-
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
40759.txt
6769 lines (5529 loc) · 337 KB
/
40759.txt
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
903
904
905
906
907
908
909
910
911
912
913
914
915
916
917
918
919
920
921
922
923
924
925
926
927
928
929
930
931
932
933
934
935
936
937
938
939
940
941
942
943
944
945
946
947
948
949
950
951
952
953
954
955
956
957
958
959
960
961
962
963
964
965
966
967
968
969
970
971
972
973
974
975
976
977
978
979
980
981
982
983
984
985
986
987
988
989
990
991
992
993
994
995
996
997
998
999
1000
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Old Road, by Hilaire Belloc
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Old Road
Author: Hilaire Belloc
Illustrator: William Hyde
Release Date: September 14, 2012 [EBook #40759]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OLD ROAD ***
Produced by Melissa McDaniel and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive)
Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have
been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Italic text is denoted by _underscores_ and bold text by =equal
signs=.
Stede Hill, cross-referenced in the Index, does not have an Index
entry.
THE OLD ROAD
[Illustration: WINCHESTER]
THE OLD ROAD
BY
H. BELLOC
ILLUSTRATED BY WILLIAM HYDE
LONDON
CONSTABLE AND COMPANY
LIMITED
1911
TO
PHILIP KERSHAW
AND
HAROLD BAKER
MY COMPANIONS ON
THIS JOURNEY
CONTENTS
PAGE
ON THE ROAD AND THE FASCINATION OF
ANTIQUITY 3
THE THEORY OF THE OLD ROAD
THAT SUCH AND SUCH CAUSES DETERMINED THE
TRACK OF THE OLD ROAD, AND THAT IT RAN
FROM WINCHESTER TO CANTERBURY 15
THE CAUSES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF WINCHESTER
AND CANTERBURY, AND OF THEIR POSITION AS
TERMINI OF THE OLD ROAD 29
THE CAUSES OF THE PRESERVATION OF THE OLD
ROAD; ITS GENERAL CHARACTER, AND OUR
APPLICATION OF THIS IN OUR METHOD OF RECOVERING
IT 72
THE EXPLORATION OF THE ROAD
WINCHESTER TO ALTON 117
ALTON TO SHALFORD 147
SHALFORD TO DORKING PITS 160
BOXHILL TO TITSEY 188
TITSEY TO WROTHAM 214
WROTHAM TO BOXLEY 231
BOXLEY TO CANTERBURY 256
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
WINCHESTER, _Photogravure frontispiece_
_Facing page_
A ROAD MOST TYPICAL OF ALL THAT ROADS HAVE
BEEN FOR US, 8
THESE PITS WHICH UNCOVER THE CHALK BARE
FOR US, 26
GLIMPSES OF THE ITCHEN AWAY BEHIND US, 60
THE CHURCH OF SHERE, 110
THE HEAD-WATERS WHICH FORM THE ITCHEN, THE
ALRE AND OTHER STREAMS, 128
ROUGH, AND MARKED ONLY BY RUTS IN THE
WINTER SOIL, AND BY ITS RANK OF SECULAR
TREES, 162
THAT CURIOUS PLATFORM WHICH SUPPORTS IN
SUCH AN IMMENSE ANTIQUITY OF CONSECRATION
THE RUINS OF ST. CATHERINE'S CHAPEL, 163
A PLACE OF CLOSE DARK AND VARIOUS TREES,
FULL OF A DAMP AIR, AND GLOOMY WITH
STANDING WATER-RUTS, 174
THAT SPLENDID AVENUE OF LIMES, 176
IT STOOD OUT LIKE A CAPE ALONG OUR COASTING
JOURNEY, OUR NAVIGATION OF THE LINE OF
THE DOWNS, 182
AND BEYOND THE WHOLE OF THE WEALD, 200
THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE RIVERS IT MEETS
UPON ITS COURSE, THE MEDWAY, 238
ROCHESTER, 252
THE SHEEP IN THE NARROW LANES, OR THE
LEANING CONES OF THE HOP-KILNS AGAINST
THE SKY, 260
THE PLOUGHLANDS UNDER ORCHARDS: ALL THE
KENTISH WEALD, 268
SUCH A MAGIC OF GREAT HEIGHT AND DARKNESS, 278
MAP _at end_
ON THE ROAD AND THE FASCINATION OF ANTIQUITY
ON THE ROAD AND THE FASCINATION OF ANTIQUITY
There are primal things which move us. Fire has the character of a
free companion that has travelled with us from the first exile; only
to see a fire, whether he need it or no, comforts every man. Again, to
hear two voices outside at night after a silence, even in crowded
cities, transforms the mind. A Roof also, large and mothering,
satisfies us here in the north much more than modern necessity can
explain; so we built in beginning: the only way to carry off our rains
and to bear the weight of our winter snows. A Tower far off arrests a
man's eye always: it is more than a break in the sky-line; it is an
enemy's watch or the rallying of a defence to whose aid we are
summoned. Nor are these emotions a memory or a reversion only as one
crude theory might pretend; we craved these things--the camp, the
refuge, the sentinels in the dark, the hearth--before we made them;
they are part of our human manner, and when this civilisation has
perished they will reappear.
