The escarpment of the hills is here extremely steep. It falls at an
angle which could not conveniently support a road, or at least could
not support it without such engineering work as primitive men would
have been incapable of performing, and this steep bit lasts without
interruption from just east of Pebble Combe right away to the height
above Reigate which is known as Quarry Hill.
Now, if the road could not be supported upon the bank of the
escarpment, and yet desired--as it always must--to escape the damp
land of the lower levels, it was bound to seek the crest. Nowhere
hitherto in all this march from Winchester had we found it attempting
the summits of the hills, but there were here unmistakable evidences
that it was going to approach those summits and to keep to them as
long as the steepness of the escarpment lasted.
Our inexperience made us hesitate a long while; but at last we saw,
in a line of old yews above us, an indication that the hill was to be
climbed, and on going up close to those yews we found that they ran
along a platform which was the trodden and levelled mark of the Old
Road, running here in a form precisely similar to that which we had
found round Box Hill.
[Illustration]
Once we had thus recovered it, it did not fail us. Within half a mile
it climbed sideways along the hillside from that point, 353 feet above
the sea, which I have mentioned, to the neighbourhood of the 600-feet
contour-line which here marks the edge of the range; and this line it
follows with a slight rise corresponding to the rise of the crest all
the way to what are known as the Buckland Hills, and the high knot
which just tops the 700 feet near Margery Wood.[27]
To the north and to the south of this, at Walton Heath on the plateau
above, and at Colley Farm in the valley below, there had been
discoveries of Roman and of pre-Roman things; but though they pointed
to its neighbourhood, these relics would not of themselves have given
us the exact line of the road; that was furnished by the broad and
unmistakable track which it had itself impressed upon the chalk from
the usage of so many hundred years.
It was slow work here. Much of it ran through dense brushwood, where
one had to stoop and push aside the branches, and all of it was damp,
shaded from the sun by the mass of old yews, and less well drained on
this flat edge and summit than it is on the hillside where it usually
hangs. But though it is a difficult two miles, the path is
discoverable all the way.
With Margery Wood it reaches the 700-feet line, runs by what I fear
was a private path through a newly-enclosed piece of property. We
remembered to spare the garden, but we permitted ourselves a trespass
upon this outer hollow trench in the wood which marked our way.
A magnificent bit of open ground, from which we saw below us the sandy
hills, and beyond, the whole of the Weald, led us on to a point where
the Old Road once again corresponds with a modern and usable, though
unmetalled and very dirty lane. This is the lane which runs to the
south of the park of Margery Hall. It skirts to the north the property
recently acquired by the War Office, and when it has passed the War
Office boundary-stone it is carried across the high-road from Reigate
to London by a suspension bridge, which must surely be the only
example in Europe of so modern an invention serving to protect the
record of so remote a past. Nor would there be any need for such a
suspension bridge had not the London Road in the early part of the
nineteenth century been eased in its steepness by a deep cutting, to
cross which the suspension bridge was made. That bridge, once passed,
the road pointed straight to the lodge of Gatton, and pursued its way
through that park to the further lodge upon the eastern side.[28]
Here should be submitted some criticism of the rather vague way in
which the place-names of this district have been used by those who had
preceded us in the reconstruction of the Pilgrim's Way.
Reigate, which was Churchfell at the Conquest, has been imagined to
take its later title from the Old Road. Now the name, like that of
Riggate in the north country, means certainly the passage near the
road; but Reigate lay well below in the valley.
True, the pilgrims, and many generations before them, must have come
down to this point to sleep, as they came down night after night to so
many other points, stretched along the low land below the Old Road in
its upland course from the Wey to the Stour. So common a halting-place
was it in the later Middle Ages that the centre of Reigate town, the
place where the Town Hall now stands, held the chapel of St. Thomas
from perhaps the thirteenth century to the Reformation. But Reigate no
more than Maidstone, another station of the medieval pilgrimage, could
have stood on the Old Road itself. It may be another track which gives
Reigate its name. Some Roman by-way which may have run from Shoreham
(which the experts do not believe to have been a port), right through
the Weald to Reigate, and so to London.
[Illustration: AND BEYOND, THE WHOLE OF THE WEALD]
It is possible that a way from the Portus Adurni[29] to London ran
here by Reigate and climbed the hill above; one of those fingers
reaching to the ports of the south coast, of which the Stane Street,
the Watling Street, and perhaps the fragment further east by
Marden, are the remnants: moreover, in the existence of such a road I
think one can solve the puzzle of Gatton.
Gatton, which is now some three or four houses and a church and a
park, sent two members to Parliament, from the fifteenth century until
the Reform Bill. It was therefore at some time, for some reason, a
centre of importance, not necessarily for its population but as a
gathering-place or a market, or a place from which some old town had
disappeared. Indeed a local tradition of such a town survives. One may
compare the place with that other centre, High Cross, where is now the
lonely crossing of the Fosse Way and Watling Street in Leicestershire.
