Inside South Dorset's 'holloways' - in pictures

Drawing by Stanley Donwood … a graphite holloway with thousands of overlapping pencil-strokes representing the meshed branches. Photograph: Peter Stone/Stanley Donwood

A holloway is a sunken path; a route that centuries of footfall, hoof-hit, wheel-roll and rain-rush have harrowed down into the bedrock. Photograph: Finn Hopson

A holloway on the Pilgrim's Way, North Downs: In places they are 18ft beneath the level of the fields and exhibit grotesque and wild appearances, from the tangled roots that are twisted among the strata. 'These rugged gloomy scenes affright the ladies when they peep down into them from the paths above.' (Gilbert White, The Natural History of Selborne, 1788). Photograph: Hamish Fulton

Walking north from Huish, towards Gopher Wood near Oare, Wiltshire.These holloways are landmarks that speak of habit rather than of suddenness. Trodden by innumerable feet, they are the record of journeys to market, to worship, to sea. Photograph: Stanley Donwood

A holloway in Normandy. Some holloways are overgrown by the trees that border them, so they resemble green-roofed tunnels. Photograph: Jonathan Baker

Roger Deakin at Chideock holloway, July 2005: 'We pitched the pup-tents side by side on an almost level sward, and slept soundly in the silence under a sky perforated by stars.' From Notes From Walnut Tree Farm, by Roger Deakin. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

Chideock holloway, September 2011: 'We spent two days following the holloways on bicycle and foot.' Photograph: Dan Richards

Map-poring, down in the depths of the Chideock holloway: Stanley Donwood (seated), Robert Macfarlane (leaning). Photograph: Dan Richards

By the time we left Dorset, the image of the holloway had lodged itself deep in Stanley’s imagination. He spent months creating versions of it: a golden holloway, with a Herne-like figure glimpsed at its end. Photograph: Stanley Donwood

A new jacket for a reissue of Rogue Male, the novel with which this adventure began. Photograph: Stanley Donwood

An unambiguous sign in the type-casting workshop. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

Molten lead being swirled in the hopper of the caster. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

Making type is fiendish work. You use a large finger-disc keyboard. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

All you have to show for hours of wary key-punching is a roll of perforated white paper. That roll is what then instructs the casting machine. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

A 1955 Monotype caster, which uses brass dies to impress the typeforms on the molten lead. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

The instructions for the punching are heavily coded. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

The font chosen was Plantin … first cut in 1913 and based on a face cut in the later 16th century by Robert Granjon. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

Freshly cast type. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

Once the type was cast, it had to be set letter by letter into the presses: a 1965 Heidelberg Platen press and a 1970 Vandercook proofing press. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

Stanley took photographs of his line illustrations, which were converted into etched magnesium plates. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

The plates and the type were inked, thick wove paper was bought, the pages were printed, sewn up and limp-bound, and lo! – the lump of lead had become a book. Photograph: PR

Faber proposed re-publishing Holloway in a hardback edition, with a wraparound cover designed by Stanley. Photograph: Stanley Donwood

Stanley carried on drawing and designing: a multi-panelled emerald holloway, big enough to fill a wall. Photograph: Peter Stone

People began to send me images and stories of the holloways they knew and had followed: more walkers, deepening these ancient lanes a foot at a time. Photograph: Robert Macfarlane

On returning to the Chideock holloway this spring, Dan found that its hedges had been flailed and its floor churned up by tyre tracks. Photograph: Dan Richards

'The interior of the double hedge is of no conceivable use … and nobody but an adventurous child would want to explore it.' Geoffrey Household, Rogue Male, 1939. Photograph: David Quentin