Of these primal things the least obvious but the most important is The
Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have
mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for
granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose
pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot,
and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive,
somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it;
it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries,
and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the
mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but,
as I have said, the greatest and the most original of the spells which
we inherit from the earliest pioneers of our race. It was the most
imperative and the first of our necessities. It is older than building
and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals
still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places,
and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have
made.
It is easy to re-create in oneself to-day a sense of what the Road
means to living things on land: it is easy to do it even in this
crowded country. Walk, for instance, on the neglected Pennines along
the watershed of England, from Malham Tarn, say, to Ribblehead, or
from Kirkby Stephen up along the crest to Crossfell and so to Alston,
and you will learn at once what follows on an untouched soil from the
absence of a track--of a guide. One ravine out of the many radiating
from a summit will lead to the one valley you seek; take another
stream and you are condemned at last to traverse mountains to repair
the error. In a fog or at night, if one has not such a path, there is
nothing to help one but the lay of the snow or the trend of the
vegetation under the last gale. In climbing, the summit is nearly
always hidden, and nothing but a track will save you from false
journeys. In descent it alone will save you a precipice or an
unfordable stream. It knows upon which side an obstacle can be passed,
where there is firm land in a morass, and where there is the best
going; sand or rock--dry soil. It will find what nothing but long
experiment can find for an individual traveller, the precise point in
a saddle or neck where approach is easiest from either side, and
everywhere the Road, especially the very early Road, is wiser than it
seems to be. It reminds one of those old farmers who do not read, and
whom we think at first unreasoning in their curious and devious ways,
but whom, if we watch closely, we shall find doing all their work just
in that way which infinite time has taught the country-side.
Thus I know an old man in Sussex who never speaks but to say that
everything needs rest. Land, he says, certainly; and also he believes
iron and wood. For this he is still ridiculed, but what else are the
most learned saying now? And I know a path in the Vosges which, to the
annoyance of those who travel by it, is irrational: it turns sharp
northward and follows under a high ridge, instead of directly crossing
it: some therefore leave it and lose all their pains, for, if you
will trust to that path you will find it crosses the ridge at last at
the only place where, on the far side, it is passable at all; all
before and beyond that point is a little ledge of precipice which no
one could go down.
More than rivers and more than mountain chains, roads have moulded the
political groups of men. The Alps with a mule-track across them are
less of a barrier than fifteen miles of forest or rough land
separating one from that track. Religions, which are the principal
formers of mankind, have followed the roads only, leaping from city to
city and leaving the 'Pagani,' in the villages off the road, to a
later influence. Consider the series Jerusalem, Antioch, Ephesus,
Athens, and the Appian Way: Rome, all the tradition of the Tuscan
highway, the Ligurian coast, Marseilles and Lyons. I have read in some
man's book that the last link of that chain was the river Rhone; but
this man can never have tried to pull a boat upon the Rhone up-stream.
It was the Road that laid the train. The Mass had reached Lyons
before, perhaps, the last disciple of the apostles was dead: in the
Forez, just above, four hundred years later, there were most probably
offerings at night to the pagan gods of those sombre and neglected
hills.
And with religions all that is built on them: letters, customs,
community of language and idea, have followed the Road, because
humanity, which is the matter of religion, must also follow the road
it has made. Architecture follows it, commerce of course, all
information: it is even so with the poor thin philosophies, each in
its little day drifts, for choice, down a road.
The sacredness which everywhere attaches to The Road has its sanction
in all these uses, but especially in that antiquity from which the
quality of things sacred is drawn: and with the mention of the word
'antiquity' I may explain another desire which led me to the study I
have set down in this book: not only did I desire to follow a road
most typical of all that roads have been for us in western Europe, but
also to plunge right into the spirit of the oldest monument of the
life men led on this island: I mean the oldest of which a continuous
record remains.
[Illustration: A ROAD MOST TYPICAL OF ALL THAT ROADS HAVE BEEN FOR US]
To study something of great age until one grows familiar with it and
almost to live in its time, is not merely to satisfy a curiosity or to
establish aimless truths: it is rather to fulfil a function whose
appetite has always rendered History a necessity. By the recovery of
the Past, stuff and being are added to us; our lives which, lived in
the present only, are a film or surface, take on body--are lifted into
one dimension more. The soul is fed. Reverence and knowledge and
security and the love of a good land--all these are increased or given
by the pursuit of this kind of learning. Visions or intimations are
confirmed. It is excellent to see perpetual agony and failure
perpetually breeding the only enduring things; it is excellent to see
the crimes we know ground under the slow wheels whose ponderous
advance we can hardly note during the flash of one human life. One may
say that historical learning grants men glimpses of life completed and
a whole; and such a vision should be the chief solace of whatever is
mortal and cut off imperfectly from fulfilment.
