He could plant a tree faster than anyone else without appearing to hurry. He would dig the hole, ease the sapling into place, heel it in, stake and enclose it in the time that most planters would need to barely scrape the dirt. Turfing, he would cut a perfect oblong, gently slide the levelled blade and up would come a turf as precisely shaped as a brick, ready for stacking and, later, for warming the hamlet’s cottages.
On a late summer’s day in 1970 Ray loaded his trailer and, just as he was thinking of stopping for the day, decided he’d cut one or two more turves. His spade struck something hard. He knew it wasn’t a rock. He shifted the cut but the blade still stopped only an inch or two below the surface. He dug carefully around until he exposed the end of a log. Instinctively, Ray knew what it was.
He dug carefully round it. As he expected, the log had been driven at an angle. He started to dig another hole about a yard away –found nothing, Tried again and struck timber. Ray Sweet had found an “X”. He moved 6ft away and found only one pole But he again excavated to reveal the remains of another timber “X”. He looked around and saw nobody. He partly refilled the holes and went home for supper. All he had to do now was to unload his trailer, stack the turves into neat cairns to dry.
Emma had a nice mutton joint from the butchers, fresh vegetables from the garden and ice cream from the village shop. As it was Friday they would dress up and head for the pub. Emma would join her women friends at their favourite table and the men would roam between table and bar. He collected his beer and Emma’s shandy and joined his friends at the big table where they would talk about farming, football and films on the telly. A coarse joke or two would be told, just too quietly for the coven to overhear.
“I passed your field this afternoon,” Joe Banks said. “You looked as though you were digging deeper than usual. Treasure hunting?”
Ray said, “I think I’ve found a bit of an old causeway. Two crossed poles.”
“Christian cross?” Joe asked.
“No. An “X” – like Cedric uses when he signs his name.”
Cedric pretended to be insulted. “Cheeky blighter. If you don’t mind, Ray, I’d like to have a look at your field – shall we say 9 o’clock tomorrow?”
He asked his friends not to talk about it yet.
In the morning Ray uncovered the posts and watched his friend trowel the dirt away.
“As I thought, Ray it’s a prehistoric causeway or raised track. This part of Somerset is full of antiquity and legend. Avalon, Camelot, Glastonbury, The Tor; one of King Arthur’s grave; they’re like the day before yesterday compared with this structure. I need to get Flinders.”
The following Monday an excited Professor Flinders declared that this could be a major historical find. Those two crosses indicated the direction of the path and it justified a full investigation. They might even find the planks which rested on the crosses.
“Cover up the holes and the Natural History Department will fence off the site for a major dig,” Flinders said. “I’ll get my students to help. This find won’t make us rich, but you could be famous.”
The rest, as they say, is history. The experts carefully removed what they could. They carbon-dated the timber, they counted the tree-rings and produced a report. Ray Sweet had found the oldest and the longest Early Neolithic causeway in the world. Flinders confidently dated it to 3807 BCE. Acidic peat had protected it for nearly 6,000 years’
“We’ll name this The Sweet Road,” Flinders said to Ray.
That’s what it’s called on the Ordnance Survey Map of the boggy Somerset Levels.
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