iv
The negative effect of the Road, the effect of its breakdown, especially at the bridges and in the causeways over marshy land, is equally indisputable in human relations. We have the typical case of Sussex remaining heathen for one hundred years after the conversion of its neighbours, because the main road from the north with its causeway everywhere crossing the clay and piercing the scrub of the weald fell into decay, and because the bridge at Alfoldean broke down. It is most significant that the great battle of Ockley was fought north of this break in communications. The Danes, marching from London against the English army, could get down as far south as this, and the English army coming up from Hampshire could intercept them as far south as this, but all the Danish attack on Sussex, such as it was (and it was very slight), came from the sea.
Another very conspicuous example of the breakdown of the Road and of the political effect thereof is the chaos you get in the Balkan peninsula after the decay of the great Roman trunk roads. If the Greek Church is to-day separate from the Latin Church to the west it is due not only to the obstacle of the Pinsk Marshes in the north, but to the gradual decline in the south of the main artery between Durazzo and Constantinople. For centuries old and new Rome communicated by the great trunk road down to Brundusium and then across the narrow sea to Dyracchium and Byzantium. When that traffic began to be interrupted the contrast between the east and the west was founded and increased.
A last minor effect of the Road upon human society is the use of the Road as a boundary. That is a use, of course, which hardly ever develops in a high civilization. On the contrary, a road of its nature should run transverse to boundaries. It is built to unite towns the territories of which have boundaries naturally perpendicular to the Road. The road from Canterbury to London, for instance (the first great main road in this island), is transverse to the Darent frontier, and all the great roads from the French-speaking to the German-speaking country on this side of the Rhine are transverse to the language boundary. It is in the very function of a road to be thus transverse to political limits. But with the decay of civilization the remains of a great, well-built road lend themselves at once to the idea of a boundary. Men need something to which they can perpetually refer which will be a permanent mark and which will be indisputable. A river is thus often so chosen; sometimes, but much more rarely, a range of hills, especially where the crest is particularly steep and marked. But the Road, when the use of documents declines and when record is with difficulty maintained—the Road, especially if it has been built to endure, comes in to fulfil this artificial function. Here in England we have more examples of this than in any other part of Europe. Very often you can recover a Roman road first by noting on the map the parish boundaries running on straight lines, which are the prolongation one of the other, and the survival of a Roman road used in the Dark Ages to define a parochial limit. The Road is thus also used as a boundary not only for parishes but for states, not only for states but for realms. The Roman road to the north-west of London was part of the great boundary established between Wessex and the Danish territories of the north and east. One could quote hundreds of cases with a little research, but best of all perhaps is that of the boundary of Westminster, which dates from the heart of the Dark Ages. The northern limit of the manor was fixed by the great Roman military road which to this day survives and is the boundary of Hyde Park on the north.
THE ROAD
§ II
THE ENGLISH ROAD
CHAPTER VII
THE ROAD IN HISTORY
Through the Dim Ages: The Characteristics of the English Road: Absence of Plan: A Local instead of a National System Leading to the Present Crisis.