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By Root 382 0

and it remains one of the most persistent myths in our canon of beliefs about our footpath network. It was enough to scare many landowners from allowing funeral processions across their land, although once a path has been established, it was generally treated with the utmost respect, even dread. Corpse paths went unploughed, and were left to become hard and dry, as they would have to be for the task of ferrying a dead body across sometimes punishing terrain. For the coffin bearers, there were numerous customs to which they must cling in the execution of their grisly task. Many believed that the corpse must be carried feet forward. Oftentimes, corpse roads deliberately crossed streams, stiles and crossroads, for these were thought to be liminal places that held the spirits and prevented them wreaking havoc back in this world. It was the terror of allowing the spirit to escape, and then return to haunt old friends and neighbours, that underpinned the most important custom on corpse roads, that the funeral procession must not, under any circumstances, deviate one inch from the prescribed route. Calamity would await those who failed. Is this perhaps one root of the terror that so many people still feel these days about deviating from the official path?

Many of our corpse roads have been ploughed up or built on, but many have not, and their ghosts can be found not just in the misty fringes of our islands, but also in some unexpectedly prosaic corners. Paul Devereux, in his book Fairy Paths & Spirit Roads, locates examples at Saintbury in Gloucestershire, Thurmaston on the outskirts of Leicester, across Otmoor in Oxfordshire, near Abertillery in the south Wales valleys and at Brailes on the edge of the Cotswolds in Warwickshire. A fine example can be found at the southern edge of the spreading hinterland of Redditch new town in Worcestershire: starting as Burial Lane in Ham Green and continuing along a bridleway and ancient holloway to the church at Feckenham.

Self-evidently, it is in the less urbanised parts of the land that old corpse paths can most easily be found. The South West is riddled with them, none more famous than the Lich Way across Dartmoor. Lich, or lych, is an old English word for ‘corpse’, and is more commonly associated with the thousands of lichgates to be found in churchyards everywhere. Such gates originated as the dedicated entrance to the churchyard for funeral processions: their roof would give mourners shelter and a few examples survive of integral wooden or stone slab shelves on which the coffin (or, rather more frequently, the corpse in a shroud) would have rested. The funeral service would begin at the gate, with the priest intoning, ‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ before leading the party to the freshly dug graveside.

The Dartmoor corpse road sounded fascinating, and I was eager to try it. Its celebrity is due to its considerable length, around 12 miles, the only path crossing this part of the moor from one side to the other. Lydford, on the north-western flank of the moor, was for centuries the largest parish in England, its jurisdiction covering almost the entire moor. This meant that anyone dying in or around the villages on the eastern and southern edges of Dartmoor – such as Bellever, Princetown, Postbridge and Hexworthy – was obliged to be carted to Lydford. The corpse road across the middle of the moor was by far the most direct route, but it was difficult, long and crossed almost featureless terrain.

On a website about the Dartmoor Lich Way, there was some mention about walking it at dusk on a summer’s evening. The idea squatted in my imagination, and refused to move. I decided to set off from the west side a couple of hours before sunset on the night of the June full moon, mentally crossing the moor under a fading pink glow and then through silvery beams. In my head, it looked lovely. I checked the calendar and saw that the June full moon fell on a Saturday. Perfect: the Lich Way crosses an extensive military firing range, but the guns are silent on summer weekends. When I mentioned