_Eleven miles_
The Old Road leaves the Guildford and Shalford highway on the left, or
east, in a line with the path which has reached it from the ferry. We
passed through a gate and entered an avenue of trees, at the end of
which the newer road which has been built along it turns off to the
left, while the Old Road itself, in the shape of a vague lane, begins
to climb the hill. The light was just breaking, and we could follow it
well.
At this point, and for some distance further, it is known to
historians and antiquaries, and preserves, moreover, many indications
of that use whereby the medieval pilgrimage revived and confirmed its
course. It skirts by the side of, and finally passes through, woods
which still bear the name of the 'Chantries,' and climbs to that
isolated summit where stands the chapel of St. Thomas: 'the Martyr's'
chapel, which, in the decay of religion and corruption of tradition,
came to be called 'St. Martha's.'
This spot, for all its proximity to London and to the villas of the
rich, preserves a singular air of loneliness. It has a dignity and an
appeal which I had thought impossible in land of which every newspaper
is full; and that morning, before men were stirring, with the mist all
about us and the little noises of animals in the woods, we recovered
its past. The hill responded to the ancient camps, just southward and
above us. It responded to its twin height of St. Catherine's: the
whole landscape had forgotten modern time, and we caught its spirit
the more easily that it relieved us of our fears lest in this belt
near London the Old Road should lose its power over us.
It has been conjectured, upon such slight evidence as archæology
possesses, that the summit was a place of sacrifice. Certainly great
rings of earth stood here before the beginning of history; certainly
it was the sacred crown for the refugees of Farley Heath, of
Holmbury, of Anstie Bury, and of whatever other stations of war may
have crowned these defiant hills.
If it saw rites which the Catholic Church at last subdued, we know
nothing of them; we possess only that thread of tradition which has so
rarely been broken in western Europe: the avenue, whereby, until the
sixteenth century, all our race could look back into the very origins
of their blood.
The hill was an isolated peak peculiar and observable. Such separate
heights have called up worship always wherever they were found: the
Middle Ages gave this place what they gave to the great outstanding
rocks of the sea, the 'St. Michaels': to the dominating or brooding
capitols of cities, Montmartre or Our Lady of Lyons; perhaps Arthur's
Seat had a shrine. The Middle Ages gave it what they had inherited,
for they revered the past only, they sought in the past their ideals,
and hated whatever might destroy the common memory of the soil and the
common observances of men--as modern men hate pain or poverty.
Remembering all this we rested at the chapel on the hill-top, and
considered it wearily. We regretted its restoration to new worship,
and recollected (falsely, as it turned out) famous graves within it.
The air was too hazy to distinguish the further view to the south. The
Weald westward was quite hidden, and even the height of Hirst Wood
above and beyond us eastward was hardly to be seen.
When we had spent half an hour at this place we prepared to go down
the further side, but first we looked to see whether the Old Road
passed clearly to one side or the other of the summit, for we thought
that matter would be of importance to us as a guide for its direction
in similar places later on. But we could decide nothing. Certainly the
track makes northward of the church until it is near the top of the
hill, but, as it gets near, it points right at it (as we might
expect), is lost, and is only recovered some twenty or fifty yards
beyond the platform of the summit, coming apparently neither from the
south nor from the north of the church; the direction is a little
obscured, moreover, by a modern plantation which confuses the
beginning of the descent. Soon it grew clear enough, and we followed
it at a race, down the hill perhaps half a mile. It was plainer and
plainer as we went onward, till it struck the road which leads from
Guildford to Albury.
Here there rises a difficulty unique in the whole course of the way.
It is a difficulty we cannot pretend to have solved. The trail for
once goes to the damp and northward side of a hill: the hill on which
stands Weston Wood. It is an exception to an otherwise universal rule,
and an exception for which no modern conditions can account.
