The path began to descend into the earth as if burrowed out in ancient times by the slithering of a giant worm. As we followed it downwards, the atmosphere changed: the wind became still, the air warmer. The plant life changed, too, the verges of the path becoming a jungle of curling ferns. Up ahead, as the passageway became deeper and the banks on each side reared higher, the sky became obscured by the branches of crowning trees, which in a couple of months’ time would be flush with the green canopy of summer – completing the illusion of a little hidden netherworld.
I was standing in Shute’s Lane, one of the most famous of the sunken paths known as “holloways” that riddle the southern English county of Dorset. Accompanying me were ecologist Andy Jefferies and archaeologist Rosie Cummings, who are leading a project with Natural England that aims, for the first time, to map this ancient network across the region using state-of-the-art 3D cameras alongside crowdsourced reports from hikers and locals on the ground.
Holloways have lent their name to places and people alike. There is a London neighbourhood called Holloway; towns of the same name in Minnesota and Ohio; and a number of famous people who bear the word as a surname, from English comic actor Stanley Holloway to American poet Ariel Williams Holloway. It’s a common enough word that most people have probably never stopped to think about what it means – quite simply, a “hollow way”; a path or lane hollowed out into the soft earth. As for the name, Ancestry lists it as a “topographic name for someone who lived ‘(by the) sunken road’ from Middle English hol(g)h ‘hollow’ + weie ‘way’.”
Some holloways are wide enough to have been tarmacked and now have roads running through them; others remain as footpaths; yet more have become overgrown and forgotten. The thing that unites them is that they are not natural features. Instead, they have been slowly eroded away by human activity: footpaths and livestock routes, carved into deep lanes by millions of footsteps.
The sunken lanes have been eroded over centuries by the footsteps of travellers and their animals (Credit: Andrew Wood/Alamy)
“Holloways are lower than the surrounding field levels because they have been created by movement of people – not deliberately, but over thousands of years,” explained Jefferies, as we stood around 10ft below the adjacent countryside. Holloways are found all over the world, he explained, but a variety of factors – including soft bedrock and a long history of habitation – have come together to make southern England, and Dorset in particular, a hotspot. (There are around 40 miles of holloways in Dorset, by Jefferies’ reckoning, out of around 1,000 total holloway miles in England.)
Mapping the network
Natural England are planning to publish the results of their holloway mapping project in late 2023, with a nationwide map to follow.
“To make a holloway, you need soft rock, a hill and rain – and people needing to get from A to B. Feel how soft this rock is; it’s Bridport sandstone,” he said, his hand easily brushing some crumbly particles away from the wall. Footsteps have worn down a gully in this soft rock, which gradually, combined with rainwater flowing down at the right angle, has become a deep tunnel.
While most habitats are degraded by human activity, holloways depend on it. “If you leave them alone, they become overgrown,” Jefferies said. “The dynamics of sunlight and exposed rock would all change, and many of the species would leave.” The unique, manmade topography of holloways creates conditions for unusual ecosystems to thrive. “At the canopy level, you get nice native woodland,” Jefferies said, motioning to the ash and beech trees that crowned the holloway’s banks. “Then, underneath, you get this weirder stuff. These hart’s-tongue ferns are a really old species – the stable, warm, humid environment of a holloway supports species like this, which are specialist and aren’t adapted to variation.
“Up there,” he motioned to the world above with what I’m sure was a touch of disdain, “with agriculture, exposed air, bright sunlight – these things can’t live.”
The unique ecosystem is home to rare ferns and mosses as well as animals, insects and fungi (Credit: Savo Ilic/Alamy)
The unique atmosphere of the holloways leads even scientific minds into states of treasure-seeking wonder. For Jefferies, the holy grail is goblin’s gold, a vivid green moss that glows in the dark like a carpet of emeralds. It’s been spotted in Hell Lane, which is connected to Shute’s Lane, before, and he remains hopeful he can find it – although, as he noted sadly, it’s not been seen since the 1960s.
