The Road

by Hilaire Belloc

v

(2) Stane Street. The Stane Street (which I must be excused for quoting so continuously as I know it in great detail) is, I think, the leading example of a road still remaining for the most part and clearly showing how the later systems were built up upon a Roman backbone.

I will take the liberty of recapitulating here my argument, developed at greater length in my monograph on this Way. The original motive of the Stane Street was the connecting of the Chichester Harbours, and indirectly of Portsmouth Harbour, with London by a road which should overcome the difficulties of the Weald. The Weald is a mass of stiff clay, impassable to general traffic for six months of the year unless one uses artificial means. Left to itself it turns rapidly into a waste of oak and thorn scrub: save in the dry months, there is no going over it in its natural state for armies or bodies of wheeled vehicles. Its watercourses are numerous, muddy, difficult of approach, and soft at bottom. It produces nothing save in moments of high civilization, when it can be heavily capitalized by draining and penetrated by expensive artificial communications. The supply of good water is rare and capricious. The Weald was, therefore, the great obstacle between the south coast and the Thames. Because it was such an obstacle the Romans drove their first great road from the main harbour of Portsmouth to the capital round westward by Winchester, Silchester, and Staines; but they needed a supplementary road, for two reasons. First, they wanted a short cut to serve Portsmouth and the lesser inlets collectively called Chichester Harbours (Bosham appears to have been an official port throughout the Dark Ages); and, secondly, they wanted to be able to reach quickly for purposes of travel and commerce the very fertile sea plain of which Chichester is the capital. Therefore did they construct the most purely military and most direct of all the Roman roads in the island, the Stane Street. It ran from the east gate of Chichester in a direct line to the crossing of the Arun at Pulborough, with a camp at the end of this first day’s march to defend it; thence it made in another great straight limb for the shoulder of Leith Hill, with a camp at the second crossing of the upper Arun at Romans Wood; thence by a series of much shorter limbs to the third camp at Dorking; thence over the Mole at Burford Bridge and over the Epsom Downs past the racecourse to the fourth camp at Merton, and thence to London Bridge—a five-march stage.

In the Dark Ages the Weald became impassable again, the causeway on the Arun marshes broke down and was swallowed up. The bridge at Alfoldean broke down, and Sussex was isolated from the north.

Further, with the absence of any exit for direct and rapid communication between Chichester and London the meaning went out of the road between Dorking and Merton. Merton was close enough to London to give the road vitality again, and between this and London it was never lost. It runs to this day, and is the main line of tramways upon which people still travel from Streatham and Balham to the Borough. It is only deflected at the end by the intricacies of the Southwark streets.

[Now, if you look at the present scheme of roads surrounding this original Roman core] they look at first as though they had no connection with it, but when you examine them in detail the way in which they grew up out of the Roman road is clear. Every deflection can be accounted for, and the development of the local systems from the original continuous backbone becomes evident.

Part II, Sketch XI

First you have all Sussex south of Pulborough Marsh, and again south of Alfoldean Bridge, isolated.

What happens?

There remained no reason for using the Stane Street as a continuous line. It now led nowhere. When it meets with its first great obstacle going north, the woods near Eartham, it makes for the next centre of population—Petworth, where there was a fortified post going back to some very early time. The wood deflects the road towards Duncton Hill (I have quoted this example in my section on vegetation in the earlier part of this essay). Beyond Petworth it had little function, so this first ten miles of the Stane Street becomes the parent of the local Chichester-Petworth road which grew up out of it, leaving a gap where the woods intervened. Next you must note the local roads beyond this gap. Pulborough Bridge probably survived, but the causeway could not be kept up, or was ill kept up. In its original line, when it served the camp at Hardham, it ran over a wide part of the marsh. In the Dark Ages men picked their way over the narrowest part of the marsh and then followed the hard bank above the Arun-flooded levels, linking up the villages as far as Bignor. But there the use of the road ended. The “potential” was from Pulborough to the nearest seaport, which was then Arundel. And all that the Roman road did in this section was to throw out this bow or curve of lateral road eastward between Pulborough and Bignor, the line of main local travel being diverted from Bury over Arundel Hill and so seaward.

In the section north of Pulborough the Roman road still served a few scattered homesteads in the Dark Ages up to Billingshurst at least, but again it led nowhere because the bridge at Romans Wood was broken down and the high weald beyond was a mass of scrub growing on stiff clay. The road petered out and began again with harder going near Ockley. But it was not used over the shoulder of Leith Hill, because that trace subserved no local use and yet compelled the traveller to steep gradients. Travel was deflected round the base of the hills to Dorking, linking up the more populated part where the water springs were. This new trace, growing up obviously out of the Roman road, opens up to the eastward for a mile or two of the way until it joins up in the heart of Dorking itself, where the third camp was, out of which the town of Dorking has grown, and where in the churchyard the Roman road can still be traced passing through. From Dorking onwards one might have imagined that it would have survived all the way to London. Why did it not do so?

It was a matter of gradients and of centres of population. In the Dark Ages, when there was little necessity for making a direct line between Dorking and London—no continual marching of great Roman forces, no conveying of orders from a centralized government—men took the easier way. They abandoned the up-and-down of the spur of land lying immediately north of Dorking and went round by its base to save the trouble of the little climb. They used the Roman bridge (which apparently survived at Burford), but the very steep leap up on to the Epsom Downs they abandoned, especially as the further progress of the road over the chalk connected no centres of population. The way curled round by Michelham and Leatherhead and came round to Epsom—all places suitable for centres of population with low water levels and no heavy gradients in between. The Roman road on the high waterless chalk above was left abandoned.

What happened between Epsom and Merton has been already described. There is only one divergence in this section, which is where the road of the Dark Ages deflected somewhat to the left and was used to avoid the low wet ground below Clapham Common. For the rest it maintained its use.

Ermine Street near Royston

(3) The best example I know, as I have said, of a Roman road the evidences of which have nearly disappeared, but round which local roads have grown and which can still be identified as the core of these, is the short cut between Penkridge and Chester. It is very puzzling why the Roman road should here have disappeared. It is perhaps best to be explained by the continual fighting between the Eastern and the Western troops, which must have ravaged all that country between the first of the raids and the full conversion of England to civilization and the Christian religion which was the work of the seventh century.

But, whatever the cause or circumstances, the phenomenon is quite plain. The local roads developed for purely local purposes on either side of the original Roman line, and that line, since there is no longer required any continuous traffic along it, disappears.