Drovers' road
[1] Many drovers' roads were ancient routes of unknown age; others are known to date back to medieval or more recent times.
In Wales, the start of many droveways, drovers' roads are often recognisable by being deeply set into the countryside, with high earth walls or hedges.
Rural England, Wales and Scotland [5] are crossed by numerous drove roads that were used for this trade, many of which are now no more than tracks, and some lost altogether.
[8] Controlling herds of three or four hundred animals on narrow roads, keeping them healthy, and feeding them en route over several weeks or months required expertise and authority.
Whereas several Persons have of late used and carried on the Business of a Drover of Cattle, and of a common Badge Carrier, Buyer and Seller of Com and Grain, butter and Cheese, within the County Palatine, of Durham, without, being thereunto licenced according to the Statute in that Behalf made and provided: These are to give Notice, that every Person offending against the said Act of Parliament, forfeits the Sum of Five Founds for every Offence, and that if any Person shall from hence- forth presume to use or carry on the said Business of a Drover or Badger, within the said County of Durham, without a proper Licence, he will be prosecuted according to Law.
[citation needed] Many lengths of the Welsh Road through the English Midlands coincide with manorial or parish boundaries, suggesting that it predates them and probably had pre-Roman origins as an ancient trackway.
[16] In medieval Spain the existence of migratory flocks on the largest scale, which were carefully organised through the system of the Mesta, gave rise to orderly drovers' roads, called cabañeras in Aragon, carreradas in Catalonia, azadores reales, emphasising royal patronage, in Valencia, and most famous of all, cañadas, including three major cañadas reales, in Castile.
In Languedoc the transhumance pathways, more restricted by agriculture and orchards and less organized than those of Iberia, were the drailles that fed into the main carraïres, which led from coastal plains to summer mountain pastures.
[19] In the Kingdom of Naples, patterns of transhumance established in Late Antiquity were codified by Frederick II Hohenstaufen, but the arrival of rulers of Aragon in the 15th century saw the organisation of sheepways, tratturi delle pecore on the Aragonese model, and pastoralists were given privileges and restrictions, collectively termed the dogana, that were reminiscent of those of the Mesta.
Many of the greatest stock fairs, such as Tan Hill, Yarnbury and White Sheet in Wiltshire, were held on ancient sites to which cattle were driven for centuries, perhaps since prehistoric times.
Cattle were shod with iron shoes; geese could be driven through a pan of tar mixed with sawdust, grit or ground shells or fitted with pads to protect their feet.
[23] Daniel Defoe recorded that 150,000 turkeys were driven from East Anglia to London each year, the journey taking three months to complete.
— Welshman[26]The regularity of the Welsh trade across Wiltshire is proved by an inscription in Welsh on an old inn (now a private house) in Stockbridge, still visible in the twentieth century: Gwair tymherus porfa flasus (worthwhile grass and a pleasant pasture) and Cwrw da cwal cysurus (good beer and a comfortable shelter).
In some places, such as Australia, New Zealand,[29] and parts of the British Isles,[30] rural roads are often separated from adjoining paddocks and fields by both a hedge or fence and a wide grass verge.
The long acre provided an important resource for such flocks and herds, perhaps forming a significant part of a small farmer's pasture.
ALL that old-accustomed and well-established DROVER'S HOUSE, called Tydd Gote Inn, with the Barn, Stable, Granary, and other Out-houses, Yard, Garden, and several Closes of rich Grass Land thereto belonging, containing Twenty Acres (more or less), situated in Tydd St Giles, the Isle of Ely, adjoining the turnpike-road from Long Sutton to Wisbech.
[33]Droving declined during the nineteenth century, through a combination of agricultural change, the introduction of railway transport from the 1840s, cattle disease, and more intensive use of the countryside through which the stock had passed for hundreds of years.
For example, importation of cattle from Donaghadee in Ireland to Portpatrick, which would then be driven through Wigtownshire, had reached 20,000 per year in 1812, but fell to 1,080 in 1832, because they came by steamer directly to ports at Liverpool and Glasgow instead.
[34] As the use of driveways declined and rights of way and responsibility for maintenance were disputed, evidence of usage by drivers could be given in court, as happened in Wisbech St Mary, Isle of Ely in 1843.
They held that right of the respondents to the drove-stances could not be sustained, and therefore the interlocutor must be remitted, and the case on the other points sent back to the Court of Session.
The question before their Lordships were two in number- first, as to the form, whether the appeal was competent; and, secondly as to the merits, whether the respondents, owners and drovers of cattle and sheep, had a right to stance - a place for resting and feeding their cattle on their way from the north and west Highlands to the south -on the lands of Inverouran and Inverruach, in the parish of Glenorchy, of which the appellant was the proprietor.
The respondents, in their pleadings, say certain places for resting and refreshing sheep and cattle on their journey are , indispensable; these, places are situated at average distances of 10 miles from each other, and are invariable and indispensable accompaniments to the drove roads And the Court in its interlocutor "finds that there are relative averments fit to be the subject of a jury trial" But the right claimed appeared to nothing less than a right to pasture the cattle certain distances in the drove-roads on other men's lands, without payment and without con sent or agreement.
In a case of this kind in England, if the owner of fields lying by the side of the road brought an action of trespass because the cattle ate the herbage at the sides of the road, the only defence would be that of excuse, because the drover could not prevent them, but it would be no defence that the drover had a right to allow them take it; still less that the owner of adjoining fields was to bound furnish places where the cattle might rest and feed on the way.
[38] An example of regular annual sheep droving is described as taking place "a short time before the [First World] war" in England between Dorset and Hertfordshire.
