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THE EXPLORATION OF THE ROAD

Winchester to Alton

Eighteen miles and a half

Winchester differs from most other towns which the Romans reorganised in that its main streets, the street north and south and the street east and west, do not divide the city into four equal quarters. The point where the two ways cross is close to the western wall, and this peculiar arrangement was probably made by the first conquerors in order to avoid an exit upon the marshy land beside the Itchen; for that river flowed just against the eastern wall of the city.

Of the four arms of this cross, the northern, a street always given up to commerce, became, in the later Middle Ages, the Jewry. By a process at first perhaps voluntary, but later legal, the Jews were concentrated into one quarter, a sort of Ghetto. It is to be noticed that in nearly every case these Jewish quarters were in the very thick of a city's life, and (as in the Paris of Philippe le Bel) of far greater value than any other equal area of the city.8 Something of the kind was present at Winchester. The whole stream of traffic which passed out from the capital to the rest of England went through the lane of the moneylenders, and we may say with certitude that the north gate, the limit of that lane, was the starting-point of the Old Road.

The north gate has now disappeared. It lay just south of the grounds now known as North-Gate House. The deflection of the street is comparatively modern; the original exit was undoubtedly (as at Chichester and elsewhere) along the straight line of the Roman road. This passed near the site of the present house, and pointed towards the isolated tree which marks the northern edge of the garden.

From this point it has been commonly imagined that the Old Road must have coincided with the modern Hyde Street, and have followed this line as far as the smithy at Headbourne Worthy. Thence it has been supposed to branch off to King's Worthy.

From the church of that village onwards through Martyrs' Worthy and Itchen Abbas no one questions but that the modern highway is identical with the Old Road; but I think the original track may be shown to have proceeded not along the modern street, but by an interior curve, following up the Monks' Walk, passing under the modern railway embankment near the arch which is just north of the Itchen bridge, and making thence straight for King's Worthy church, thus leaving Headbourne Worthy on the left, and running as the thick line runs in this sketch-map.

The point evidently demands argument, and I will give the arguments upon one side and upon the other, so that the conclusion may recommend itself to my readers.

In favour of the first supposition there is this to be said, that the line through Headbourne Worthy carries the road all the way above the levels which may be marshy, avoids the crossing of any stream, and indicates in the continuity of the place-names (the three Worthies)9 a string of similar sites dating from a similar antiquity. To this consideration may be added that parallel between Canterbury and Winchester which will be found throughout this essay. For at the other end of the road the entry into Canterbury is of a similar kind. The Old Road falls, as we shall see, into Watling Street, a mile before the city, and enters the ecclesiastical capital by a sharp corner, comparable to the sharp corner at Headbourne Worthy in the exit from Winchester.

Against all this one can array the following arguments. The Old Road, as the reader has already seen, never during its course turns a sharp corner. It has to do so at Canterbury because it has been following a course upon the north bank of the Stour, the bank opposite from that upon which Canterbury grew; no better opportunity could be afforded for crossing the river than the ferry or bridge which the most primitive of men would have provided as an entry into their township, and such a bridge or ferry would necessarily run at right angles to a path upon the opposite bank.

No such necessity exists in this case of the exit from Winchester. The town is on the same bank of the river as the road. Had the Old Road left by the eastern gate, such a corner would have been quite explicable and even necessary, but as a matter of fact it left by the northern.

The argument which relies upon the necessity of following the high land is of more value; but that value may be exaggerated. The shorter and more natural track, to which we inclined, though it runs indeed at a lower level, follows the edge of the chalk, and just avoids the marshy alluvial soil of the valley.

The objection that it compels a crossing of the little stream, the Bourne, is not so well founded as might be imagined. That stream would indeed have to be crossed, but it would have been crossed under primitive conditions in a much easier fashion than under modern. Its depth and regularity at the present day are the result of artifice, it runs at an unnatural level embanked in a straight line along the Monks' Walk, and was perhaps turned, as was nearly every stream that served a medieval congregation, for the purpose of giving power to the mill of the Hyde Abbey and of supplying that community with water.

