An Early Norfolk Trackway: The “Drove” Road

Abstract

It is difficult to prove that a road is prehistoric—in many cases more difficult to prove that it is not—but the fourteen miles of the Norfolk “Drove,” “Droveway,” or “Harling Drove,” which connects the fenland at Blackdike, Hockwold, with Peddar's Way on Roudham Heath, have certain claims to: that distinction. Though not so well known as the Northumberland “Drove Way” or the Surrey “Drove. Road,” and probably a favourite route in mediæval times for flocks and herds to and from the fens, its origin must be sought in a much more remote period, and as for the greater part of its course its primitive condition is still retained, it is easy—possibly with the mental elimination of all trees from the landscape—to picture it as it was in its early days.