The Old Road (19 page)

THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE RIVERS IT MEETS UPON ITS COURSE, THE MEDWAY

A clear statement of the problem will lead one towards its solution.

I have said that for several miles before Wrotham, the chalk hills, well defined and steep, running almost due east and west, present an excellent dry and sunny bank for the road. As one goes along this part of one's journey, Wrotham Hill appears like a kind of cape before one, because beyond it the hills turn round northward, and their continuation is hidden. I have also told how, a long way off, over the broad flat of the Medway valley, the range may be seen continuing in the direction of Canterbury, and affording, when once the river is crossed, a similar platform to that from which one is gazing.

We knew, also, that the road does, as a fact, follow those distant hills, precisely as it had the range from which we made our observation, and if no physical obstacles intervened, the first travellers upon this track would undoubtedly have made a direct line from the projecting shoulder of Wrotham Hill to the somewhat less conspicuous turning-point which marks the
further hills of Grey Wethers, where also Boxley once stood.

But obstacles do intervene, and these obstacles were of the most serious kind for men who had not yet passed the early stages of civilisation. A broad river with a swift tidal current, flanked here and there (as tidal rivers always are before their embankment) by marshes; a valley floor of clay, the crossing of which must prove far more lengthy than that of any they had hitherto encountered, made the negotiation of this gap a difficult matter. Moreover, the direct line would have led them by the marshiest way of all: the fields of Snodland brook.

Oddly enough the difficulty of rediscovering the original track by which the road forded the Medway, does not lie in the paucity of evidence, but rather in the confusion arising from its nature and amount. So great is this confusion that some authorities have been content to accept alternative routes at this point.

Savage trails, however, never present alternatives so widely separate, and least of all will they present any alternative, even
one neighbouring the main road, where a formidable obstacle has to be overcome: to do so would be to forfeit the whole value which a primitive road possesses as a guide (for this value depends upon custom and memory), and when a tidal river had to be traversed, a further and very cogent reason for a single track was to be found in the labour which its construction upon a marshy soil involved.

If some one place of crossing had held a monopoly or even a pre-eminence within the limits of recorded history, the evidence afforded by it would be of the utmost value. But an indication of this simplicity is lacking.

It is certain that within historic times and for many centuries continuously, the valley and the river were passed at four places, each of which now may lay a claim to be the original passage.

The modern names of these places are, in their order from the sea, Cuxton, Lower Halling, Snodland, and Aylesford.

Before proceeding I must repeat what was said above, that two tracks of great antiquity continue the Old Road northward
on each side of the Medway far beyond any point where it would have crossed; these tracks (I have called them elsewhere 'feeders') are not only clearly defined, but have each received the traditional name of the Pilgrim's Way, and their presence adds a considerable complexity to the search for the original passage.

So much of the elements of the problem being laid down, let us now recapitulate certain features which we have discovered to be true of the road in the earlier part of its course, where it had to cross a river, and certain other features which one knows to be common to other British track-ways over valleys broader than those of the Mole or the Wey. To these features we may add a few others, which are conjecturally those that such a road would possess although we might have no direct evidence of them.

A list of these features will run very much as follows:—

(1) The road will attempt the shortest passage of the valley floor, the breadth being more or less of an obstacle, according as the soil is more or less low, covered, or damp.

(2) It will seek for a ford.

(3) Other things being equal, it would naturally cross a river as high up as possible, where the stream was likely to be less difficult to ford.

(4) It would cross in as immediate a neighbourhood as possible to that height upon which survey could be made of the opportunities for crossing.

(5) The nature of the bottom at the crossing would influence it greatly, whether that bottom were gravel and sand, or treacherous mud. Moreover, a primitive road would often leave evidence of its choice by the relics of good material thrown in to harden the ford.

(6) A point of so much importance would probably be connected with religion, and almost always with some relic of habitation or weapons.

(7) It would often preserve in its place-name some record of the crossing.

(8) It would (as we had found it at Dorking and at Otford) choose a place where a spur on either side led down to the river.

To these eight points may be added the
further consideration, that whatever was the more usual crossing in early historic times affords something of a guide as to prehistoric habits, and, finally, that where a tidal river was concerned, the motives which were present on any river for seeking a passage as far up stream as possible would be greatly strengthened, for the tide drowns a ford.

Now, in the light of what the map tells us, and of these principles, let us see where the crossing is most likely to be found, and having determined that, discover how far the hypothesis is supported by other evidence.

To begin with Cuxton:

At Cuxton the firm land of the hills comes upon either side close to the river. An ancient track-way upon either side leads very near to the point of crossing and cannot be followed, or at least nothing like so clearly followed further down the valley. At Cuxton, moreover, as a constant tradition maintains, the crossing of the river by pilgrims was common.

On the other hand there is nothing approaching a ford at this place. The
bottom is soft mud, the width of the river very considerable, the tidal current strong, and of all the points at which the river might have been crossed, it is the most distant from the direct line; indeed, compared with the next point, Lower Halling, a traveller would add five or six miles to his journey by choosing Cuxton.

