SOME SUNKEN TRACK-WAYS NEAR SAFFRON WALDEN. 243
developed in the course of centuries into one of these deep
sunken track-ways.
Finally, what is the age of these sunken track-ways ?
This is a question it is not easy to answer with precision.
There has been, of course, a certain amount of pack-horse traffic
from extremely early times, and it is difficult to fix any definite
limit to the possible antiquity of these track-ways, which appear
to have been caused by that traffic. In the case of the track
coming from Newport, however, there does seem to be some
evidence as to its age. Thus, there can be little or no reasonable
doubt that it is the "Short Ditch" which gave name to the Manor
of Shortgrove, in which it is situated ; for, in Domesday Book,8
that manor appears as "Scortegrave" and as "Sortegrave"
(the latter evidently a scribal error). This name is obviously
derived from the O.E. words scort, short, and graef, a ditch or
trench.9 The track-way must, therefore, have been already in
existence at least as early as Saxon times (say, in the fifth,
sixth or seventh century), when our manors were first organised.10
It may be, indeed, of much earlier date ; for it has the appear-
ance or having once been an early tribal boundary, as well as
(or before it was) a track way ; and the existence on its southern
side of two parallel banks, suggests that it may have been intended
to defend the country lying to the south of it from some enemy
threatening from the north.
However all this may be, we may assume, that these narrow
sunken track-ways continued to be used until the period when
travel on horseback and horse back transport of merchandise
gave place, in the Middle Ages, to travel and transport by means
of wheeled vehicles.
8 Sec V.C.H. Essex, i., pp. 463 and 520 (1903).
9 This implies the existence, somewhere near, of a longer trench ; but I know not where
that may have been.
10 The fact that only a few hundred yards distant, at Mutlow Hill, in Wenden parish, stood
the Moot-low or Moot-hill of Uttlesford Hundred, may have some connection with the matter.
Schoolboys' Essays on Birds.—We learn from the 38th Annual
Report (for 1928) of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds that
in the County competitions instituted by the Society in connection with
its Bird and Tree Scheme for nature-study in elementary schools, the
Ingatestone Boys' School tied for 2nd prize with Affpuddle (Dorset) in
the Open Class.—Ed.