The mention of the stream and of the monastery leads me to two further considerations in support of the same thesis. This splendid monument of the early twelfth century and of the new civilisation, the burial-place of the greatest of our early kings, the shrine which stood to royal Winchester as St. Germain des Prés did to royal Paris, and Westminster later to royal London, would, presumably, have had its gates upon the oldest highway of its time.

It should be remarked also that before its deflection that brook must have followed the slope and fallen into the Itchen by a much shorter and smaller channel, reaching the river near where the railway bridge now stands. A portion of its water still attempts a similar outlet, and there can be little doubt that before the embankment of eight hundred years ago the fields we traversed in our search for the path would have been dry, for they are high enough to escape flood, and they have a sufficient slope, and their chalky soil is sufficiently porous to have left the land firm upon either side of the little stream.

The Roman road also took the same line, at least as far as King's Worthy; and a Roman road was often based upon a pre-Roman track.10

The path so taken not only turns no abrupt corner (in itself an excellent argument in support of its antiquity), but points directly to King's Worthy church so as to pass its south porch, and then curves easily into that modern highway which goes on to Martyrs' Worthy and Itchen Stoke, and is admittedly coincident with the Old Road.

The alternative has no such regular development; if one comes through Headbourne Worthy one is compelled to turn a sharp corner at the smithy of that village and another just upon King's Worthy church before one can fall in with the modern road at the point where its coincidence with the old one ceases to be doubtful.

From all these considerations we determined to follow the lower and more neglected path as representing the track of the Old Road.

We left Hyde Street by the first opening in the houses of its eastern side; we halted with regret at the stable door, still carved and of stone, which is the last relic of Hyde Abbey. We saw the little red-brick villas, new built and building, that guard the grave where Alfred lay in majesty for six hundred years.11

We went up the Monks' Walk, under the arch, past King's Worthy church, through King's Worthy village and so on through Martyrs' Worthy to Itchen Abbas. It is a stretch which needs little comment, for after King's Worthy the modern high-road certainly corresponds with the ancient track. We were walking these few miles upon earth beaten (to quote recorded history alone) by the flight of Saxons from the battle of Alton, and by the conquering march of Swegen which was the preliminary to the rule of the Danes over England. We noted the sharp dip down into the valley12 (whence Itchen-A-Bas is thought to take its name), and on reaching the green at Itchen Stoke, six miles from our starting-point, we determined to explore the first considerable difficulty which the road would present to us.

That difficulty we had already presupposed to exist from a study of the map before we undertook our journey, and an examination of the valley confirmed us in our conjecture.

Thus far the history of the Worthies, and, as we have seen, the topographical necessities of the valley had determined the way with some accuracy; the most of it had corresponded to the present high-road. At Itchen Stoke these conditions disappeared.

The valley of the Itchen here makes a sharp bend northwards round a low but rather difficult hill, and leads on to the Alresfords. The modern road follows that valley, passes through New Alresford, and there joins the main road from Winchester to London.

The Old Road did not follow this course. It crossed the river at Itchen Stoke, crested the hill, and did not join the London road until the point marked by the church at Bishop Sutton, one mile from Alresford. That its track was of this nature can be proved.

We had already noted, upon the earlier maps, that, barely a century ago, nothing but irregular lanes connected Itchen Stoke with the Alresfords by the valley of the river. These could not represent the original trail; where that trail passed we were able to discover. The word Stoke here, as elsewhere in the South Country, is associated with the crossing of a stream. It stands for the 'staking' which made firmer the track down through the marshy valley, and supported on either side the wattles and faggots by which an approach to a river was consolidated. Moreover, to this day, a ford exists at Itchen Stoke, and it is an obvious place for passing the river; not only is the water shallow, but the bottom is firm, and the banks are not widely separated, as is so often the case where the depth of a river is lessened.