Now of all that study the chief charm lies in mere antiquity. No one
truly loves history who is not more exalted according to the greater
age of the new things he finds. Though things are less observable as
they are farther away, yet their appeal is directly increased by such
a distance in a manner which all know though none can define it. It is
not illusion; perhaps an ultimate reality stands out when the details
are obscured. At any rate it is the appeal which increases as we pass
further from the memories of childhood, or from the backward vision of
those groups of mountain which seem to rise higher and more awfully
into the air as we abandon them across the plains. Antiquity of that
degree conveys--I cannot pretend to say how--echoes which are exactly
attuned to whatever is least perishable in us. After the present and
manifold voice of Religion to which these echoes lead, and with which
in a sense they merge, I know of nothing more nobly answering the
perpetual questioning of a man. Nor of all the vulgar follies about us
is any more despicable than that which regards the future with
complacency, and finds nothing but imperfection in that innocent,
creative, and wondering past which the antiquaries and geologists have
revealed to us.
For my part I desired to step exactly in the footprints of such
ancestors. I believed that, as I followed their hesitations at the
river-crossings, as I climbed where they had climbed to a shrine
whence they also had seen a wide plain, as I suffered the fatigue they
suffered, and laboriously chose, as they had chosen, the proper soils
for going, something of their much keener life would wake again in the
blood I drew from them, and that in a sort I should forget the
vileness of my own time, and renew for some few days the better
freedom of that vigorous morning when men were already erect,
articulate, and worshipping God, but not yet broken by complexity and
the long accumulation of evil. It was perhaps a year ago that I
determined to follow and piously to recover the whole of that doubtful
trail whereby they painfully made their way from one centre of their
common life to the sea, which was at once their chief mystery and
their only passage to the rest of their race--from Hampshire to the
Straits of Dover. Many, I knew, had written about that road; much of
it was known, but much also was lost. No one, to my knowledge, had
explored it in its entirety.
First, therefore, I read what had been written about this most ancient
way, I visited men who were especially learned in geology and in
antiquarian knowledge, I took notes from them, and I carefully studied
the maps of all sorts that could help me in my business. Then, taking
one companion, I set out late in December to recover and map out yard
by yard all that could be recovered and mapped out of The Old Road.
No better task could be put before a man, and the way in which I
accomplished it my readers shall judge in the essay which follows this
introduction, and in the diary of my journey with which the book shall
close.
THE THEORY OF THE OLD ROAD
THAT SUCH AND SUCH CAUSES DETERMINED THE TRACK OF THE OLD
ROAD, AND THAT IT RAN FROM WINCHESTER TO CANTERBURY
[Illustration]
If one looks at a map of England in relief one sees that five great
ridges of high land come, the first from just east of north, the
second from the north-east, the third and fourth from the east, and
the fifth from the south and west, to converge on Wilts and the
Hampshire border.
Roughly speaking, their area of convergence is Salisbury Plain, and it
has been suggested that Avebury and Stonehenge drew the importance of
their sites from this convergence; for these continuous high lands
would present the first natural highways by which a primitive people
could gather from all parts of the island.
The advantages afforded in the matter of travel by such hills (which
are called in great parts of their course the Cotswold, the Chilterns,
the North Downs, the South Downs, and the Dorsetshire Downs) are still
quite plainly apparent if a man will follow them on foot.
He will see from the heights even to-day the remains of the woodland
which made the valleys and the wealds originally far more difficult to
traverse. He will note the greater dryness of these heights, and he
will remark, if he contrast his cross-country going on the hills with
that of the valleys, that the geological formation of these heights,
with their contours, fit them peculiarly for an original means of
communication.
Four out of the five are great dry, turf-covered ridges of chalk,
steep towards the summer sun. The fifth range, the Cotswold, though
oolitic and therefore greasy under foot, is at the summit of its
western escarpment much drier than the valleys; for that escarpment is
steep, and drains off well into the valley of the Severn.
When one has once recognised the importance of these five radiating
lines of hills and of their point of convergence, one will next see
that of the five, one in particular must have had an especial value
perhaps in the very earliest times, and certainly in all the centuries
just preceding the historic period, during which Britain, from
similarities in religion, language, and blood, was closely connected
with the Continent. The passage westward from the Straits of Dover to
the Hampshire centres must have been by far the most important line of
traffic. We know that it has been so continuously in historic times,
and it is easy to prove that long before the opening of our national
history with the Roman invasions, some east-to-west road must have
been the leading road of England.
Few of the following considerations are new, but all are to the
purpose:
1. The Straits of Dover are the natural entry into the country. The
nature of that entry, and its very great effect upon the development
of our island, I will discuss later in connection with the town of
Canterbury. How far the Straits may have a rival lower down the
Channel I will discuss in connection with the town of Winchester. For
the present, the main point is that in the earliest times, whoever
came in and out of the country came in and out most easily by the only
harbours whence the further shore is visible.
