Alfred Watkins - Legacy

Legacy

Watkins' ideas are not generally accepted by archaeologists. At first it was thought that the ancient Britons were too primitive to have devised such an arrangement, but this is no longer the argument used against the existence of leys. More crucially there are so many ancient features that finding some in approximate alignment is highly likely. Watkins was sensitive to such arguments and argued for caution. He also drew up a list according to which landscape features could be given values between ¼ and 1 point, five points or more being required as evidence of a ley.

Watkins' work was revived and popularised from the 1960s following John Michell's book The View over Atlantis published in 1969. Michell merged Watkins' ideas with mystical concepts that were absent in Watkins' own work. In 2004, John Bruno Hare of 'Internet Sacred Texts Archive' 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. .. He was an intensely rational person with an active intellect, and I think he would be a bit disappointed with some of the fringe aspects of ley lines today. —John Bruno Hare, 17 June 2004

In 2002 Watkins had a beer named after him, "Alfred Watkins' Triumph", brewed by Wye Valley Brewery Ltd.