Now, consider Aylesford, the other extreme; the highest up as Cuxton is the lowest down the river of the four points. Aylesford has many powerful arguments in its favour. It has produced one of the most interesting and suggestive prehistoric relics in England: I mean that 'Aylesford pottery' which is an imitation, or possibly even an import, of the pottery of northern Italy in the first or second centuries before our area. It has furnished a mass of other antiquities: armillae of gold have been found in the river and British coins and graves on the northern bank. It preserves in the last part of its name the tradition of a ford, and though 'ford' in place-names by no means always signifies a ford any more than 'bridge' signifies a bridge, yet in this case we have historic knowledge that a ford
existed; and (as is most frequently the case) the ford has been bridged.

A further argument, and in its way one of the strongest that could be adduced, is the position of the place in the earliest of our annals. Whether 'the Horse and the Mare,' Vortigern, and the rest are wholly legendary or not, cannot be determined. Certainly the texture of the story is fabulous, but Bede and 'Nennius' have both retained the memory of a great battle fought here, in which the British overcame the Pirates, and what is most significant of all, the legend or memory records a previous retreat of the Saxons from a defeat at Otford. We know, therefore, that a writer in the seventh century, though what he was writing might be fable, would take it for granted that a retreat westward from Otford would naturally lead along some road which passed the Medway at Aylesford. We get another much later example of the same thing when Edmund Ironside, after his great victory at Otford over the Danes, pursued them to Aylesford, and was only prevented from destroying them by their passage over the river under the cover of treason.

This is very strong evidence in favour of Aylesford, and when one remembers that the manor was ancient demesne, its antiquity and importance are enhanced.

But against Aylesford there are three strong arguments. They are not only strong, they are insuperable. The first is the immense width of valley that would have to be crossed to reach it. That is, the immense tract of uncertain, wooded way, without a view either of enemies or of direction.

The second is the clay. A belt of gault of greater or lesser width stretches all along the Downs just below the chalk. Here it is particularly wide, and no straight line can be taken from Wrotham to the Aylesford gravels without crossing nearly two miles of this wretched footing, which, throughout its course, the road has most carefully avoided. That a ford of great antiquity was there; that the men of the sandy heights used it; that the Romans used so admirable a ford (it is gravel near the river on either side), that they bridged it, that they made a causeway over the clay, and that this causeway and that
bridge were continuously used after their time, I am willing to believe; but not that the prehistoric road along the chalk hills could have waded through all that clay to reach it, and have gone out of its way into the bargain.

Thirdly, there is the clinching fact that a number of prehistoric remains, Kit's Coty House and the rest, lie to the
north
of such a crossing, and that to reach Boxley itself, a site indubitably dependent upon the prehistoric road, a man crossing at Aylesford would have to turn
back
upon his general direction.

It must further be remembered that by the seventh century some of the valleys had acquired firm roads, inherited from the old civilisation, and that in the rout after a battle, an army making for a tidal river, and not able to choose their own time of crossing (as can a wayfarer), would certainly make for a point as far up the stream as possible and for a bridge.

If Cuxton and Aylesford, then, are to be neglected (as I think they certainly must be), there remain only Lower Hailing and Snodland.

At first sight the weight of argument is for Lower Halling, and if the various parts of such an argument as I adduce have different proportions from those I lend them, one might conclude that at Lower Halling was the original passage of the Medway.

True, there is for the passage at Lower Halling but one evidence that I can discover, but it is an evidence of the greatest weight, and such an one as is often permitted alone to establish a conclusion in archæology. It is this, that there was good surface over the original soil from the Pilgrim's Way on the hills above, right down to the river-bank at this point. No clay intervenes between the chalk and gravel. The primitive traveller would have had fairly dry land all the way down to the river. Even beyond the river the belt of alluvial soil is less broad than it is at Snodland; and altogether, if the geological argument alone were considered, the decision undoubtedly would be given to this place.

The claims of Snodland are asserted by a number of converging arguments. I will enumerate them, and it will, I think, be
seen that though each is individually slight, the whole bundle is convincing.

First.
—The spur, which leaves the main range of hills for the river (such a spur as has elsewhere, at Shalford, and at Dorking, and at Otford, attracted the Old Road towards the ford it points to), touches indeed both Snodland and Lower Halling on either side, but with this great difference—that Snodland is on the south, Lower Halling upon the north of the ridge. The elevation is not pronounced, the slope is slight, but a little experience of such ground at various seasons will determine one that the southern bank would be chosen under primitive conditions. In such a conformation the southern bank alone has during the winter any chance of drying, and in a dry summer, it matters little whether a slope be partly of clay
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(as is the descent to Snodland) or of chalk (as is that to Lower Halling). During more than half the year, therefore, the descent to Snodland was preferable; during the other half indifferent.

Secondly.
—Immediately before and beyond the Lower Halling crossing no antiquities of moment have been discovered: a grave, possibly Roman, is, I believe, the only one. At Snodland, and beyond its crossing, they are numerous. An ancient and ruined chapel marks the descent from the hills. The church itself has Roman tiles. Beyond the river, the Roman villa which was unearthed in 1896 by Mr. Patrick is precisely upon the road that would lead from such a crossing up to the Pilgrim's Way upon the hill. Close by the origin of this lane from the ford to the hillside were discovered the fragments of what some have believed to be a Mithraic temple; and earlier, in 1848, Roman urns and foundations were found near the road at Little Culand.