It’s not just rare plants that make their homes here. Badgers and rabbits have been seen on camera traps using holloways as highways between woodland areas, and the earthen walls of Shute’s Lane were clearly pockmarked with tiny holes where mason bees made their nests. “Insects, fungi, bryophytes; they all like these damp, stable conditions,” Jefferies said. “We’ve counted at least three amber-listed [threatened in the UK] bird species: dunnock, song thrush and bullfinch. There is likely to be more.”
As they get older and more deeply trodden, holloways become wider at the bottom than they are at the top. Looking up, this gives the impression that the walls are closing in. The sides burrow out laterally to expose balls of roots, making trees appear half-suspended in mid-air. It contributes to the impression of being in a hidden chamber, perceiving the overworld from forbidden angles like a glitch in a video game. “It makes you wonder,” said Jefferies, as we passed one of these knotted tangles of roots supporting a giant ash tree, “is it the wall holding the tree up, or the other way around?”.
Just as intriguing as the holloways’ unique ecology is their rich human history. Although they are difficult to age with certainty, some appear to link the sites of ancient settlements dating to the Saxon and Roman periods, and perhaps even as far back as the Iron Age. For archaeologists like Cummings, they are a fascinating example of how humans have long shaped the landscape. “Shute’s Lane and Hell Lane cover a distance of around 1.3 miles,” she said. “They are likely to have existed first and foremost as the primary route between settlements at Symondsbury and North Chideock but may also have been important for the transportation of building stone from a long-since closed quarry on the nearby hill.”
Graffiti and symbols have been carved into the soft rock at Shute’s Lane (Credit: Daniel Stables)
“These are dynamic habitats – they’re defined by human movement,” she added, as we entered a stretch of the holloway where the walls were richly carved with all manner of graffiti, symbols and glyphs. Some seemed timeless or esoteric: a leaping hare reminiscent of Oxfordshire’s prehistoric Uffington White Horse; ornately rendered Celtic roses and knots. Others less so – I counted two Homer Simpsons, one Squidward and a Mandalorian helmet of varying degrees of artistic accomplishment. The truth is, none of the carvings are likely to be very old – the same softness of rock that allowed the holloway to be carved out in the first place does not wear the same face for very long before its top layer is washed away by wind and rain.
Holloway walks
These holloways follow public footpaths, making them easy to access and explore:
Golden Cap, Dorset: The Golden Cap National Trust estate is famous for its views over the Jurassic Coast, but it’s also home to peaceful woodlands riddled with ancient holloways.
Newton Hollows, Cheshire: The historic Roman road that once connected the 1st-Century CE settlement of Deva Victrix to what is now the town of Warrington still survives as a holloway.
South Downs, Hampshire: The soft chalkland of the South Downs is perfect for the creation of holloways. Walk one famous example that winds between the Hampshire villages of Selbourne and Alton.
“The oldest graffiti we’ve found is from 1974, but most of it is much newer,” Cummings said. “But I love the modern graffiti – it’s part of the story of the holloways.”
While Cummings and Jefferies would like the holloways to be studied further, and to be protected from being destroyed or filled in, the last thing they want is for them to become closed off. On the contrary, they want to encourage people’s sense of wonder at these unique places. “We want to use the mapping to create virtual reality experiences of the holloways, so it’s about intellectual as well as physical access,” Cummings said.
Ultimately, it’s hoped that the project will inspire more people to learn about the holloways: to walk down them, participate in their creation – even to leave their mark on the wall. There is no sense, after all, in being precious about an environment like a holloway, which owes its very existence to flux, movement and change.
We approached an impressively carved human face that had been damaged by a subsequent visitor, its lips crudely scratched away. I suggested it was a shame, but Jefferies was unmoved. “It’s okay,” he said. “It will wash away. That tree will fall down. Life goes on.”
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