Drove Roads

_{^{title: Drove Roads
location: Woodley Shield, Northumberland, England
project: Exploring new landforms
date: 2025}}

DROVE ROADS

Transhumance, the seasonal driving of livestock across the countryside, is no longer practised in Northumberland (England). But in the past, large herds of beasts were driven across the land to provide meat for hungry mouths in the big cities.

Cattle drivers drove the animals across the land in a period without barbed wire, motorways or countless other barriers. The routes between the cattle markets were worn down to sunken roads by the many hooves and cart wheels. In the valleys, streams and rivers were crossed at the shallowest points, the fords.  The banks were deformed not only by the cold flow of water, but especially by the hot flow of meat. New folds were formed in the land, where old paths were no longer passable.

Roads such as these drove roads literally wear away the land; they are grooves or folds left behind by humans in land that we have made our own; into landscape. 

This wool-felted map without topology, retells the story of Northumberland’s drove roads and imagines land made flesh.