2. When the Straits had been crossed and England entered, whither
would the principal road lead? The conformation of Kent forced it
westward, for the Thames estuary forbade a northern, the only
alternative route.
One track of great importance did indeed go north and west, crossing
near London. It was later known as the Watling Street; it was the
artery which drained the Midlands; it became the connection with
sacred Anglesey, ultimately the northern door into Ireland.
But no northern road--whether leading as did the Watling Street to
Chester, or bending round as did the Icknield Way north-east after
passing the ford of the Thames, or taking the island in diagonal as
did the Fosse Way, or leading from London to the Humber as did the
Ermine Street, or up at last to the Wall as did the Maiden Way--none
of these could have a principal importance until the Romans invented
frontiers: frontier garrisons to be fed, and frontier walls to be
defended. Before their time this northern portion of England, split by
the barren Pennines, hardly cultivated, leading nowhere, could not
have been a goal for our principal road. That must have run to the
south of Thames, and must have led from the Straits to the districts
of which I have spoken--Hampshire, the Mendips, the Wiltshire Hills,
Devonshire, and Cornwall.
3. The west of the island contained its principal supplies of mineral.
Lead indeed was found and exploited in the north, but perhaps not
before the Romans, whereas the variety and the amount of the wealth
in the valley of the Severn and the peninsula beyond gave all that
region an economic preponderance over the rest of the island. Tin, an
absolute necessity for the Mediterranean civilisation, was certainly
found in Cornwall, though the identification of the Scilly Islands
with the Cassiterides is doubtful.
The Mendips formed another metallic centre, presumably richer than
even the Devonian peninsula. Lead certainly came in early times
regularly from these hills, and Gloucester remained till the Middle
Ages associated with the tax on iron.
4. There is a fourth aspect of the matter: it is of a sort that
history neglects, but it is one the importance of which will be
recognised with increasing force if the public knowledge of the past
is destined to advance. It is that powers mainly resident in the mind
have moulded society and its implements.
That economic tendency upon which our materialists lay so great a
stress is equally immaterial (did they but know it) with the laws they
profess to ignore, and is but one form of the common power which
human need evokes. A man must not only eat, he must eat according to
his soul: he must live among his own, he must have this to play with,
that to worship, he must rest his eyes upon a suitable landscape, he
must separate himself from men discordant to him, and also combat them
when occasion serves. The south-west of England has had in this region
of ideas from the earliest times a special character and a peculiar
value. It is one in spirit with Brittany, with Ireland, and with
Wales; nor is it by any means certain that this racial sympathy was
the product of the Saxon invasions alone. It is possible that the
slower and heavier men were in Kent before Caesar landed, it must be
remembered that our theory of 'waves of population' perpetually
pressing aborigines westward remains nothing but a theory, while it is
certain that the sheltered vales and the high tors would nourish men
very different from those of the East Anglian flats or the Weald.
Now one of the forces which helps to produce a road is the necessity
of interchange--what physicists call potential--a difference between
opposite poles. Such a force is to be discovered in the permanent
character of the west; its permanent differentiation from our eastern
seaboard. Nor is it fantastic to insist upon the legends which
illumine this corner of the island. Glastonbury was for centuries the
most sacred spot in our country, and it was sacred precisely because
confused memories of an immense antiquity clung round it. The struggle
between the Romano-British princes and the heathen pirates, a struggle
the main effort of which must have taken place much further east, is
yet fixed by legend in that same land of abrupt rocks and isolated
valleys which forms the eastern margin of the Bristol Channel, and
Arthur, who was king if anything of the Logrians, yet has been given
by tradition a castle at Tintagel.
To the west, then, would the main road have gone so far as the mind
could drive it.
5. The eastern and western road would have been the main artery of
southern England, just as the Icknield Way (the north-eastern and
south-western one along the Chilterns) would have been the main artery
from the Midlands and from the men of the Fens, just as the road
along the Cotswold would have been the artery along the Severn valley
and from the bend of this at the Wrekin on up into the Fells and the
Pennines; and just as that along the Dorsetshire Downs would have been
the great means of communication for the Devonian peninsula.
Now of all these districts, the first was by far the most important.
Southern and eastern England, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, south
Berkshire, were the most open and the best cultivated areas, enjoyed
the best climate, and were most in touch with the civilisation of the
Continent. It is true to say that right down to the industrial
revolution the centre of gravity of England lay south of the Thames.
In the actual fighting the south always conquered the north, and
whereas influence monastic and constitutional would spread from either
end of the island, it was the southern which ultimately survived.
There is more. It was along the green-sand ridge of south England that
neolithic man had his principal seat. The getting of iron sprang up
before history on the red stone of the Sussex weald; it remained
there till our grandfathers' time. The oaks that grew from Kent to
Devon, along so many creeks from the Rother to the Tamar, built our
first ships. They remained our resource for this industry till the
Napoleonic wars. The _Victory_ was launched in Beaulieu River, and the
first eye-witness, Caesar, heard that in cultivation the south had
preceded the north.
