A way along which a cart can be driven; sometimes = highway, as in the phrase ‘common as the cart-way’; but now usually a rough road on a farm or in a wood, passable by a heavy cart, but not by a carriage or other spring-vehicle.
1362. Langl., P. Pl., A. III. 127. Heo is … As Comuyn as þe Cart-wei to knaues and to alle.
1532–3. Act 24 Hen. VIII., v. Any common high way, cartway, horseway, or foteway.
1590. H. Swinburn, Testaments, 162. Albeit the wife were as common as the Cart-waie.
1673. in Ansted, Channel Isl., I. iv. (1862), 78. There is a cartway cut by art down to the sea.
1725. Bradley, Fam. Dict., s.v. Copse, Where the Woods are large, it is best to have a Cart-way along the Middle of them.
1768. Blackstone, Comm. (1793), 442. Every cartway leading to any market-town must be made twenty feet wide at the least.
1824. Miss Mitford, Village, Ser. I. (1863), 46. Cross-roads, mere cart-ways, leading to the little farms.
