy Underwood conducted various investigations and claimed that crossings of ‘negative’ water lines and positive aquastats explain why certain sites were chosen as holy. He found so many of these ‘double lines’ on sacred sites that he named them ‘holy lines.’ Modern studies such as those by Martin Brennan and Robert Bauval also look at astronomical alignments.

Glastonbury
Glastonbury is undeniably a magical place, easily reachable from Ireland by Ryanair to Bristol and then bus to Glastonbury. Glastonbury is also said to be the centre of several ley lines.

During the 7th millennium BC the sea level rose and flooded the valleys and low-lying ground surrounding Glastonbury so the Mesolithic people occupied seasonal camps on the higher ground, indicated by scatters of flints.

The Neolithic people continued to exploit the reed swamps for their natural resources and started to construct wooden trackways. These included the Sweet Track, west of Glastonbury, which is one of the oldest engineered roads known and the oldest timber trackway discovered in Northern Europe.
Tree-ring dating (dendrochronology) of the timbers has enabled very precise dating of the track, showing it was built in 3807 or 3806 BC. It has been claimed to be the oldest road in the world.

The track was discovered in the course of peat digging in 1970, and is named after its discoverer, Ray Sweet. Built in the 39th century BC, during the Neolithic period, the track consisted of crossed poles of ash, oak and lime (Tilia) which were driven into the waterlogged soil to support a walkway that mainly consisted of oak planks laid end-to-end. Curves at the bases of the poles show that they were from coppiced woodland.

Most of the track remains in its original location, and several hundred metres of it are now actively conserved using a pumped water distribution system. Other portions are stored at the British Museum, London, while a reconstruction can be seen at the Peat Moors Centre near Glastonbury.

Since the discovery of the Sweet Track, it has been determined that it was actually built along the route of an even earlier track, the Post Track, dating from 3838 BC and so 30 years older.

The remains of the magnificent Glastonbury Abbey also attract visitors. It is possibly the oldest Christian Abbey in Britain.

Richard Whiting, the last Abbot of Glastonbury, was executed with two of his monks on 15th November, 1539 during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. In 1191, monks at the abbey claimed to have found the graves of Arthur and Guinevere to the south of the Lady Chapel of the Abbey church, which was visited by a number of contemporary historians including Giraldus Cambrensis.

In some Arthurian literature Glastonbury is identified with the legendary island of Avalon. An early Welsh poem links Arthur to the Tor, a 518-foot high hill with tower overlooking the town, and a holy well, the Chalice Well and garden, at its foot. The water is believed to possess healing qualities.

Ireland’s early Iron Age Road at Corlea
The ley hunters will probably want to visit Corlea Trackway Visitor Centre in Longford, where you can see the the only known example in Ireland of an Early Iron Age road. In 1984, at Corlea near Keenagh, Co. Longford, removal of peat by Bord na Móna’s production machinery revealed a great timber roadway, which had lain buried in the bog for centuries.

Tree ring analysis carried out at Queen’s University, Belfast revealed the trees used were felled late in 148 B.C. or early in 147 B.C. In 1985 the roadway at Corlea was excavated under the auspices of the National Monuments Branch of the Office of Public Works, and there is a fine visitors’ centre there.