_Twenty-one miles_
At Alton, with the green by which one enters the town from the west,
begins a stretch of the Old Road, which stands by itself.
It may be roughly called the division between Alton and Farnham, but
it stretches for a mile or two beyond Farnham to the pond at
Whiteways, where the main road climbs the summit of the Hog's Back,
and leaves the Pilgrim's Way a few hundred yards to the south.
This section, just over thirteen miles in length, has several
peculiarities which distinguish it from the rest of the Road.
_First_--It follows the river Wey for miles, not as it followed the
river Itchen, on a dry ledge above the stream, but right along the low
land of the waterside. This is a feature in the Old Road not to be
discovered in any other part of its course. It takes care to be within
easy reach of water for men and horses, but it avoids the low level of
a stream, and thick cover and danger of floods which such a level
usually threaten. We had not found it (save for a very few yards) in
immediate touch with the Itchen, nor should we find it later on
running by the Mole, the Darent, or the Medway. Even the Stour, whose
valley it is compelled to follow, it regards from heights well above
the river.
_Secondly_--It runs for a part of this division upon clay, a soil
which elsewhere it carefully avoids as being about the worst
conceivable for a primitive and unmetalled road. Elsewhere (after
Wrotham, for instance), it will make a detour rather than attempt any
considerable stretch of gault; but here, for several miles along this
valley of the Wey, it faces the danger.
_Thirdly_--In every other portion of its long journey it passes along
the _edge_ of habitations and tilled land; it was brought to do so by
the same economic tendency which makes our railways to-day pass by
the edges, not the centre of most towns; but here it must often have
run right through whatever cultivation existed; at Alton, at Farnham,
and in one village between, Bentley, it forms the high street of the
place. A track which carefully just avoids Guildford, Dorking,
Reigate, Westerham, Wrotham, Charing, and a dozen smaller places here
touches and occasionally passes through the earliest groups of houses,
the earliest pastures and ploughed fields.
Finally, there is a correspondence between it and the modern high-road
for the _whole_ of this considerable distance of over thirteen miles.
In this character, again, the division we were now entering is unique.
We have indeed already found it identical with a modern road. The
modern high-road also corresponds with the old way for something like
a mile at Otford over the Darent, and for two or three miles beyond;
it is a modern road for more than half a mile before you reach the
ferry at Snodland, and there is a road in construction which follows
its track for some hundreds of yards on Gravelly Hill, near Caterham.
For many miles of its course it is identical if not with high-roads
at least with metalled lanes, as we had already found between Itchen
Stoke and Bishop Sutton, and very commonly with unmetalled tracks or
paths. But in all these cases it is broken: there are stretches of it
unused. Modern advantages and modern necessities have left the Old
Road continually to one side. Here for this very considerable distance
it is identical with the great turnpike, and so remains identical up
to and beyond its point of junction with the older 'Harrow Way' at
Farnham.
Can we discover any explanation for this coincidence of a prehistoric
track with the high-road of our own time, which is almost indifferent
to soil? for the crossing of the clay? for the neighbourhood of the
river?
A little consideration will enable us to do so. The hills which
everywhere else afford so even a platform for the prehistoric road are
here of a contour which forbids their use. To-day, as a thousand years
ago, any road down this valley must have run upon this lowest line.
The contour-lines, of which a rough sketch is here appended, are
enough to prove it.
[Illustration]
There is a deep combe at Holybourne Down, two more on either side of
Froyle, a fourth beyond Bentley, a fifth--smaller--before Farnham. All
these gullies cut up into a hopeless tangle what in Surrey and Kent
will become one unbroken bank of chalk. Any path attempting these
hillsides would either have doubled its length in avoiding the
hollows, or would--had it remained direct--have been a succession of
steep ascents and falls; all the dry slopes which bound the vale to
the north are a succession of steep and isolated projections, thrust
out from the distant main chain of the chalk; many of them are
crowned with separated summits. The road is therefore compelled to
follow the valley floor with all the consequences I have noted.