There is apparently no reason why it should not have followed its
otherwise invariable rule of taking the southerly slope, and it could
have chosen the dry clean air of the heath and kept all the way near
the fresh water of the Tillingbourne. On the other hand, there is no
doubt whatever of its direction. Tradition, the existence of modern
tracks, and more important still, the direction of the road after it
leaves St. 'Martha's' chapel, all point to the same conclusion. The
Pilgrim's Way crosses diagonally the field beyond the main road, goes
just behind the little cottage at its corner,[23] and then makes for
Albury Park by way of a wretched and difficult sunken lane to the
north of Weston Wood. We entered this neglected and marshy way. It was
a place of close, dark, and various trees, full of a damp air, and
gloomy with standing water in the ruts: the whole an accident
differing in tone from all that we knew of the road, before and after.
It was not long in passing. We left the undergrowth for the open of a
field, and found the trace of the road pointing to the wall of Albury
Park. It entered just north of the new church, and then followed a
clearly marked ridge upon which, here and there, stood the yews.
[Illustration: A PLACE OF CLOSE DARK AND VARIOUS TREES, FULL OF A DAMP
AIR, AND GLOOMY WITH STANDING WATER-RUTS]
After the Old Road enters Albury Park there is a doubtful section of
about a mile and a half. The 25-inch Ordnance for Surrey (revised
eight years ago) carries the track southward at a sharp angle, round
the old church of SS. Peter and Paul and then along the south of Shere
till it stops suddenly at a farm called 'Gravel Pits Farm.' It
seemed to us as we overlooked the valley from the north, that the Old
Road followed a course now included in the garden of Albury, and
corresponding, perhaps, to the Yew Walk which Cobbett has rendered
famous, and so reached the ford which crosses the Tillingbourne at the
limits of the park--a ford still called 'Chantry' ford, and evidently
the primitive crossing-place of the stream.
Thence it probably proceeded, as we did, along that splendid avenue of
limes which is the mark of the village of Shere. But from the end of
this there are some three hundred yards of which one cannot be very
certain. It comes so very near to the church that one may presume,
without too much conjecture, that it passed beside the southern porch.
If it did so, it should have crossed the stream again near where the
smithy stands to-day, and this double crossing of the stream may be
accounted for by the presence of a shrine and of habitation in the
oldest times. But if the bridge be taken as an indication (which
bridges often are) of the original place where the stream was
re-crossed, then the track would have left the church on the right,
and would have curved round to become the present high-road to
Gomshall. Nothing certain can be made of its passage here, except that
the track marked upon the Ordnance map will not fit in with the
character of the road. The Ordnance map loses it at Gomshall, finds it
again much further on, having turned nearly a right angle and going
(for no possible reason) right up to and over the crest of the hills:
across Ranmore Common and so to Burford Bridge. The first part of this
cannot but be a confusion with the Old Drove Road to London. As for
the crossing of the Mole at Burford Bridge we shall see in a moment
that the medieval pilgrimage passed the river at this point, but the
prehistoric road at a point a mile and more up stream.
Taking into consideration the general alignment of the Old Road, its
'habits,' the pits that mark it, and its crossing-place in the Mole
valley, we did not doubt that we should find it again on the hillside
beyond Gomshall.
[Illustration: THAT SPLENDID AVENUE OF LIMES]
Its track must have crossed the high-road at a point nearly opposite
Netley House, and by a slow climb have made for the side of the
Downs and for the chalk, which henceforward it never leaves, save
under the necessity of crossing a river valley, until it reaches
Chilham, sixty miles away.
Beyond the grounds of Netley House the Old Road is entirely lost. A
great ploughed field has destroyed every trace of it, but the
direction is quite easy to follow when one notes the alignment which
it pursues upon its reappearance above the line of cultivation. It
must have run, at first, due north-west, and turned more and more
westward as it neared Colekitchen Lane: it must have crossed the mouth
of Colekitchen Combe, which here runs into the hills, and have reached
in this fashion the 400-feet contour-line at the corner of Hacklehurst
Down, where we come on it just at the far edge of the Combe, on the
shoulder about three hundred yards east of the rough lane which leads
up from under the railway arch to the Downs.[24]
From this point we could follow it mile after mile without any
difficulty. Its platform is nearly always distinct; the yews follow it
in a continual procession, though it is cut here and there by later
roads. The old quarries and chalk pits which mark it henceforward
continually along the way to Canterbury begin to appear, and it does
not fail one all along the hill and the bottom of Denbies Park until,
at the end of that enclosure, it is lost in the pit of the Dorking
Lime Works. It does not reappear. Beyond there is a considerable
gap--nearly a mile in length--before it can reach the river Mole,
which it must cross in order to pursue its journey. With this gap I
shall deal in a moment, but it was the affair of our next day's
journey, for short as had been the distance from Shalford, the many
checks and the seeking here and there which they had entailed had
exhausted the whole of the short daylight. The evening had come when
we stood on the Down looking over to Box Hill beyond.