6. Finally, not only was the district the best in England to develop
an important road, but the platform or site for that road was ready
provided, and invited use much more definitely than did any other way
from the narrow seas up into the island.
* * * * *
With this last point I am led to describe the natural causeway which
seems to call for a traveller landing in Kent to use it if he would go
westward, or for one leaving the inland country to use it as the last
part of his journey eastward towards the sea--I mean those heights
which are called in their entirety the North Downs.
There runs from the neighbourhood of the Straits of Dover right across
south England, in a great bow, a range of hills which for its length,
unchanging pattern and aspect, has no exact parallel in Europe.
A man who should leave the Straits with the object of reaching the
Hampshire centres would find a moderately steep, dry, chalky slope,
always looking full towards the southern sun, bare of trees, cut by
but three river valleys (and but one of these of any width), not often
indented with combes or projecting spurs: this conspicuous range would
lead him by the mere view of it straight on to his destination.
[Illustration]
When you have turned the corner of the valley of the Stour, you can
see for miles and miles the Kentish Downs like a wall pointing on
over the Medway to Wrotham and the villages beyond. When you reach
that projecting shoulder of Wrotham Hill you can still see on for
miles and miles the straight, clean-cut embankment of chalk inviting
you to pursue it westward at such a height as will clear the last
cultivation of the valleys, and as will give you some view of your
further progress. The end of each day's march is clearly apparent from
the beginning of it, and the whole is seen to lie along this
astonishingly homogeneous ridge. You do not lose that advantage for
perhaps four days of going until you reach the valley of the Wey and
the Guildford Gap; and even then for many miles further, though no
longer on the chalk but on the sand, a sharp hillside, still looking
at the sun, is afforded you in the Hog's Back.
You may say that from the Straits of Dover to Farnham, Nature herself
laid down the platform of a perfectly defined ridge, from which a man
going west could hardly deviate, even if there were no path to guide
him.
[Illustration: THESE PITS WHICH UNCOVER THE CHALK BARE FOR US
_See page 191_]
From Farnham to the converging point near Salisbury, where he would
meet the northern, the western, and the south-western roads, no
definite ridge continued; but high rolling downs of chalk gave him
good enough going, and led him along a water-parting which saved him
the crossing of rivers, and afforded for his last two or three days a
dry and firm soil.
Such, we must presume, was the full course of the original Road from
east to west. To put it the other way round, and give from west to
east the primeval track from the centre of south England to the
Straits of Dover, we may say that it would leave Stonehenge to enter
Hampshire near Quarley Hill, leave Bury Hill Camp on the right, pass
near Whitchurch, and so proceeding eastward, following the southern
edge of the watershed, would enter Farnham by the line of 'Farnham
Lane'; it would thence follow the southern side of the range of hills
until it reached the sea above the Portus Lemanis--the inlet which
covered the marshy plain below the present village Lympne.
Such was undoubtedly the earliest form of the Old Road, but upon this
original trajectory two exceptions fell in a time so remote that it
has hardly left a record. The western end of the Road was deflected
and came to spring, not from Stonehenge, but from the site of
Winchester; the eastern portion was cut short: it terminated, not at
some port, but at Canterbury, inland.
Why did Winchester come to absorb the traffic of the west, and to form
the depot and the political centre of southern England? Why did
Canterbury, an inland town, become the goal of this long journey
towards the narrow seas?
The importance of the one and of the other can be explained. Let me
take them in order, and begin first with Canterbury.
THE CAUSES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF WINCHESTER AND CANTERBURY,
AND OF THEIR POSITION AS TERMINI OF THE OLD ROAD
The Straits of Dover fill the history of this island because they have
afforded our principal gate upon a full life.
All isolated territories--valleys difficult of entry, peninsulas,
islands--have this double quality: they are not sufficient to live a
full life of themselves, but, receiving sufficient material of
civilisation from the larger world outside, they will use it
intensively and bring it to the summit of perfection.
Cut off, they wither. Nowhere does humanity fall more abject and
lethargic than in such defended places, if the defence be too long
maintained. But let them admit from time to time the invasion of
armies or ideas, and nowhere does humanity flourish more densely or
higher. The arts, the fierce air of patriotism, in whose heat alone
the gems of achievement can form, the solution of abstract problems,
the expression of the soul in letters--for all these things seclusion
provides a special opportunity. It protects their origins from the
enemies of seeds, it nurtures their growth with the advantage of a
still air, it gives them a resting-place for their maturity.
The valleys prove my thesis. The abandoned valleys of Savoy and
Piedmont are goitrous, smitten, sterile. They are the places where, in
the Middle Ages, vapid degradations of religion (the Waldensian for
instance) could arise; they are the back-waters of Europe. Contrast
with them the principal and open valleys; the valley of the
Gresivaudan, a trench sown with wealth and vigour, the dale which is
the backbone of strong Dauphine, or that valley of the Romanche from
which the Revolution sprang, or that of the Ticino which comes down
from the Alps to the Italian plain, rejoicing like a virgin stepping
forward into the ample day of her womanhood, arms open and all
informed with life. Remember the Limagne and the Nemosian vineyard; I
could think that God had made these half-secluded places to prop up
our fading memories of Paradise.