As far as Froyle, two and a half miles from Alton, it never leaves the
river by more than a quarter of a mile, but the valley is here dry,
the soil gravelly and sandy, the height considerable (above three
hundred feet), and there is no reason why it should go further from
the stream than it did in the valley of the Itchen. After Froyle you
get the clay, and then right on through Bentley the road does attempt
to get away northward from the stream, avoiding the marshy levels and
keeping to the 300-feet contour-line. It does not approach the river
again till firmer ground is found near the Bull Inn. Thence to within
two miles of Farnham it has to negotiate a good deal of clay, but it
picks out such patches of gravel as it can find,[21] and it must be
remembered that the valley of the Wey, in this early part, drains more
rapidly, and has a less supply of water than that of the Itchen. Near
Farnham, somewhat beyond Runwick House, it finds the sand again, and
can follow along the low level without difficulty.
The Old Road keeps throughout this passage to the sunny northern bank
of the river, so that, while it is compelled to keep to the bottom of
the valley, it attempts at least to get the driest part of it.
Farnham, at the mouth of this valley, the point of junction between
the Old Road and its still older predecessor from Salisbury Plain, was
always a place of capital importance, especially in war. The Roman
entrenchment, two miles up the valley, the Roman dwellings to the
south, tell us only a little of its antiquity; and though our
knowledge of the castle extends no further than the eleventh century,
the fact that it was the meeting-place of the roads that came from
Salisbury Plain, from the Channel, from London, and from the Straits
of Dover, necessarily made it a key to southern England.
We have seen how the western roads converge there, first the Harrow
Way, then our own road from Southampton Water and Winchester (a road
which probably received the traffic of all the south beyond
Dorsetshire), then the road from Portsmouth and the Meons, which came
in at Chawton.
The accident of the Surrey hills made all men who wished to get to the
south-western ports from the Thames valley and the east pass through
Farnham. Travellers going west and north from the Weald were equally
compelled, if they would avoid the ridge, to pass through Farnham. The
former had to come down north of the Hog's Back, the latter from the
south of it, and it was ever at Farnham that they met.
At Farnham, therefore, the first political division of our road may be
said to end; and after Farnham the western tracks, now all in one,
proceed to the Straits of Dover, or rather to Canterbury, which is
the rallying-point of the several Kentish ports.
Just outside the town the road begins to rise: it is an indication
that the road is about to take the flank of the hills, a position
which it holds uninterruptedly (save for four short gaps occasioned by
four river valleys) from this point until the Camp above Canterbury.
Hitherto, for reasons which I have explained, the road has had no
opportunity of this kind. The hills of the Itchen valley were not
sufficiently conspicuous, those of the upper Wey too tortuous, for the
trail to take advantage of a dry, even, and well-drained slope. The
height to which it rises between Ropley and Alton is not a height
chosen for its own purpose, but a height which had to be overcome of
necessity to cross the watershed. Henceforward, until we were within a
few miles of Canterbury, there stretched before us, on and on, day
after day, the long line of the northern heights, whose escarpment
presented everything the Old Road needed for its foundation, and of
which I have written at such length in the earlier portion of this
book.
The rise continued gently until the inn at Rumbold was passed, and the
fork at Whiteways was reached. Here the old flanking road went up
along the ridge of the Hog's Back in the shape of the modern turnpike,
while our track was left to continue its eastward way, two hundred
feet below, upon the side of the hill.
Its soil was here a thin strip of the green-sand which continued to
support us, until next day we crossed the Tillingbourne, just above
Shere. It runs, therefore, firmly and evenly upon a dry soil, and the
villages and the churches mark its ancient progress.
The afternoon was misty, even the telegraph poles, which at first
marked the ridge of the Hog's Back above us, disappeared in the first
half mile. We went unhappily and in the fog regretting the baker's
cart which had taken us along many miles of road so swiftly and so
well: a cart of which I have not spoken any more than I have of the
good taverns we sat in, or of the curious people we met (as for
instance, the warrior at Farnham), because they are not germane to
such an historical essay as is this.
We went, I say, regretting the baker's cart, and came to the wonderful
church of Seale standing on its little mound. We noted that the track
passed to southward of it, not right against its southern porch, but
as near as it could get, given the steep accident of the soil just
beyond. We noted this (but dully, for we were very tired), and we
plodded on to Shoelands.
We were in the thick of the memories which are the last to hang round
the Old Road, I mean the memories of those pilgrims, who, after so
many thousand years of its existence, had luckily preserved the use
and trace of the way.
Seale was built at the expense of Waverley, right in the enthusiasm
that followed the first pilgrimages, just after 1200. The names also
of the hamlets have been held to record the pilgrimage. How Seale (a
name found elsewhere just off the Old Road) may do so I cannot tell.
