A road, path, or route designed for or regularly used by carts and wheeled vehicles in medieval and early modern times.
Compound word from 'cart' (Old Norse 'kartr') and 'way' (Old English 'weg'). Cartways were distinguished from footpaths and were essential infrastructure in medieval Europe for commerce and agriculture.
Medieval cartways were literally the original highways—they determined where villages could prosper, where trade could flow, and sometimes cartways eventually became the modern roads we still use today, hundreds of years later.
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