The Ancient Holloways Of Europe

There are sunken lanes you can come across all across the European countryside that are called holloways, and they seem like trenches dredged through the earth or tunnels cleared through the forest. In the past, they began at the ground level, however over time, under the tread of a million feet and chariots carrying people and things, the floor of these roads have worn away, and eroded down to the bedrock, creating trenches that lay beneath the level of the surrounding landscape. Many of these ancient passages have high banks on both sides and they used to be used as temporary waterways during rains, which deepened and widened the paths, even more, making them permanent features of the landscape. A number of these paths are twenty to thirty feet deep and it can be said that they are more like ravines than roads.

In the photo, you can see a sunken lane at La Meauffe, Manche, France. -Sunken lanes can only be found in areas where the ground is soft, such as the sandstone and chalk-rich counties of southern England, for example. You can see a lot of hollow ways especially in the county of Dorset. It's possible for a holloway to develop in a couple of decades, just like from those along the old Oregon trail, worn down by thousands and thousands of wagons as the settlers moved west across North America, those across Europe are absolutely ancient, with some going before the Roman or Iron age. There are also more recent ones, but those also are more than 300 years old. During the World Wars, a number of these naturally made trenches, such as the Sunken Lane in Beaumont Hamel, France were used as shelters or powerful defense points. Most of these sunken lanes are too small to still be used, but some are used for foot traffic, and a couple of them wide enough for the passage of a single vehicle are still used today.