'Shoelands' has been connected with 'Shooling'--almsgiving. Compton
church itself was famous. Even little Puttenham had its pilgrim's
market, and Shalford its great fair, called Becket's fair. We left
Seale then, and at last, two miles on and very weary, we approached
Puttenham, where, for the first time since Alton, something of
exploration awaited us.
There was, indeed, just before reaching Puttenham, a small difficulty,
but it is not of this that I am writing. The Old Road, which had for
miles coincided with the lane, turned a sharp corner, and this, as I
have already remarked, is so much against its nature in every known
part of it, that I could only ascribe it to a cultivated field[22]
which has turned the road. Once tillage had begun, the road would be
led round this field, and the old track, crossing it diagonally, would
disappear under the plough; the original way must have run much as is
suggested at the point marked X upon the map, and the suggestion has
the greater force from the presence of a footpath following this line.
But the point is of little importance and is easily settled. In
Puttenham itself lay the more interesting problem, to elucidate which
this sketch was drawn.
[Illustration]
It arises, just before the church is reached, and affords a very
interesting example of how the Old Road has been lost and may be
recovered.
The present road goes round to the north of the church, outside a high
wall, which there forbids any passage. It turns sharp round a corner,
and then proceeds due south to the village of Compton. When it has
passed through this village, it turns north again, and so reaches St.
Catherine's chapel, near which point it is agreed that the passage of
the Wey was made.
Not only does the modern road take this circuitous course, but the
pilgrims of the later Middle Ages probably followed a direction not
very different. Compton church perhaps attracted them.
It is not the only place in which we shall find their leisurely piety
misleading our research.
The Pilgrimage and the modern road both tend to make us miss the
original track. That track, as a group of independent facts
sufficiently show, passed south of Puttenham church, continuing the
direction which it had hitherto followed from Seale; it went past the
inn miscalled 'The Jolly Farmer,' and so on in a straight line over
Puttenham Heath, where it is still marked by a rough cart-track kind
of way.
One must here repeat an argument which continually recurs in these
pages. Short of a physical obstacle, there is no reason but private
property, and property long established and well defined, to give rise
to such an unnatural halt in a path as is here made by a sudden turn
of a right angle.
We know that the enclosure of this church within the wall was
comparatively recent.
We know that in every case where the Old Road passes directly past a
village church, it passes to the south. From the south, as we have
already seen, the entry of the traveller was made; for, to repeat the
matter, a custom presumably much older than our religion, gave
approach to sacred places from the side of the sun.
The face of the Inn, the road before it (ending now abruptly and
without meaning at the wall), and the road through Puttenham village
are all in the same alignment.
It is an alignment that makes for the passage of the Wey (for
Shalford, that is), much in the direction the Old Road has held since
Seale.
The alignment is continued on through Puttenham Heath by an existing
track, and in all this continuous chain there is no break, save the
comparatively modern wall round the church.
Finally, Puttenham Heath had furnished antiquities of every sort,
especially of the Neolithic period and of the Bronze: all within a
small area, and all in the immediate neighbourhood of this Way.
So many indications were sufficient to make us follow the right-of-way
across Puttenham Heath, and our conjecture was confirmed by our
finding at the further edge of the heath, a conspicuous embankment
marked by an exact line of three very aged trees, which everywhere
indicate the track.
Though it was hardly a road, rough and marked only by ruts in the
winter soil and by its rank of secular trees, it was most evidently
the Old Road. We were glad to have found it.
When we had passed through the hollow to the north of a few cottages,
direct evidence of the road disappeared at the boundary of Monk's
Hatch Park, but it was not lost for long. 350 yards further on, laid
on the same line, a slightly sunken way reappeared; it ran a few yards
below the recently made Ash Path, and led directly by the lane along
the south of Brixbury Wood, across the Compton Road, and so by a lane
called 'Sandy Lane,' beyond, over the crest of the hill, till, as the
descent began, it became metalled, grew wider, and merged at last into
the regular highway which makes straight for St. Catherine's Hill and
the ferry and ford below it.
[Illustration: ROUGH, AND MARKED ONLY BY RUTS IN THE WINTER SOIL, AND
BY ITS RANK OF SECULAR TREES]
The Old Road having thus coincided once more with a regular road, we
went at a greater pace, observing little of our surroundings
(since nothing needed to be discovered), and hoped to make before it
was quite dark the passage of the river.
