Re: Meaning of Rodway and Rodaway
-
In reply to:
Meaning of Rodway and Rodaway
Sidney Rodaway 4/10/00
Sid,
Perhaps you are right, but Alfred Watkins in his early work (The Old Straight Track, publ Hereford, England c1920) cites a Herefordshire Rodway placename in addition to the Somerset/Avon one. Mr Watkins was the man who recognised so-called 'ley lines' as early trackways used as trading routes or for other, perhaps religious, purposes. He gives his meaning of Rodway as 'one who made roads', a man of singular importance in those far off times. The two staves of the 'Cerne Abbas Giant', a prehistoric chalk figure in the South Downs, are believed to have been sighting rods, invaluable in the surveying and laying of straight tracks. Many of these tracks have been proved to run directly through churches, standing stones or stone circles, hill forts and river crossings, and the two Rodway placenames that I have discovered have subsequently been identified as lying on 'ley' lines. The Saxon/Old English 'ridan', to ride as quoted is probably therefore an etymological derivation of an older Celtic root.