Now, what would have given this decayed spot its importance long ago?
Most probably the crossing of an east and west road (the Old Road)
with another going north and south, which has since disappeared.
The influence of vested interests (for Gatton Park fetched twice its
value on account of this anachronism) preserved the representation in
the hands of one man until the imperfect reform of seventy years ago
destroyed the Borough.
There is another point in connection with the Pilgrim's Way at Gatton.
For the second time since it has left Winchester it goes to the north
of a hill. At Albury it did so, as my readers have seen, for some
reason not to be explained. In every other case between here and
Canterbury the explanation is simple. It goes north to avoid a
prominent spur in the range and a re-entrant angle at the further
side. The map which I append will make this point quite clear.
[Illustration]
For precisely the same cause it goes north of the spur south of
Caterham and much further on, some miles before Canterbury, it goes
north of the spur in Godmersham Park.
We did not here break into another man's land, but were content to
watch, from the public road outside, the line of the way as it runs
through Gatton, and when we had so passed round outside the park we
came to the eastern lodge, where the avenue runs on the line of the
Old Road. Here the public lane corresponds to the Pilgrim's Way and
passes by the land where was made a find of Roman and British coins,
close to the left of the road.
After this point the road went gently down the ridge of the falling
crest. This was precisely what we later found it doing at Godmersham,
where also it climbs a crest and goes behind a spur, and having done
so follows down the shoulder of the hill to the lower levels of the
valley. The valley or depression cutting the hills after Gatton is the
Merstham Gap, by which the main Brighton Road and the London and
Brighton Railway cross the North Downs. The Old Road goes down to this
gap by a path along the side of a field, is lost in the field next to
it, but is recovered again just before the grounds of Merstham House;
it goes straight on its way through these grounds, and passes south of
Merstham House and just _south_ of Merstham church; then it is
suddenly lost in the modern confusion of the road and the two railway
cuttings which lie to the east.
We left it there and went down to Merstham inn for food, and saw there
a great number of horsemen all dressed alike, but of such an accent
and manner that we could not for the life of us determine to what
society they belonged. Only this was certain, that they were about to
hunt some animal, and that this animal was not a fox. With reluctance
we abandoned that new problem and returned to Merstham church to look
for the road from the spot where it had disappeared.
So to have lost it was an annoyance and a disturbance, for the point
was critical.
We had already learnt by our experience of the way between Dorking and
Reigate, that when the escarpment is too steep to bear a track the Old
Road will mount to the crest, and we saw before us, some two miles
ahead, that portion of the Surrey hills known as Whitehill or (on the
slopes) Quarry Hangers, where everything pointed to the road being
forced to take the crest of the hill. The escarpment is there
extremely steep, and is complicated by a number of sharp ridges with
little intervening wedges of hollow, which would make it impossible
for men and animals to go at a level halfway up the hillside. The Old
Road then, certainly, had to get to the crest of these Downs before
their steepness had developed. On the other hand the top of the crest
was a stiff and damp clay which lasted up to the steep of Quarry
Hangers.
The pilgrims of the Middle Ages probably went straight up the hill
from Merstham by an existing track, got on to this clay, and followed
Pilgrim's Lane along the crest--some shrine or house of call attracted
them. The prehistoric road would certainly not have taken the clay in
this fashion. On every analogy to be drawn from the rest of its course
it would climb the hill at a slow slant, keeping to the chalk till it
should reach the summit at some point where the clay had stopped and
the slope below had begun to be steep. The problem before us was to
discover by what line it climbed. And the beginning of the climb that
would have given us the whole alignment was utterly lost, as I have
said, in this mass of modern things, roads, railways, and cuttings,
which we found just after Merstham church.
We walked along the road which leads to Rockshaw, and along which
certain new villas have been built. We walked slowly, gazing all the
time at the fields above us, to the north and the hillside, and
searching for an indication of our path.
The first evidence afforded us was weak enough. We saw a line of hedge
running up the hill diagonally near the 400-feet contour-line, and
climbing slowly in such a direction as would ultimately point to the
crest of the Quarry Hangers. Then we noticed the lime works, called on
the map 'Greystone Lime Works,' which afforded us a further clue. We
determined to make by the first path northward on to the hillside, and
see if we could find anything to follow.
Such a path, leading near a cottage down a slight slope and the hill
beyond, appeared upon our left when we had covered about three
quarters of a mile of road from Merstham. We took it and reached the
hedge of which I have spoken. Once there, although no very striking
evidence was presented to us, there was enough to make us fairly
certain of the way.