And as the valleys, so the islands also prove it. Consider Crete,
Cyprus, Sicily--for the matter of that our own island--what they can
be when they are linked with neighbouring civilisation, and what when
they are cut off.
The place of landing, therefore, is always capital and sacred for
islands, and with us that place was chiefly the Kentish shore.
It might seem natural that some special haven upon that shore should
absorb our traditions and receive our principal road. It was not so.
Canterbury, and no port, received that road and became the nucleus of
worship in the island. Why?
Canterbury, and not some port, is the terminus of the Old Road, on
account of the effect of the tide in the Straits of Dover. The bastion
of Kent, jutting out into the sharpest current of the narrow seas,
distorts and confuses the violent tides of the Channel. Now complexity
of tides involves a multiplicity of harbours, and many neighbouring
harbours among which seamen choose as necessity may drive them,
involve a common centre inland.
That is the whole of my argument.
We have already seen how necessarily this corner of England will
attract exit and entry. The most powerful emotion connected with that
attraction was the sight of land. There is but one small section of
the continental coast whence England, the sun shining on the chalk
cliffs, can be clearly seen; and it can be so seen but upon certain
days, say one day out of three. The little section lies between
Sangatte and Ambleteuse. Here a great hill, whose seaward projection
is the cape of Gris Nez, affords a good look-out, and hence I say that
at least 120 days out of the year the further shore is visible. On
rarer occasions it may be got beyond Calais on the east, and as far as
the high sandhills near Etaples on the south and west.
[Illustration]
Similarly there is but a small section of the Kentish coast whence the
further shore can be seen. It extends from the South Foreland, you
may say, to the hill above Folkestone; half a day's walk. There are
days when you can see it as far north as Ramsgate Hill, but those days
are rare; further west than Folkestone it is hardly ever seen (for
the country is flat) save under conditions of mirage, such as startled
the people of Hastings at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
There are from the continental side no good starting-points from the
coast immediate to Gris Nez; it is rocky, uncertain, and unprovided
with inlets. Calais, to the east, was probably the earliest port of
departure. Here, at least, is a hole in the land, and there are two
considerations which make it probable that the earliest men would
start from this side of Gris Nez rather than the other. The first is
that they could run as far as possible sheltered from the prevailing
winds--for these come from the west and south-west; with such winds
they would, up to the point of Gris Nez, be in calm water, while if
they started from Boulogne they would have no such advantage. The
second is that they could run with an ebb tide down to Gris Nez, and
then if the wind failed so that they could not cross in one tide, the
flood would be to their advantage when they neared the English coast.
It would take them up again under lee of the land, round the South
Foreland to Sandwich. From Boulogne they would have to start without
shelter, run up on a flood tide, and if they missed that tide they
might have drifted down again under the full force of the prevailing
wind, any distance along the English coast. Boulogne ultimately became
the principal port of exit and entry. It was certainly so used by the
Romans; but Calais must, I think, have been the earliest
starting-point.
From Calais, then, the run would have been made to the English shores.
But when we note the conditions of this corner of England several
things strike us. In the first place, the number of the harbours.
These included originally Winchelsea, Rye, the Portus Lemanis, Dover,
Richborough, Reculvers; in all six harbours in this small stretch of
coast. If we look at the place to-day we find something similar; men
will attempt Rye, they will make Folkestone or Dover for choice;
Sandwich at a pinch in quite small boats. Ramsgate after Dover gives
the best of modern opportunities. There is something more. Most of
these harbours were and are bad; most of them were and are artificial.
It is true that in ancient times the strait which divided the Island
of Thanet from the mainland afforded an excellent shelter at either
end. Reculvers was at one end, and the island of Rutupiae
(Richborough) at the other. If one could not get into Richborough and
was carried round the North Foreland, one could always beat round into
Reculvers; but Dover was not much of a harbour; the Port Lemanis must
have been open to the south wind and was probably very shallow; Rye,
though better than it is now, was never a steep shore, and was always
a difficult place to make. The modern harbours may, without
exaggeration, be described as every one of them artificial. Folkestone
is distinctly so. The old harbour of Dover has silted up centuries
ago, and the gas works of the town are built over its site. Ramsgate
would be of no value but for the two constructed piers.
Now what is the meaning of this multiplicity, and of all this interest
in preserving such a multiplicity even by artificial means? The tide
is the clue to the problem.
