A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
sunken lane
A sunken lane is a track worn below the level of the ground on either side, sometimes by many feet, with banks or hedges standing above it and often meeting overhead. The wearing is done by feet, hooves, wheels, and by water running down the exposed surface afterward, and the depth is a rough measure of age: Centuries of use cut a groove that no single generation could dig.
Etymology
The English term is descriptive, and the more evocative word is holloway, from an Old English phrase meaning a sunken road. Other languages have their own: the French chemin creux, the Dutch holle weg, and in the American Southeast the same feature on old wagon roads is called a trace or a swale.
Notes
Because a sunken lane is cool, shaded, damp, and undisturbed, it holds ferns, mosses, and woodland flowers on ground that may be surrounded by open farmland, and the banks are frequently the oldest continuously undisturbed soil in a parish. They are also archaeological documents: the depth, the branching, and the way they avoid or approach a site record where people were going and for how long.