A continuous alignment of yew, hedge, and track, appeared behind us,
coming straight, as it should do, from Merstham church and right
_across_ the old lime pit; before us it continued to climb diagonally
the face of the hill. Lost under the plough in more than one large
field, it always reappeared in sufficient lengths to be recognised,
and gained the crest at last at a point which just missed the end of
the clay, and was also just over the beginning of the Quarry Hangers
steep.[30]
Once arrived at the summit of Quarry Hangers we found the road to be
quite clear: a neat embankment upon the turf; and when, half a mile
beyond, we came to the cross-roads and the tower, we had reached a
part of the Pilgrim's Way which, though short, had already been
settled and did not need to detain us. It corresponds with the modern
lane, goes just north of the spur known as Arthur's Seat (a spur upon
the southern side of which stands a prehistoric camp), goes up over
the summit of Gravelly Hill (where it is the same as a modern road now
in the making), and at last strikes Godstone Woods just at the place
where a boundary-stone marks the corner of another little patch of
land belonging the War Office.
On the further side of this patch of land, which is a kind of isolated
cape or shoulder in the hills, runs a very long, deep combe, which may
be called Caterham Combe. Up this ran one of the Roman roads from the
south, and up this runs to-day the modern road from Eastbourne to
London. On the steep side of that precipitous ravine, which is a
regular bank of difficult undergrowth (called Upwood Scrubbs), the Old
Road was, as we had rightly expected from our previous study of the
map, very hopelessly lost.
It is a difficult bit. Had the road followed round the outer side of
the hill it would have been much easier to trace, but crossing as it
does to the north of the summit, in order to avoid the re-entrant
angle of Arthur's Seat, it has disappeared. For the damper soil upon
that side, and the absence of a slope into which it could have cut its
impression, has destroyed all evidence of the Old Road. One can follow
it in the form of a rough lane up to the second of the War Office
landmarks. After that it disappears altogether.
When one considers the condition of the terrain immediately to the
east, the loss is not to be marvelled at. The hillside of Upwood
Scrubbs falls very steeply into the valley by which the modern
high-road climbs up to Caterham. It is an incline down which not even
a primitive road would have attempted to go, and when one gets to the
valley below the whole place is so cut up with the modern road, the
old Roman road a little way to the east, and the remnants of a quarry
just beyond, that it would have been impossible in this half-mile for
the trace of the Pilgrim's Way to be properly preserved. I will,
however, make this suggestion: that it descended the hillside
diagonally going due NE. from the summit to the old gravel pit at the
bottom, that then it curved round under the steep bank which supports
Woodlands House, that is Dialbank Wood, went north of Quarry Cottage,
and so reached the face of the hill again where the lane is struck
which skirts round the southern edge of Marden Park. This, I say, will
probably be found to be the exact track; but it is quite certain that
the Way cannot have run more than a couple of hundred yards away from
this curve. It cannot have been cut straight across the valley, for
the steepness of the valley-side forbids that, and, on the other hand,
there would have been no object in going much further up the valley
than was necessary in order to save the steep descent.
At any rate, the gap is quite short and the road is easily recovered
after the combe and the high-road are passed; it is thence identical
with the lane I have spoken of above. This lane is called Flower Lane.
It follows the 600-feet contour-line and winds therefore exactly
round the outline of the hill. It passes the lodge of Marden Park, and
within a few hundred yards comes to a place where the modern road
bifurcates. The good macadamised lane goes straight on and somewhat
downwards towards the plain. Another, less carefully made, begins to
wind up the hill above one. From this point onward the Old Road takes
again to the rough ground.
[Illustration]
There lies just before one on the hillside a wood, called 'The Hanging
Wood.'
We skirted the south edge of this wood and found beyond it a field in
which the track is lost;[31] nor was the task of recovering it an easy
one, for the light was just failing, and here, as always where
cultivation has risen above the old level, the Old Road is confused
and destroyed.
We had, however, over these few yards an excellent clue. In a wood
called 'The Rye Wood' just in front of us the track of the Old Road is
not only clearly marked, but has been preserved by local traditions.
For this NW. corner of the Rye Wood we made, through the south of the
spinney called 'Hogtrough Spinney.'
Just beyond the Rye Wood, the hillside is pierced by a deep railway
cutting which is the entrance to Oxted Tunnel. This cutting comes
right across the line of the Old Road. We made for this point (which
is a few yards north of the first bridge), but when we reached it, it
was quite dark, and if we had covered in that day but eighteen miles
or so, it must be remembered how much of our time had been spent in
the perpetual checks of this division.[32]
We reluctantly determined, then, to abandon the hillside for that
evening, and to go down to the plain and sleep. The nearest place of
hospitality was Oxted. We made for that village in the darkness,
stumbling along the railway-line, and in the inn we met a third
companion who had come to join us, and who would accompany us now as
far as Canterbury.
When we had eaten and drunk wine, and had had some quarrelling with a
chance traveller who suffered terribly from nerves, we left our
entertainment. We slept, and the next morning, before it was light, we
all three set out together, taking the northern road towards the hill.