Consider a man starting from the continental shore to reach England;
consider him sailing with a fresh breeze, for if the breeze was not
fresh his chances of crossing in a reasonable time and of making any
particular place of landing were small. Consider the fact that if he
crossed in a fresh breeze that breeze would be, three times out of
four, from the south or west. He runs under the lee of Gris Nez, and
when he is beyond that point of rock, he gets into the short, sharp
tumble of the sea which is raised by such a wind against the tide, for
he has started at the ebb. He runs down with the wind abeam perhaps as
far as the end of the Varne (where we now have the Varne Buoy), for
the tide so takes him. He sees the water breaking and boiling at this
shallow place. It settles near the turn of the tide. He holds on
easily, making less westing and pointing well up to the shore. There
opens before him a broad but very shallow lagoon with probably some
central channel which he knows. He enters and has made the most
favourable of the many crossings he knows. It is the Portus
Lemanis--our Lympne.
But there are other chances. The wind might fail him, or the wind
might so increase that he had to run before it. Did it fail him he
would be caught by the flood tide some miles from land. He would drift
up along the English shore, getting a few hundred yards nearer with
every catspaw, and looking impatiently for some place to which he
could steer. The dip in the cliffs at Dover would give him a chance
perhaps. If he missed that he would round the South Foreland; he would
have the advantage of smooth water, and he would make for the island
Rutupiae, which stood at the southern entrance of the strait between
the Isle of Thanet and the mainland. If his bad luck preserved, he
might be swept up in what we now call the Gull Stream round the North
Foreland; but the tide would have been making so long by this time as
to be curling round Longnose, and even without the wind he could trust
to it almost alone to make Reculvers. Similarly if the wind made him
run before it and caused him to miss the Portus Lemanis, he would
have the advantage of a weather shore once he was round the South
Foreland, and could run with smooth water under him into Rutupiae.
With the prevalent winds, then, and the tidal conditions of the
Straits, a multiplicity of harbours was a necessity for this crossing.
In a tideless sea--such as the Mediterranean--one harbour, and one
alone, would have absorbed the trade of Kent. Under our tidal
conditions, a coast most ill-provided was compelled to furnish no less
than six.
I could add, were I not afraid of confusing the reader, many other
examples of this necessity. For instance, when one runs from the
Belgian ports, or Dunkirk, to England, ever so little a change in the
wind may make it necessary to go north above the North Foreland.
Again, there is the barrier of the Goodwins, which, in spite of
legend, is probably prehistoric. If you could not get well south of
that barrier at the first trial you had to go north of it. Everything
has compelled men, so far, to provide as many chances as possible upon
this coast, and at the present day the breakwater at Folkestone, the
desperate attempt which many still make to use the harbour of Rye, to
some extent the great works of Dover, the poor relic of Sandwich, the
continual improvement of Ramsgate, point to the same necessity.
Perhaps some refuge less distant from the sea than the estuary of the
Swale will be made again to replace Reculvers upon the north of the
Kentish coast.
[Illustration]
Now it is this multiplicity of Kentish harbours proceeding from the
conditions of the tide which has created Canterbury.
When an army has to spread out like the fingers of a hand or the
sticks of a fan in order to cover a wide area, it must start from some
point of concentration.
When commerce is in doubt as to whether it will use this, that, or
another out of many gates, it must equally have this point of
concentration.
When defenders are expecting an invasion from many points of a
circumference, their only plan is to make their base some central
point whence radii depart to that circumference.
When the traveller is uncertain which of six places he can choose for
his departure, he will halt at some point more or less central, while
his decision is being made for him by the weather or by other
circumstances.
When a merchant, landing, knows not in which of six towns he shall
land, he must at least be certain that some one town, common as it
were to all the six, can be reached the day after his landing; he must
know that his correspondents can meet him there, and that he may make
that common town his depot for further transactions inland.
Thus it was that the six Kentish ports and more, standing on the edge
of that rounded county, created Canterbury inland.
* * * * *
The town might have stood, theoretically, at any one of a great number
of points; geometrically perhaps it ought to have been near the
village of Goodnestone, which is the centre of all this circumference
from Reculvers round to Lympne. But there is one governing condition
which forbids us to look for such a centre anywhere save upon one
line, and that condition is the river Stour. It is the only
considerable body of fresh water, and the only easy means of
communication with the interior. On the Stour, then, would the centre
of these ports be.
It might conceivably have been placed as far westward as Wye, for here
the Stour traverses the high ridge of land which provides a good road
from Dover and Folkestone to the north and west, but though this ridge
would have given a reason for the growth of our central town at this
spot, there is a better reason for its having risen six miles down
stream.
The tendency was to build such a place as near as possible to the tide
without losing the advantage of fresh water. In other words,
Canterbury represents on a smaller scale the founding of Exeter, of
Rouen, and of twenty other towns. Quite a short time ago the tide went
up the Stour as far as Fordwych, just below Canterbury, and the
presence of the tide up to a point just below the city, coupled with
the presence of fresh water flowing from above the city, seems to me
to have decided the matter.
The many conjectures upon the primitive state of Canterbury, whether
it were a lake village built upon piles, or what not, I do not presume
to discuss. The certain matter is that this place was the knot of
south-eastern England, and the rallying-point of all the roads from
the coast. Caesar landed at Deal, but Canterbury fort was the place he
had to take; Augustine landed at Richborough, but Canterbury was the
place wherein he fixed the origins of Christianity in England. It was
bound to counterpoise that other city of which I shall next speak,
and to be for the Straits of Dover what Winchester was for the centre
of south English civilisation. It so happened that, of the many
characters it might have assumed, the ecclesiastical attached to it.
