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The very earliest footpaths were usually animal tracks which man followed while hunting. As settlements and farmsteads gradually developed, so footpaths evolved, at first around the settlement on regularly used local routes such as to the water supply or to the fields. As man became more social and developed a need to trade with neighbouring settlements, a communications network of paths and tracks developed across the country. Many of the major routes kept to the higher ground since at the time most of the countryside was covered with large forests and the clear, higher paths were usually safer. One such, now the A30, would have been along the Windwhistle ridge on the northernmost boundary of the parish. |
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Many of these prehistoric routes, as the Windwhistle ridge route above, became today's major roads but some are still unmetalled and are a reminder of how ancient routes may have looked - for example the ancient Fox Path along the ridge of the Quantocks or the Ridgeway Path, now an official long-distance footpath from Overton Hill across the Wessex Downs to Goring and then following the prehistoric Icknield Way to Ivinghoe Beacon in the Chilterns.
Some of these native tracks may have been re-used by the Romans but their roads were invariably surveyed anew. Although neglected after the Romans left, a few Roman roads remain today - notably the Fosse Way that passes through the parish of Winsham, giving rise to place names along its route such as Street and Perry Street.
These then were the great trackways crossing the countryside, but it was from these routes that entries were made into the great forests of the time, clearings made and new settlements, farms and hamlets established.
The Medieval Period, from the fifth to the eleventh centuries, saw the greatest period of settlement of the country and it was during these times that the pattern of most of our present-day footpath system was established. Networks of local tracks and paths evolved around each village and farmstead, trod out by farm workers and villagers as they went about their lives; on their way to work in the fields, going to church, the inn, trading or visiting. The most-used pathways and tracks were, over time, established as our present road system.
Today's metalled road network in the parish generally forms a web-shaped pattern with roads radiating from Winsham village. Today's footpath network, on the other hand, tends to be either short-cuts linking these radiating roads or the traces and remnants of ancient routes fallen into disuse. The footpath system we see today, when combined with the metalled road network, therefore represents the vestiges of the original medieval footpath infrastructure.
While some paths and tracks evolved, others became overgrown with disuse and became down-graded, or even disappeared, for a variety of reasons. For example the direct route between the villages of Winsham and Wayford (forming part of the Liberty Trail in the parish) is now, in many places, simply a footpath or farm track.
Many paths across large open fields of the old manorial system were lost when the Enclosure Acts were brought in during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Occasionally paths have been extinguished in modern times as, for example, the path that formed part of the old, direct Winsham to Ilminster route. This route journeyed due north along Limekiln Lane from Winsham until the lane turned northeast towards Purtington. The path, however, continued north across fields, through the Cricket St Thomas estate (the part now extinguished) to the A30 and on to Ilminster.
Some paths never "developed". For example the only direct "route" linking Winsham and neighbouring Thorncombe (via Bere Farm and journeying up the valley of the River Synderford) remains a series of footpaths. Today's metalled roads linking the villages are on the higher ground skirting the valley, that to the east via Laymore and that to the west via Ammerham and Bridge.