This ford, by itself, might not mean much. There are plenty of reasons for crossing a stream whenever one can, and Itchen Stoke would have provided a convenient ford for any one living north of the river who desired to get south of it. But there are a number of other considerations, which confirm to a point of certitude the crossing of the river by the Old Road at this point. Just above Itchen Stoke is the confluence of all the head-waters which form the Itchen: the Alre, and other streams. Now a confluence of this kind is invariably marshy, and this marsh could not, in early times, have been avoided (if one followed the flat right bank) save by a very long bend to the north: along that bend no trace of a road or of continuous prehistoric use exists: while, if one crosses at Itchen Stoke to the other bank, one finds a steep, dry bank on which to continue one's journey.

THE HEAD-WATERS WHICH FORM THE ITCHEN, THE ALRE AND OTHER STREAMS

It might be argued that the traveller would have wished to take on his way such settlements as the Alresfords; but though it is true that an ancient track leaves Old Alresford to the north-east, that track does not point to Farnham, the known junction of the 'short-cut' from Winchester with the original 'Harrow Way.' Old Alresford is well to the west, and also too far to the north of the track we had followed to be touched by it save at the expense of an abrupt and inexplicable bend. New Alresford is nearer the alignment (though not on it), and it is to New Alresford that the modern road leads. But the town was not in existence13 till the end of the twelfth century, and only grew up in connection with Bishop Lucy's scheme for rendering the Itchen navigable. The pond which was the head of that undertaking still remains, though much diminished, the chief mark of the place.

The ford might have been used, and is still used, for reaching all the district south of the Itchen, but that district was high, bare, waterless, unpeopled, and of no great importance until one got to the Meon valley, and it is significant that the Meon valley was in its earliest history independently colonised and politically separate from the valley of the Itchen.

In this absence of any but a modern road up the valley to the Alresfords, in the presence of the marsh, in the eccentricity of Old and the modernity of New Alresford, and in the unique purpose attributable to the ford, we had a series of negative considerations which forbade the Old Road to follow the river beyond Itchen Stoke.

On the other hand, there are as many positive arguments in favour of the thesis that the ford was used by the oldest road from Winchester to Farnham.

Between these two centres, as will be seen in a moment by the sketch-map on p. 137, a high but narrow watershed had to be crossed. To approach this watershed by the easiest route must have been the object of the traveller, and, as the map will show, to cross at this ford, go straight across the hill to Bishop Sutton, and thence follow the Ropley valley was to go in a direct line to one's object.

As we talked to the villagers and gathered their traditions, we found that this ford had been of capital importance. The old church of the village stood just beside the river, and in such a position that the road to the ford passed just by its southern porch. It has disappeared—'in the year of the mobbing,' say the peasants: that is, I suppose, in 1831; but the consecrated land around it is still enclosed, and its site must have clustered the whole place about the riverside. It stood, moreover, close against the ford; and the Old Road that skirted the churchyard is marked by an alignment of yews and other trees leading directly to the river.

Finally, when we accepted the hypothesis and crossed the river, we found a road corresponding to what the old track should be. It has in the past been somewhat neglected, but it is now a metalled lane; it is without any abrupt turn or corner, and leads directly over the hill in the direction of Bishop Sutton, the Ropley valley, and so at last to the watershed, the surmounting of which was the whole object of the trail from this point onwards.

The points I have mentioned will be made clearer, perhaps, by a sketch-map, in which the dark patches and lines represent the water-ways at this confluence which forms the Itchen. The Old Road I have indicated by a dotted line, but for its exact course it would be advisable for readers to refer to an Ordnance map.

All these pieces of evidence supporting one another seemed to us sufficient to determine the trajectory at this point. The ford, the position of the church, the number of streams that would have to be crossed were the valley to be further pursued, the low marshy ground at the confluence of these streams, the non-existence of any ancient settlement or trace of a road at the base of Alresford Hill, the fact that the only village to which such a track could lead is of comparatively recent creation, the existence of an old track, direct in its alignment, proceeding straight from the ford, and pointing without deviation to Bishop Sutton church and the Ropley valley—all these facts combined settled any doubts upon the way we should go. We climbed and followed the lane to the top of the hill.

