<< Feature Articles >> The Puddingstone Trail - fact or fantasy?
Submitted by Thorgrim on Monday, 07 December 2020 Page Views: 22696
Multi-periodCountry: England Type: Marker StoneInternal Links:
This article was originally published in 2005: Is there a lost Neolithic trade route that took high quality flint from the mines at Grimes Graves to Stonehenge? Dr Ernest Rudge certainly thought so and spent many years researching what he called a "Lost Highway". Rudge located many puddingstone boulders that he thought acted as marker stones along the way. After his death in 1984, his work was summarised by John Cooper of the Department of Palaeontology at London's Natural History Museum. His summary gives a detailed itinerary, much of which I have now plotted on the Megalithic Map. I have John's permission to use information from his publication and he is delighted that further research will continue.
Do the stones mark an ancient trade route? Is there evidence of Pagan worship? Long distance trade routes certainly existed long before the coming of the Romans and the Icknield Way is an undisputed track from 'Seahenge' to Stonehenge via Grimes Graves- its name changes en route from Peddars Way to Icknield Way to Ridgeway. So why was there a need for another trackway? Perhaps the answer lies in the route chosen in as much as it is not as direct as the Icknield Way - it makes a dog-leg into Essex and comes close to Colchester at Stanway (meaning the stone way). The route then goes on to St Albans before heading directly towards Wiltshire. The suggestion is that the track served communities in what is now Suffolk, Essex and Hertfordshire. (See sketch map here)
What is Puddingstone?
Puddingstone is so named because it looks like a plum pudding stuffed with fruit. Rounded flint pebbles in river beds were covered in sediment that was turned into quartzite under immense pressure. Then glaciers tore up the river beds and sections became conglomerate boulders that were embedded in the ice and moved south as the glaciers advanced. When the glaciers melted, the boulders were left behind in debris of mud, gravel and clay.Apart from clay and gravel, East Anglia has no stone other than chalk with flint nodules, so large erratic boulders would probably have had special significance to early inhabitants of the region. Puddingstone varies from the younger "iron-puddingstone" of Essex (one million years old) to the more angular puddingstones of Hertfordshire and Bradenham (55 million years old) and then to the sandstone sarsens which sometimes just have a narrow "stringer" of pebbles. Dr Rudge regarded them all as puddingstones and markers of his highway.
Where are the Puddingstones?
Dr Rudge began his research sometime in the 1940's and published his first paper in 1949. Thereafter, he continued to publish his work in popular and academic journals, copies of which I retain. He was no armchair theorist, but a dedicated fieldworker who, accompanied by his wife Lilian, went out to search for puddingstones. He began close to home near Waltham Abbey (see Holyfield). Initially it seemed that puddingstones were found to mark places where lanes crossed or forked. Then he found boulders marking fords and so indicating safe river crossings.As he discovered more such stones, it became apparent to him that the stones were beginning to form a long distance trackway. Then he went on to search for stones that would continue in the directions that he assumed i.e. towards Grimes Graves and towards Stonehenge. The key questions here is - did Dr Rudge only search for and record puddingstones that lay along the route that he had determined in advance? The answer appears to be "Yes" as there are other puddingstones nearby marking lane junctions and fords that he did not include (e.g. Standon and Ugley).
This does not diminish Rudge's theory, but it blurs it somewhat. Central to this is the issue of whether today we find erratics exactly where the glaciers dropped them - or whether they have been moved by the hand of man for whatever purpose. They certainly have been moved in modern times - some to inn yards as mounting blocks, others as lanes were widened into roads and even taken into gardens for rockeries and grottoes (Saffron Walden). Dr Rudge was accused of ignoring the random scatter of erratics and answered thus "For fourteen miles from the White Notley stone to Boyton Hall have been found a series of unusually large boulders, in conspicuous positions, with no scatter of smaller specimens between. Intensive searching over several years failed to find any other conglomerate stones, emphasising the truth that this exercise has never consisted in drawing an arbitrary line through such a scatter to suit the whim of the searcher."
