The Historical Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc
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the general tendency of the rest.
There is a mass of other indications besides the mere direction to guide one in one's research; and a congeries of these together make up what I have called the method by which we approached the problem.
That method was to collate all the characteristics which could be discovered in the known portions of the Road, and to apply these to the search for traces of the lost portion.
Supporting such a method there are the a priori arguments drawn from geographical and geological conditions.
There are place-names which point out, though only faintly, the history of a village site.
There is the analogy of trails as they exist in savage countries at the present day.
There is the analogy of other portions of prehistoric tracks which still exist in Britain.
All these confirm or weaken a conclusion, but still the most important arguments are found in the characteristics which can be discovered in the known portions of the Road, and which may be presumed, in the absence of contradictory evidence, to attach to the lost portions also.
When a gap was reached, it was necessary to form an hypothesis to guide one in one's next step, and such an hypothesis could best be formed upon a comparison of all these various kinds of knowledge. The indication afforded by any one of them would, as a rule, be slight, but the convergence of a number of such indications would commonly convey a very strong presumption in favour of some particular track.
It was then our business to seek for some remaining evidences, apparent to the eye, whereby the track could be recovered. Such evidences were the well-known fact that a line of very old yews will often mark such a road where it lies upon the chalk; the alignment of some short path with a known portion behind, and a known portion before one; while, of course, the presence of a ridge or platform upon such an alignment we regarded (in the absence of any other lane) as the best guide for our search.
Occasionally, the method by which we brought our conjecture to the test had to be applied to another kind of difficulty, and a choice had to be made between two alternative tracks, each clear and each with something in its favour; in one or two short and rare examples, the Road very plainly went one way, when by every analogy and experience of its general course it should have gone another. But, take the problem as a whole, whether applied to the commonest example, that of forming an hypothesis and then finding whether it could be sustained, or to the most exceptional (as where we found the Road making straight for a point in a river where there was no ford), the general method was always the same: to consider the geographical and geological conditions, the analogy of existing trails of the same sort, the characters we had found in the Road itself throughout its length as our research advanced, and to apply these to the parts where we were in doubt.
The number of 'habits,' if I may so call them, which the Road betrayed, was much larger than would at first have appeared probable, and that we could discover them was in the main the cause of our success, as the reader will see when I come to the relation of the various steps by which we reconstituted, as I hope, the whole of the trail.
The principal characteristics or 'habits' are as follows:—
I. The Road never turns a sharp corner save under such necessity as is presented by a precipitous rock or a sudden bend in a river.
In this it does precisely what all savage trails do to-day, in the absence of cultivated land. When you have a vague open space to walk through at your choice you have no reason for not going straight on.
We found but one apparent exception to this rule in the whole distance: that at the entry to Puttenham; and this exception is due to a recent piece of cultivation.4 This alignment, however, is not rigid—nothing primitive ever is—the Road was never an absolutely straight line, as a Roman road will be, but it was always direct.
II. The Road always keeps to the southern slope, where it clings to the hills, and to the northern bank (i.e. the southward slope) of a stream. The reason of this is obvious; the slope which looks south is dry.
There are but four exceptions to this rule between Winchester and Canterbury, and none of the four are so much as a mile in length.5
III. The road does not climb higher than it needs to.
It is important to insist upon this point, because there is nothing commoner than the statement that our prehistoric roads commonly follow the very tops of the hills. The reason usually given for this statement is, that the tops of the hills were the safest places. One could not be ambushed or rushed from above. But the condition of fear is not the only state of mind in which men live, nor does military necessity, when it arises, force a laden caravan to the labour of reaching and following a high crest. The difficulty can be met by a flanking party following the top of the ridge whose lower slope is the platform for the regular road. In this way the advantage of security is combined with the equally obvious advantage of not taking more trouble than you are compelled to take. There are several excellent examples of the flanking road on this way to Canterbury, notably the ridge-way along the Hog's Back,6 which has become the modern high-road; but nowhere does the Old Road itself climb to the top of a hill save when it has one of two very obvious reasons: (a) the avoidance of a slope too steep to bear the traveller with comfort, or (b) the avoidance of the ins and outs presented by a number of projecting ridges. On this account at Colley Hill, before Reigate, and later, above Bletchingly, near Redhill, the Road does climb to the crest: and so it does beyond Boughton Aluph to avoid a very steep ravine. Once on the crest, it will remain there sometimes for a mile or so, especially if by so doing it can take advantage of a descending spur later on: as after Godmersham Park down to Chilham. But, take the Road as a whole, its habit when a convenient southerly bank of hills is present, is to go up some part of the slope only, and there to run along from 50 to 100 feet above the floor of the valley. If it be asked why the earlier traveller should have been at the pains of rising even so much as this, it may be noted that the reason was threefold: it gave the advantage of a view showing what was before one; it put one on the better drained slope where the land would be drier; and it lifted one above the margin of cultivation in later times when men had learned to plough the land. In the particular case of this Road it had the further advantage that it usually put one on the porous chalk and avoided the difficult clay of the lower levels.
IV. Wherever the Road goes right up to the site of a church it passes upon the southern side of that site.
It is necessary to digress here for a moment upon the archæological importance of these sites. They are but an indication, not a proof, of prehistoric sanctity. It would be impossible to say in what proportion the old churches of these islands stand upon spots of immemorial reverence, but it is certain that a sufficient proportion of them do so stand (the church of Bishopstoke, for instance, upon the site of a Druidical circle), as to afford, when a considerable number are in question, a fair presumption that many of the sites have maintained their meaning from an age long prior to Christianity. Apart from the mass of positive evidence upon this matter, we have our general knowledge upon the methods by which the Faith supplemented, and in part supplanted, older and worse rituals; and there is an impression, which no one who has travelled widely in western Europe will deny, that the church of a place has commonly something about it of the central, the unique, or the isolated in position; characters which cannot wholly be accounted for by the subsequent growth of the community around them.
Now, on its way from Winchester to Canterbury, the Old Road passes, not in the mere proximity of, but right up against, thirteen existing or ruined churches. They are, proceeding from west to east, as follows: King's Worthy, Itchen Stoke, Bishop Sutton, Seale, Puttenham, St. Martha's, Shere, Merstham, Titsey, Snodland, Burham, Boughton Aluph, and Chilham.7 In the case of eight it passes right up against the south porch; in the case of two (Bishop Sutton and Seale) it is compelled to miss them by a few yards. One (St. Martha's)