These two miles of the way gave us (under the evening—for it was the falling of the light) glimpses of the Itchen westward and away behind us. The road had the merit of all savage trails, and of all the tracks a man still takes who is a-foot and free and can make by the shortest line for his goal: it enjoyed the hills. It carried two clear summits in its flight, and from each we saw those extended views which to the first men were not only a delight, but a security and a guide. It was easy to understand how from these elevations they planned their direct advance upon the ridge of the watershed which lay far before us, eastward, under the advancing night. As they also must have done, we looked backwards, and traced with our eyes the sharp lines of light in the river we had just abandoned. We so halted and watched till darkness had completely fallen; then we turned down northward to Alresford to sleep, and next morning before daybreak, when we had satisfied the police who had arrested us upon suspicion of I know not what crime, we took the hill again and rejoined the Old Road.

By daylight we had come down Whitehill Lane, the steep pitch into Bishop Sutton, and were tramping up that vale which makes for the watershed, and so leads to the corresponding vale of Alton upon the further side.

Here, at least as far as the Anchor Inn, and somewhat further, the modern highway corresponds to the Old Road. It thus follows the lowest of the valley, but there is no reason at first why it should not do so. The rise is fairly steady, the ground dry (an insignificant stream gradually disappears beneath the chalk), and the direction points straight to the shortest approach for the ridge which cuts off the basin of the Channel from that of the Thames.

This direction, does not, however, long continue. The valley curves somewhat to the north, and it might be presumed that the original way, making more directly for the saddle of the watershed, would gradually climb the southern hillside. By so doing it would find two advantages: it would take a shorter cut, and it would conquer at one stretch, and rapidly, the main part of the 360 feet between the Anchor Inn and the summit.

It was but a guess that the Old Road would probably take a straight line upwards. The curve of the modern road does not carry it more than half a mile from the direct alignment. The Old Road might quite well have suffered such a deviation, and we were in some doubt when we proceeded to gather our evidence. That evidence, however, proved fairly conclusive.

There is a tradition, which Mrs. Adie has justly recognised, that the pilgrims of the Middle Ages passed through Ropley.14 What is more important to our purpose, Ropley has provided a discovery of British antiquities, Celtic torques, near the track which the more direct line to the watershed would presuppose.

We had further the place-name 'Street' to guide us: it is a word almost invariably found in connection with a roadway more or less ancient; later on we found many examples of it upon this same road.15 Here the hamlet of Gilbert Street lay to the south of our hypothetical alignment, and another, named North Street, just to the north of it.

We further noted upon our map that a very considerable portion of the exact alignment drawn from the main road at the Anchor Inn to the saddle of the watershed would coincide precisely with a lane, which, when we came to examine it, gave every evidence of high antiquity.

Possessed of such evidence, it was our business to see whether investigation upon the spot would confirm the conclusion to which they pointed. There was enough discovered so to confirm it, though the Old Road at this point has disappeared in several places under the plough.

The course of our discovery will be best followed with the aid of this rough map, whereon are sketched the contour-lines, the trace of the Old Road, and the watershed.

About half a mile from the 'Anchor' at the end of the avenue of trees which here dignifies the turnpike and just after the cross-roads,16 in a meadow which lay to the right of the road, my companion noticed an embankment, perfectly straight, slightly diverging southward from the main road as the line we were seeking should diverge, and (as we found by standing upon it and taking its direction) pointing directly at the saddle of the watershed. Whether it was continued through the garden of the Chequers Inn (a very few yards) I would not trespass to inquire: in the three fields beyond, it had entirely disappeared.17 After this gap, however, there is a boundary, with an old hedge running along it and a path or cartway of a sort.18 These carry us exactly the same direction down a short slope, across a lane called Cow Lane, and on to the Manor Farm at North Street. During this stretch of a mile there was nothing more to guide us. The division between fields and properties very often follows the line of some common way: one could not say more.