Pagan Worship?
There can be no doubt that erratic puddingstones were special in an otherwise stone-less landscape. They are still to be found by fords, by lane crossings and also in ancient churchyards. So in addition to asking ourselves if they were used as way markers, we can also wonder if they were venerated. Puddingstones are built into the fabric of some early churches (Magdalen Laver), which seems very sensible when all other stone would have been brought in by barge and wagon from elsewhere. Some stones were not used in the building though, yet they remain in the churchyard (Tilty).A strong indication that puddingstones may have been worshipped as pagan religious objects may be deduced from accounts of the earliest Christian missionaries to the Pagan Anglo-Saxons. In 601 AD, Pope Gregory instructed missionaries to the English that "the temples of the idols in England should not on any account be destroyed. Augustine should smash the idols, but the temples should be sprinkled with holy water and turned into churches". This tells us that many Saxon churches were built on the sites of pagan temples. Furthermore, in 625 AD, Pope Boniface wrote to King Edwin condemning idol worship - saying "How can such stocks and stones have power to assist you when they are made from perishable materials by the labour of your own subjects?" Whether natural or carved (Standon is surely woman shaped), the pagans of East Anglia can have only worshipped puddingstones and sarsens as they were the ONLY stones in the area.
Where do we go from here?
Like John Cooper, I am left sitting on the fence. Puddingstones do mark fords and lane junctions. They are found in ancient churchyards and built into the foundations of Saxon churches. They are wonderful, beautiful and weird. However, Dr Rudge was clearly determined to find and plot those stones that led in the directions that he wanted. There are other stones, off the track, equally valid as waymarkers - so I also see a broad network of local tracks rather than just a single long distance path. That does not mean that the Lost Trackway from Grimes Graves to Stonehenge is an illusion anymore than that the presence of our local road networks mean that motorways do not exist. We know that there was considerable trade in the Neolithic - e.g. stone axes from Langdale in Cumbria finding their way to Ireland, Lincolnshire and Devon. There is nothing improbable about Rudge's highway - it's perfectly possible and on balance I would say - probable. Initially sceptical, I am now much more inclined to acceptance after plotting it on the Megalithic Map. The unique properties of the largest scale "pop-up" maps through the East Anglian sections show the Puddingstone Trail very clearly indeed.So now, we need to get out there to find and photograph as many puddingstones as we can. Will they confirm the trail or blur the picture by showing a confused network of locations? This is original research and I would appreciate all the help I can get. To see information on the puddingstones so far found and described on the Megalithic Portal, enter "puddingstone" into the Search Box or click here. The pop-up maps are available by clicking on the first orange icon from any site. The full itinerary can be found in "The Lost Trackway - from Grime's Graves to Stonehenge" by Ernest A. Rudge, Ph.D. edited and prepared for publication by John Cooper in 1994. See also Megalithic Portal exclusive article on the "The Sacred Stones of Essex".
Final Word.
Ernest Rudge traced his trackway from Grime Graves in Norfolk to Great Bedwyn in Wiltshire. Then he wrote:"This is as far as I am able to follow the trail of boulders, for age and infirmity - I am approaching my ninetieth birthday - demands human forces that I am now incapable of commanding, and I must leave it to a younger man to close that tantalising short gap of a few miles, to the ford over the river Avon, towards which the line of boulders is undoubtedly pointing... And so to Durrington and the traveller will then stand at the end of The Avenue and see before him the solitary sentinel of Stonehenge, the Heel Stone." Dr Rudge's challenge has now been accepted.
View all the puddingstones.
Note: Mike Burgess has completed his nine-year project examining Dr. Ernest Rudge's doubtful Puddingstone Track theory. The write-up is now available on his web site Hidden East Anglia. Mike has photographed and measured every stone he could access from Norfolk to Oxfordshire and finds that sadly the idea doesn't hold water. But as we like cataloguing and 'collecting' stones in the landscape we're glad he did it.
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