63
PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS
Alignments of Ancient Sites in Essex:
New Judgment on "The Old Straight Track"
BY LAURENCE S. HARLEY, B.Sc., M.I.B.E.
[Delivered 9.9 March 1952]
I talk today about a subject which thirty years ago was
a startling, dramatic theory propounded by a man of
repute as an inventor but of little standing in archaeology.
After a period of vigorous support, and as vigorous denun-
ciation, the theory of The Old Straight Track seems to have
been all but killed by that most effective and crushing device,
professional neglect, so that in Antiquity for March, 1951,
Mr. O. G. S. Crawford can write". . . Where today are . . .
the Old Straight Trackers or the Phoenician tin-traders?
There is no room for these plausible hucksters in the crowded
market place of modern archaeology ''.
It seemed to me that before completing the obsequies of
this theory, it might be well to examine its claims from a
new point of view.
Alfred Watkins published in 1922 a little book entitled
Early British Trackways, which was the substance of his
lecture given to the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club at
Hereford in the previous September, after some months'
work in the field.
In 1925, he published his elaborately-documented book
The Old Straight Track, which was reprinted in 1933 and
again in 1945; the need for two reprints shows that the book
had considerable popular appeal.