Head To Head
Log In
Register
The Modern Antiquarian Forum »
harrow way
Log In to post a reply

6 messages
Topic View: Flat | Threaded
Seventhorn Inn
7 posts

Re: harrow way
Jul 29, 2009, 22:12
Sorry Yoseph, I forgot to mention, the best info I have to hand is R.Hippisley Cox's 'The Green Roads of England' (1914 London: Methuen). I've got the 1973 Garnstone Press facsimile reprint of the 1923 edition. More informative is 'The Lost Roads of Wessex' by C.Cochrane (1969 David and Charles and 1972 Pan Books). Hippisley Cox says the Harrow Way starts in Weyhill (site of the famous fair where Henchard sold his wife in 'The Mayor of Casterbridge'),or perhaps it terminates there.

Weyhill Fair was interesting in itself. They had an initiatory ceremony called 'Horning the Colt',which had an accompanying song comparing the initiate to a bull lost in the briars (or something like it) - I think Martin Carthy's covered it. I suspect the village exists because of the fair, which has probably been going on since the Neolithic (up to the 1930s), while the village never got a church until the nineteenth century as it was part of Penton Grafton parish originally. The 'Wey' in the place name comes from OE 'weoh' - 'heathen shrine'.

The Modern Antiquarian Forum Index