But the significant fact which, as we believe, permitted us to bridge the gap was this: that the embankment we had first discovered, and the hedge and path (which proceeded in the same line after the loss of the road over the two fields) each pointed directly towards the lane (Brisland Lane) which we entered close to the Manor Farm,19 which presented, as we found, such marks of antiquity, which takes the hill steeply, and which, on the plateau above, continues to aim straight at the saddle of the watershed.

It is difficult to express in a written description the sentiment of conviction which the actual view of such an alignment conveyed. When we had followed the lane up the steep hill and stood by Brisland farmhouse, looking back from that height we could see the lane we had been following, the hedge, the corner of the garden of the 'Chequers,' the embankment beyond, all in one, stretched out like parti-coloured sections of one string, and the two gaps did but emphasise the exactitude of the line.

Turning again in the direction which we were to follow, the evidence of ancient usage grew clearer.

We were upon one of those abandoned grassy roads, which are found here and there in all parts of England; it ran clear away before us for a couple of miles.

It was very broad—twenty yards perhaps. The hedges stood upon either side, guarding land that had been no man's land since public protection first secured the rude communications of the country. No one who had seen portions of the Icknield Way upon the Chilterns, or of this same Old Road where it has decayed upon the Kentish hills, could doubt the nature of what we saw. Long fallen into disuse, it had yet escaped the marauding landlords during three centuries of encroachment. They had not even narrowed it. So much of its common character remained: it was treeless, wide, and the most of it neglected; never metalled during all the one hundred and fifty years which have transformed English highways. It was the most desolate, as it was the most convincing, fragment of the Old Road we had set out to find.

It had an abominable surface; we had to pick our way from one dry place to another over the enormous ruts which recent carts had made. For generations the lane had been untenanted; but there is a place where, in the last few years, an extraordinary little town of bungalows and wooden cottages had arisen upon either side of the lane.

Not satisfied with the map, we asked of a man who was carrying milk what local name was given to this venerable street. He told us that the part in which we were walking was called Blackberry Lane, but that it had various names at different parts: and as he could tell us nothing more, we left him.

At the very summit this way joined a modern, well-made lane, called Farringdon Lane, turned to the left and north, and immediately fell into the main London road, which had been climbing from the valley below and was here at the thirteenth milestone. The Old Road, suffering no deviation, plunged into a wood, and reappeared just at the summit of the pass, perhaps a quarter of a mile further. It is the point where the Ordnance map marks a height of 683 feet, and where one finally leaves the valley of the Itchen to enter that of the Wey.

The complexity of this corner is best understood in the sketch-map on the following page.

At the point where the Old Road leaves the wood, it merges again into the London turnpike, which turns its direction (as the map shows) so as to correspond with the direction of the Old Road. This identity between the prehistoric and the modern is maintained nearly as far as Alton, and, if we except a short gap before that town, the coincidence of the Old Road and some existing highway may be said to continue right on to Puttenham, a distance of seventeen miles.

The valley which now opened eastward under the dull morning light reminded me of one of those noble dales which diversify the long slope of the Chiltern Hills. Like them it had the round sweep of the Chalk; beeches, the trees of the Chalk, adorned it; its direction was the same, its dryness, its neat turf; but it lacked the distant horizons.

For two miles the road, magnificent in surface and in breadth, one of the finest in England, followed the bottom of the valley, falling in that distance some 300 feet; and in all this part it was most evidently the oldest of ways across these hills. There could be repeated of it what has been said above with regard to the road between Bishop Sutton and Ropley, and what will appear further on in the valley of the Wey: that any track, ancient or modern, was bound to follow the same course. For the dry and porous soil permitted a journey even under the earliest conditions along the lowest points, and, so permitted, such a journey had the advantage of descending by the easiest gradient. Had it taken to the hillside it would have fallen at last upon Alton by way of a steep spur. Moreover, the bottom of the valley is here constant in direction, not curving as we had found it on the far side of the watershed, and this direction deviates little from the straight line to Alton.

