Many a weary league had the pilgrims yet to tramp or trot, up and down, along or above the Kentish Downs. Little thought had they to spare for the beauties of their long road, unless when some poetic soul was half-unconsciously moved by the freshness of a flowery mead or the coolness of the good greenwood where “smalle fowles maken melody.” Least of all did they admire the arduous steeps and the patches of wilderness on which a generation free from the fear of robbers and bogeys best loves to linger. In this too short account of some forty miles as the bird flies, which might well be doubled by turning here and there among varied scenes and sites, I have been able only to outline one of the most alluring ways in England, which threads together nearly all Surrey’s fairest charms. If the gentle reader do not believe my report, let him make this pilgrimage for himself, as he may do, day after day, in stretches of some dozen miles, by striking into its road from Farnham, Guildford, Dorking, Redhill, or Caterham, each giving access to a fresh block of the Downs.
VI
THE ROMAN ROAD
AN improvement on the British trackways, comparable almost to railways in relation to turnpikes, must have been the paved and embanked Roman roads, with their milestones and stations. Several of them are known, either as straight stretches of modern highway, or fallen into miry and grassy desuetude, or only guessed at as having shaped parish boundaries. Least forgotten are the main roads connecting London with provincial towns and camps. Our long and nearly straight Edgware Road was Watling Street, with its branches making the Midland or London and North-Western system of Roman travel. John Gilpin’s road out by Tottenham and Edmonton for several miles followed Ermyn Street, the Great Northern line of the Romans. They had a Great Western road also, running by Staines to Silchester, which has
preserved no familiar name. Watling Street, which originally, till diverted to London Bridge, came down by our west-end parks to cross the Thames at Westminster, in Surrey turned eastward into Kent as their Chatham and Dover route. From either this or from Ermyn Street, or rather as a continuation of both, “Stane” Street went south towards Chichester, the Roman Regnum, with a branch that might be styled the Brighton line of the period, when indeed Pevensey was the important terminus on this coast. From earliest days of commerce, Surrey could not but be crossed by ways from London to the southern ports; and perhaps here, as elsewhere, the Romans only adapted older tracks, as our generation may turn a canal into a railway.
More than one Roman road was made here, but what has been remembered as the Roman road, is the ancient Stone Street that ran right through the centre of the county. This name, still in parts familiar, is borne out by excavations made at different times, when flints and other stones laid alternately, to a thickness of four or five feet, were found bedded in sand and gravel or cement. As in the case of the Pilgrims’ Way, part of its line has been more or less closely followed by an actual road; part has become obliterated, the course only to be guessed by the rule of general straightness, unless where turned askew by insurmountable obstacles; but one stretch still remains clearly marked out, buried beneath a turf track that makes the joy of pedestrians. It begins just beyond the racecourse of Epsom, to which the Romans marched by much the same line as the cyclists’ road through Kennington, Clapham,—or Streatham,—Tooting, Morden, and Ewell. The name Newington Causeway is taken as a hint of Stone Street’s connection with London Bridge.