Drove roads

In my post the other day about turkeys, Angela commented on the idea of walking turkeys to market. For many centuries it was common practice to drive livestock to market, sometimes enormous distances, for example, cattle from Wales to the London market. When it comes to turkeys (and geese) thousands used to to be driven each year from East Anglia to the Christmas markets in London, a journey taking about three months. Livestock were grazed along the way, often on wide grass verges bordering the road. These grazing areas were known by the descriptive term of 'long acre'. To protect the feet of turkeys and geese leather 'shoes' were made for them or, and I suspect more commonly, their feet were tarred. Along the route there could be found public houses for farmers, or drovers, to obtain refreshment (The Drovers' Arms) but they would normally sleep in the open. In the nineteenth century, with the arrival of the railway and changes in agricultural practices, driving livestock became increasingly less common.

Around here there are many field boundaries that are demarcated by drove roads - the routes farmers drove their livestock to market. Nowadays they are primarily access tracks for farmers to reach their fields. Nearby, a stretch of the A1101 in the direct of Ely is otherwise known as Mildenhall Drove. It is still bordered on both sides for many miles by flat fenland farms and was an important drove road in times past, before it became a tarmacked road suitable for motor vehicles. 

Breach Drove not far from us. Hedges have 
been allowed to grow either side of the drove.

Holywell Drove. This has been concreted. 
During WW2, in the push to increase food
production, The War Agricultural Executive
Committees ('War Ags') brought much land
into crop production and also, to increase 
efficiency, concreted tracks. These were
 needed as tractors became more common.