It is important to insist upon this point, because there is nothing
commoner than the statement that our prehistoric roads commonly follow
the very tops of the hills. The reason usually given for this
statement is, that the tops of the hills were the safest places. One
could not be ambushed or rushed from above. But the condition of fear
is not the only state of mind in which men live, nor does military
necessity, when it arises, force a laden caravan to the labour of
reaching and following a high crest. The difficulty can be met by a
flanking party following the top of the ridge whose lower slope is the
platform for the regular road. In this way the advantage of security
is combined with the equally obvious advantage of not taking more
trouble than you are compelled to take. There are several excellent
examples of the flanking road on this way to Canterbury, notably the
ridge-way along the Hog's Back,[6] which has become the modern
high-road; but nowhere does the Old Road itself climb to the top of a
hill save when it has one of two very obvious reasons: (_a_) the
avoidance of a slope too steep to bear the traveller with comfort, or
(_b_) the avoidance of the ins and outs presented by a number of
projecting ridges. On this account at Colley Hill, before Reigate, and
later, above Bletchingly, near Redhill, the Road does climb to the
crest: and so it does beyond Boughton Aluph to avoid a very steep
ravine. Once on the crest, it will remain there sometimes for a mile
or so, especially if by so doing it can take advantage of a descending
spur later on: as after Godmersham Park down to Chilham. But, take the
Road as a whole, its habit when a convenient southerly bank of hills
is present, is to go up some part of the slope only, and there to run
along from 50 to 100 feet above the floor of the valley. If it be
asked why the earlier traveller should have been at the pains of
rising even so much as this, it may be noted that the reason was
threefold: it gave the advantage of a view showing what was before
one; it put one on the better drained slope where the land would be
drier; and it lifted one above the margin of cultivation in later
times when men had learned to plough the land. In the particular case
of this Road it had the further advantage that it usually put one on
the porous chalk and avoided the difficult clay of the lower levels.
IV. Wherever the Road goes right up to the site of a church it passes
upon the southern side of that site.
It is necessary to digress here for a moment upon the archæological
importance of these sites. They are but an indication, not a proof, of
prehistoric sanctity. It would be impossible to say in what proportion
the old churches of these islands stand upon spots of immemorial
reverence, but it is certain that a sufficient proportion of them do
so stand (the church of Bishopstoke, for instance, upon the site of a
Druidical circle), as to afford, when a considerable number are in
question, a fair presumption that many of the sites have maintained
their meaning from an age long prior to Christianity. Apart from the
mass of positive evidence upon this matter, we have our general
knowledge upon the methods by which the Faith supplemented, and in
part supplanted, older and worse rituals; and there is an impression,
which no one who has travelled widely in western Europe will deny,
that the church of a place has commonly something about it of the
central, the unique, or the isolated in position; characters which
cannot wholly be accounted for by the subsequent growth of the
community around them.
Now, on its way from Winchester to Canterbury, the Old Road passes,
not in the mere proximity of, but right up against, thirteen existing
or ruined churches. They are, proceeding from west to east, as
follows: King's Worthy, Itchen Stoke, Bishop Sutton, Seale, Puttenham,
St. Martha's, Shere, Merstham, Titsey, Snodland, Burham, Boughton
Aluph, and Chilham.[7] In the case of eight it passes right up against
the south porch; in the case of two (Bishop Sutton and Seale) it is
compelled to miss them by a few yards. One (St. Martha's) is passed on
both sides by a reduplication of the track. One (Chilham) is
conjectural, and the last (Shere) is doubtful.
[Illustration: THE CHURCH OF SHERE]
The habit is the more remarkable from the fact that the Road commonly
goes north of a village, and therefore should, unless it had some
purpose, commonly go north of all churches. And, indeed, it does pass
many churches to the north, but it always leaves them (as at
Chevening, Lenham, Charing, and the rest) to one side. It never goes
close to their site.
The importance of this rule will be apparent when we consider, later
on, the spots in which a church stands, or has stood, and where, at
the same time, the track is doubtful and has to be determined.
V. In crossing a river-valley, the Road makes invariably for the point
where spurs of dry ground and rising ground come closest upon either
side, and leave the narrowest gap of marshy land between.
I note this as a characteristic of the Road, quite apart from the more
obvious considerations; such as, that primitive man would seek a ford;
that he would seek gravel rather than clay; that he would try to pass
as high up a river as possible, and that, other things being equal, he
would keep to the general alignment of his path as much as possible in
crossing a river. All these are self-evident without the test of
experience, but this characteristic of which I speak is one that would
not occur to a traveller who had not tested it with his own
experience. It is so at the crossing of the Itchen, at the crossing
of the Wey, at the crossing of the Mole, at the crossing of the
Darent, and, as we shall see, it is useful in giving us a clue towards
the much more important crossing of the Medway.
VI. Where a hill must be taken, it is taken straight and by the
shortest road to the summit, unless that road be too steep for good
going.
Here one has something to be found all over England where an old, has
been superseded by a modern, way. I have an instance in my mind on the
main road westward from Tavistock into Cornwall. It is exactly
analogous to what the Indian trails in America do to the present day.
It is civilisation or increased opportunities--especially the use of
wheeled traffic on a large scale--which leads men to curve round a
hill or to zig-zag up it. In the course of the Old Road there are not
many examples of this. From the nature of the ground which it
traverses the hills to be surmounted are few; but when they do come,
the knowledge of this habit will lead one always to prefer the
straightest of two ways of reaching the summit.
VII. A similar tendency causes the Road to seek, as immediately as
possible, when it is passing from one valley to another, the saddle of
the watershed, if that watershed be high.
Of this there is but one example in the Old Road, that near Medstead
in Hampshire. It therefore affords us no particular clue in dealing
with this road alone, but as we know that the same phenomenon is
apparent in the remaining prehistoric tracks, and in existing trails
in savage countries throughout the world, it is a valuable clue, as
will be seen later in the particular instance of the saddle between
the valleys of the Itchen and the Wey.
* * * * *
Prepared for such a method; having well marked our maps and read what
there was to read; having made certain that the exact starting-point
was the site of the North Gate at Winchester, and that the first miles
went along the right bank of the Itchen, we two went down from town
before December ended, choosing our day to correspond exactly with
the dates of the first pilgrimage. When noon was long past, we set out
from Winchester without any pack or burden to explore the hundred and
twenty miles before us, not knowing what we might find, and very
eager.