Alfred Watkins (27 January 1855 – 15 April 1935) was an English businessman and amateur archaeologist who developed the idea of ley lines.

[1] Watkins was born in Hereford to an affluent family which had moved to the town in 1820 to establish several businesses including a flour-mill, a hotel and brewery.

[3] Instituted in 1878, the medal honours any invention, research, publication or other contribution resulting in an important advance in the scientific or technological development of photography or imaging in the widest sense.

[5] On 30 June 1921, Watkins visited Blackwardine in Herefordshire and had the idea that there was a system of straight lines crossing the landscape dating from Neolithic times.

He presented his ideas at a meeting of the Woolhope Naturalists' Field Club of Hereford in September 1921, and published his first books Early British Trackways in 1922 and The Old Straight Track in 1925.

[citation needed] Watkins' work resurfaced in popularised form from the 1960s following the publication of John Michell's book The View over Atlantis in 1969.

[8] In 2004, John Bruno Hare of the Internet Sacred Texts Archive (ISTA) wrote: Watkins never attributed any supernatural significance to leys; he believed that they were simply pathways that had been used for trade or ceremonial purposes, very ancient in origin, possibly dating back to the Neolithic, certainly pre-Roman.