A Herepath or Herewag is a military road (literally, an army path) in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, typically dating from the ninth century CE

Common Era

Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...

.

This was a time of war between the Anglo-Saxon

Anglo-Saxons

Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...

 kingdoms of southern England and Viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

 invaders from Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

. The English military preparations, conducted under the leadership of King Alfred of Wessex

Wessex

The Kingdom of Wessex or Kingdom of the West Saxons was an Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the West Saxons, in South West England, from the 6th century, until the emergence of a united English state in the 10th century, under the Wessex dynasty. It was to be an earldom after Canute the Great's conquest...

, included fortified burh

Burh

A Burh is an Old English name for a fortified town or other defended site, sometimes centred upon a hill fort though always intended as a place of permanent settlement, its origin was in military defence; "it represented only a stage, though a vitally important one, in the evolution of the...

s or places of refuge and interconnecting herepaths using either existing routes or new works. As superior or safer roads, sometimes following ridgeway

Ridgeway (track)

Ridgeways are a particular type of ancient road that exploits the hard surface of hilltop ridges for use as unpaved, zero-maintenance roads, though they often have the disadvantage of steeper gradients along their courses, and sometimes quite narrow widths. Before the advent of turnpikes or toll...

 routes, herepaths were intensely used by ordinary travellers and hauliers. Where these roads exist today, local legend often imputes them with magical, romantic or mystical origins in prehistoric time and the name is rather wantonly applied to any old trackway, especially in the region of Wessex.

In the Old English language

Old English language

Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...

 word here means "armed host". It is also found as a prefix in compound words such as harbour (a burh with a garrison) and heretoga (a militia leader). The term herepath has cognates in other Germanic languages in forms such as Heerweg (German) and Hærvejen

Hærvejen

Hærvejen is the name given to an ancient trackway in Denmark and Schleswig-Holstein. The route runs from Viborg via Flensburg to Hamburg, the territory of which it entered at Ochsenzoll and where it connected with other roads...

(Danish). In all three languages, a herepath in later times simply denotes a road that was a via publica, maintained at central government expense.