[Illustration: THAT CURIOUS PLATFORM WHICH SUPPORTS IN SUCH AN IMMENSE
ANTIQUITY OF CONSECRATION THE RUINS OF ST. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL]
Arrived, however, at that curious platform which supports in such an
immense antiquity of consecration the ruins of St. Catherine's chapel,
we saw that the exact spot at which the river was crossed was not
easily to be determined. The doubt does not concern any considerable
space. It hesitates between two points on the river, and leaves
unmapped about 800 yards of the road; but that gap is, it must be
confessed, unsolved so far as our investigation could be carried.
It is certain that the prehistoric road begins again by the
north-western corner of the Chantries Wood. Tradition and the unbroken
trail hence to St. Martha's hill-top confirm it. The arguments I have
used in the last few pages show equally that the road led, on this
side of the way, up to the point below St. Catherine's chapel where we
were now standing.
It is, moreover, extremely probable that the platform of St.
Catherine's was the look-out from which the first users of this track
surveyed their opportunities for passing the river, and near to it
undoubtedly their successors must have beaten down the road.
The precipitous face towards the stream, the isolation of the summit
and its position, commanding a view up and down the valley, render it
just such a place as would, by its value for their journeys and their
wars, have made it sacred to a tribe: its sanctity during the Middle
Ages gives the guess a further credential. But in framing an
hypothesis as to how the valley was taken from the descent of St.
Catherine's to the rise at the Chantries beyond the stream, one is met
by two sets of facts irreconcilable with one another, and supporting
arguments each, unfortunately, of equal weight. These facts are few,
simple, and urgent; they are as follows:--
Primitive man we must imagine chose, if he could, a ford, and kept to
such a passage rather than to any form of ferry. The ford exists. It
has given its name 'The Shallow Ford' to the village which grew up
near it. The church stands close by. So far it would seem that the
road certainly passed over the crest of St. Catherine's, came down to
the south of that hill, crossed at Shalford, and reached the Chantries
by that passage.
On the other hand a sunken way of great antiquity leads directly from
St. Catherine's Hill down to the river. It follows the only
practicable descent of the bank. It is in line with the previous trend
of the Old Road; at its foot is a ferry which has had a continuous
history at least as old as the pilgrimage, and beyond this ferry, the
path over the field, and the avenue beyond the main road, lead
immediately and without any diversion to that point at the foot of the
Chantries Hill where, as I have said, the Old Road is again evident.
From Shalford no such track is apparent, nor could it be possible for
a passage by Shalford to be made, save at the expense of a detour much
sharper than the Old Road executes in any other part of its course.
In the face of these alternatives no certain decision could be arrived
at. The medieval route was here no guide, for it had already left the
road to visit Compton, and was free to use Shalford ford, the ferry,
or even Guildford Bridge--all three of which the pilgrims doubtless
passed indifferently, for all three were far older than the
pilgrimage.
It may be that the ferry stands for an old ford, now deepened. It may
be that the passage at Shalford was used first, and soon replaced by
that of the ferry. We knew of no discoveries in that immediate
neighbourhood which might have helped us to decide; we were compelled,
though disappointed, to leave the point open.
It was now quite dark. My companion and I clambered down the hill,
stole a boat which lay moored to the bank, and with a walking-stick
for an oar painfully traversed the river Wey. When we had landed, we
heard, from the further bank, a woman, the owner of the boat,
protesting with great violence.
We pleaded our grave necessity; put money in the boat, and then,
turning, we followed the marshy path across the field to the highway,
and when we reached it, abandoned the Old Road in order to find an
inn.
[Illustration]
We slept that night at Guildford, whence the next morning, before
daylight, we returned up the highway to the spot where we had left the
Old Road, and proceeded through the gate and up the avenue to follow
and discover that section of the road between the Wey and the Mole
which is by far the richest in evidences of prehistoric habitation--a
stretch of the Old Road which, partly from its proximity to London,
partly from its singular beauty, partly from its accidental
association with letters, but mainly from the presence of rich and
leisured men, has been hitherto more fully studied than any other,
and which yet provides in its sixteen miles more matter for debate
than any other similar division between Winchester and Canterbury.