One wonders if the northern Hurstpierpoint “New Road” has any of those features? With trees along most of the hedgerows one cannot sense a pattern but a ruler on the two and a half inch O.S. map shows that travelling from north to south for 3 miles, some uphill stretches point to Wolstonbury Hill, whilst downhill stretches point to the Church. Hurstpierpoint Church is Victorian but built on a Saxon site. Could it be that people were measuring narrow angles horizontally and vertically in Neolithic times? Mathematicians designed Stonehenge and Avebury and much earlier work would have preceded such work.
If one accepts these peculiar lines one can only assume that they were all formed before Roman times but there appears to be no way of giving them dates. Stonehenge is dated about 2000 B.C. but we can presume much investigation was done for thousands of years before and in stages. This section is rather inaccurate but is there a better idea for these pre-Roman Roads?
Another idea is that the word combe, coombe, (or in Wales) cwm means a short steep sided valley in the side of a hill and Welcombe Bottom below Wolstonbury Hill is a good example, a place where grazing animals could be safely herded and on the steepest sides, fenced in. The hunters could have formed lines pointing there! The Roman farm roads are 25 pedes wide but turnpike roads are 30 feet or more suggesting that they were droveways but planned by Stone Age mathematicians who had already marked out the present Parish lines.
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