It became the great nucleus of English worship, and the origin, under
Rome, of English discipline and unity in the faith for nearly seven
hundred years. At last, influencing as much as influenced by the
event, the murder of its great Archbishop in the later twelfth
century, lent it, for the last three hundred years of its hegemony, a
position unique in Europe. Canterbury during those three hundred years
was almost a sacred city.
Having said so much, then, about the eastern end of the Road, and why
that end was found inland and not upon the sea, let us consider its
western region and determine what forces produced the political
domination of Winchester.
* * * * *
We have seen that the route from the island centre of Stonehenge and
Avebury (the plain where the old roads meet) to the Straits of Dover,
may be regarded as the original of our communications across the south
of the island, from the rich west to the mainland. Such it might have
remained to this day, and such it would certainly have remained
throughout the period preceding the Roman invasion, and throughout the
barbaric centuries which succeeded the withdrawal of the legions, had
not a powerful influence (to repeat what was said above) modified the
original track and substituted, at least for its earlier portion as
far as Farnham, another road. We know that the great way from west to
east which should have had its origin in Salisbury Plain, found it as
a fact in Winchester.
Why was this? Why did the encampment or town upon the Itchen gather
round itself a special character, and become the depot into which
would stream the lead of the Mendips, the tin of Cornwall, and the
armies of all Britain south of Gloucester and west of the Wiltshire
Avon? To sum up all these questions we may ask in one phrase, as we
asked at Canterbury: What made Winchester?
The answer is again, The Sea: the necessities and the accidents of the
crossing of the Channel; and just as Canterbury was made by the
peculiarity of the Straits, by the bastion of Kent, confusing and
disturbing the rush of the narrow channel, and causing the complexity
of meeting tides, so Winchester was made by the peculiar conditions
under which the Channel can be passed at what I will call, for the
purposes of this essay, the 'Second Crossing': that is, the passage
from the jutting promontory of the Cotentin to the southern cape of
the Isle of Wight, which stands so boldly out into the sea, and
invites adventure from the French shore.
The great opportunity of this passage is far less apparent to us
moderns than it was to earlier men. With our artificial methods,
especially our regular service of steam, we are ignorant or forgetful
of the sea, and the true emotions which it arouses have decayed into
the ineptitudes with which we are all familiar. We talk of
'commanding' that element in war; there are even some who write as
though we of the towns were native to it; there are very few who
understand with what divinity it has prompted, allured, and terrified
the past of our race, or under what aspect it may prompt, allure, and
terrify the men of a future decline.
By the map alone no one could discover the character of this Second
Crossing. After the Straits of Dover the 'sleeve' of the Channel
widens so considerably that no clear alternative passage appears to be
provided. From Etaples right away to Ushant one might think a sea so
wide was of much the same peril and adventure to any early sailor.
Physical experience of many passages corrects such an error; a
consideration of the political history of the Continent tends further
to correct it. The Second Crossing was, and has always been, and will,
we may presume, in the future be, second only in importance to that of
the Straits.
[Illustration]
If the narrowing of the sea, due to the northward projection of
Normandy and the southern projection of the Isle of Wight, were alone
our guide, not very much could be made of it. It is more than double,
it is nearly three times the distance between Gris Nez and
Shakespeare's Cliff, though far less than the breadth of the Channel
either above or below. But the narrowing of the sea at this point is
but a small part of its advantage. On either side is the most ample
opportunity for protection. On either side high land will comfort and
guide a sailor almost throughout the passage, and upon the northern
shore is the best conceivable arrangement of chances for his rescue
from a gale or from the chance of a tide. The deep estuary of the
Seine sufficiently cuts off what is west from what is east of it to
make every one upon the western side avoid the difficulty of a journey
to Calais and seek some approach of his own to reach England; and
south-western England is enough of a unity to demand also a secondary
port of its own, whence it may seek the shore of the Continent and
escape upon favourable occasions the long journey eastward to the
Straits.
Let us consider these points in detail.
The estuary of the Seine was not only an obvious outlet, but it gave
an opportunity for the early ships to creep under the protection of a
windward shore. From the very heart of the country, from Rouen, and
even from Pont de l'Arche, sea-going vessels could go down the stream
with a strong tide helping them. They would have calm water as far as
the point of Barfleur so long as the wind was south of west, and no
danger save the reef of Calvados. Moreover, the trend of the land led
them northward in the direction which they knew they had to follow if
they were ultimately to find the English coast.
When this defence and indication failed the early sailor, at the
corner of the Cotentin, where the land turns west again, he could find
the little harbour of Barfleur whence to set out; he was there
protected from the outer sea by reefs, and possessed, what was
important to him, an excellent shore for beaching. He was sheltered