These characters do not attach to the London turnpike after the fifteenth milestone is passed; it turns somewhat sharply to the right (or southward) and falls by a corner into the road from the Meon valley at the entry of Chawton village. Such a course one may be certain was not followed by the Old Road. It could not but have preserved the alignment which the valley had already given it, and which corresponds, moreover, with the High Street of Alton itself. For these seven furlongs there can be no doubt that it continued straight along the dip of the valley, and entered Alton on the northern side20 of the triangular common called 'The Butts,' by which one approaches the town from the south-west.

We were unable to prove this by direct examination; the main line of railway has here obliterated much by an embankment, and to this has been added all the new work of the Meon valley line, and the junction. The ground has therefore lost all its original character, and its oldest marks have disappeared. We made no attempt to follow the direct path for this short mile. We descended the high-road round by Chawton to Alton, and the first division of our task, the division in which a greater proportion of uncertainty would exist than in any other, was accomplished.

Comforted by such a thought, we drank mild ale at the 'Three Tuns' for about half an hour.

Alton to Shalford

Twenty-one miles

At Alton, with the green by which one enters the town from the west, begins a stretch of the Old Road, which stands by itself.

It may be roughly called the division between Alton and Farnham, but it stretches for a mile or two beyond Farnham to the pond at Whiteways, where the main road climbs the summit of the Hog's Back, and leaves the Pilgrim's Way a few hundred yards to the south.

This section, just over thirteen miles in length, has several peculiarities which distinguish it from the rest of the Road.

First—It follows the river Wey for miles, not as it followed the river Itchen, on a dry ledge above the stream, but right along the low land of the waterside. This is a feature in the Old Road not to be discovered in any other part of its course. It takes care to be within easy reach of water for men and horses, but it avoids the low level of a stream, and thick cover and danger of floods which such a level usually threaten. We had not found it (save for a very few yards) in immediate touch with the Itchen, nor should we find it later on running by the Mole, the Darent, or the Medway. Even the Stour, whose valley it is compelled to follow, it regards from heights well above the river.

Secondly—It runs for a part of this division upon clay, a soil which elsewhere it carefully avoids as being about the worst conceivable for a primitive and unmetalled road. Elsewhere (after Wrotham, for instance), it will make a detour rather than attempt any considerable stretch of gault; but here, for several miles along this valley of the Wey, it faces the danger.

Thirdly—In every other portion of its long journey it passes along the edge of habitations and tilled land; it was brought to do so by the same economic tendency which makes our railways to-day pass by the edges, not the centre of most towns; but here it must often have run right through whatever cultivation existed; at Alton, at Farnham, and in one village between, Bentley, it forms the high street of the place. A track which carefully just avoids Guildford, Dorking, Reigate, Westerham, Wrotham, Charing, and a dozen smaller places here touches and occasionally passes through the earliest groups of houses, the earliest pastures and ploughed fields.

Finally, there is a correspondence between it and the modern high-road for the whole of this considerable distance of over thirteen miles. In this character, again, the division we were now entering is unique.

We have indeed already found it identical with a modern road. The modern high-road also corresponds with the old way for something like a mile at Otford over the Darent, and for two or three miles beyond; it is a modern road for more than half a mile before you reach the ferry at Snodland, and there is a road in construction which follows its track for some hundreds of yards on Gravelly Hill, near Caterham. For many miles of its course it is identical if not with high-roads at least with metalled lanes, as we had already found between Itchen Stoke and Bishop Sutton, and very commonly with unmetalled tracks or paths. But in all these cases it is broken: there are stretches of it unused. Modern advantages and modern necessities have left the Old Road continually to one side. Here for this very considerable distance it is identical with the great turnpike, and so remains identical up to and beyond its point of junction with the older 'Harrow Way' at Farnham.

Can we discover any explanation for this coincidence of a prehistoric track with the high-road of our own time, which is almost indifferent to soil? for the crossing of the clay? for the neighbourhood of the river?

A little consideration will enable us to do so. The hills which everywhere else afford so even a platform for the prehistoric road are here of a contour which forbids their use. To-day, as a thousand years ago, any road down this valley must have run upon this lowest line.

The contour-lines, of which a rough sketch is here appended, are enough to prove it.