From thence across the valley, Box Hill attracted and held the sight
as one looked eastward: the strongest and most simple of our southern
hills. It stood out like a cape along our coasting journey, our
navigation of the line of the Downs. The trend of the range is here
such that the clean steep of this promontory hides the slopes to the
east. It occupies the landscape alone.
It has been debated and cannot be resolved, why these great lines of
chalk north and south of the Weald achieve an impression of majesty.
They are not very high. Their outline is monotonous and their surface
bare. Something of that economy and reserve by whose power the classic
in verse or architecture grows upon the mind is present in the Downs.
These which we had travelled that day were not my own hills--Duncton
and Bury, Westburton, Amberley and all--but they were similar because
they stood up above the sand and the pines, and because they were of
that white barren soil, clothed in close turf, wherein nothing but the
beech, the yew, and our own affection can take root and grow.
At the end of a day's work, a short winter day's, it was possible to
separate this noble mark of what was once a true county of Surrey; to
separate it even in the mind, from the taint of our time and the
decay and vileness which hang like a smell of evil over whatever has
suffered the influence of our great towns. The advancing darkness
which we face restored the conditions of an older time; the staring
houses merged with the natural trees; a great empty sky and a river
mist gave the illusion of a place unoccupied.
It was possible to see the passage of the Mole as those rare men saw
it who first worked their way eastward to the Straits, and had not the
suggestion seemed too fantastic for a sober journey of research, one
might have taken the appeal of the hills for a kind of guide;
imagining that with such a goal the trail would plunge straight across
the valley floor to reach it.
By more trustworthy methods, the track of the Old Road was, as I have
said, less ascertainable. Presumably it followed, down the shoulder of
the hill, a spur leading to the river, but the actual mark of the road
was lost, its alignment soon reached ploughed land; nothing of the
place of crossing could be determined till the stream itself was
examined, nor indeed could we make sure of the true point until we
found ourselves unexpectedly aided by the direction of the road when
we recovered it upon the further bank. This we left for the dawn of
the next day; and so went down into Dorking to sleep.
I have said that from Denbies, or rather from the pits of Dorking Lime
Works, the path is apparently lost. It reappears, clearly enough
marked, along the lower slope of Box Hill, following the 300-feet
contour-line; but between the two points is a gap extending nearly a
mile on one side of the river and almost half a mile upon the other.
I have seen it conjectured that the Old Road approached the Mole near
Burford, and that it turned sharply up over Ranmore Common on its way.
That it crossed Ranmore Common is impossible. Undoubtedly a
prehistoric track ran over that heath, but it was a branch track to
the Thames--one of the many 'feeders' which confuse the record of the
Old Road. But that it crossed at Burford Bridge is arguable.
The name Burford suggests the crossing of the river. The pilgrims
undoubtedly passed here, going down Westhumble Lane, and using the
bridge--for everybody uses a bridge once it has been built. Thence
they presumably followed along the western flank of Box Hill, and so
round its base to that point where, as I have said, the embankment and
the old trees reappear.
[Illustration]
Nevertheless, those who imagine that the original road, the
prehistoric track, followed this course, were, we thought, in error.
We had little doubt that, after the lime pit outside Denbies Park, the
road followed down the moderate shoulder or spur which here points
almost directly eastward towards the valley, crossed the railway just
north of the road bridge over the line, approached the Mole at a point
due east of this, and immediately ascended the hill before it to
that spot where it distinctly reappears: a spot near the 300-feet
contour-line somewhat to the west of the lane leading from the Reigate
Road to the crest of the hills.[25]
[Illustration: IT STOOD OUT LIKE A CAPE ALONG OUR COASTING JOURNEY,
OUR NAVIGATION OF THE LINE OF THE DOWNS]