The phrase was coined in 1921 by the amateur archaeologist Alfred Watkins, in his books Early British Trackways and The Old Straight Track.
Alfred Watkins (27 January 1855 – 15 April 1935) was an English author, self-taught amateur archaeologist, antiquarian and businessman who, while standing on a hillside in Herefordshire, England, in 1921 experienced a revelation. He noticed on the British landscape an apparent arrangement of straight lines positioned along ancient features. For these he subsequently coined the term "ley", now usually referred to as ley line, because the line passed through places whose names contained the syllable "ley"
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He sought to identify ancient trackways in the British landscape.
Watkins later developed theories that these alignments were created for ease of overland trekking by line-of-sight navigation during neolithic times and had persisted in the landscape over millennia.
