The Old Road

by Hilaire Belloc

Of all the sites which might have achieved some special position after the official machinery of Rome with its arbitrary power of choice had disappeared, these two rose pre-eminent at the very entry to the Dark Ages, and retained that dual pre-eminence until the great transition into the light, the Renaissance of civilisation at the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth.

For six or seven hundred years the two towns were the peculiar centres of English life. Winchester was a capital longer than London has been; Canterbury ruled the religion of this island for over nine hundred and forty years.

So much we know for certain, and more may be presumed; but I have conjectured that these sites were of equal importance before the advent of Rome, and such a conjecture needs support. I will maintain that the barbaric centuries which followed the decline of the Empire reproduced in Britain original conditions, and restored their value to sites neglected during the period of Roman order.

Rome, in this frontier province, put her capital in the north, at York, and her principal garrisons in the north also; but even though she did not at first admit their importance, Canterbury and Winchester, with London, insensibly preponderated: London, through which half the roads are marked in the itinerary; Canterbury and Winchester whence, to this day, great Roman roads may be discovered radiating like the spokes of a wheel.

That the importance of these sites should have increased with the increasing barbarism of the Dark Ages is, I repeat, an evidence of their great antiquity. The arbitrary and official forces of society had disappeared. An ancient sanctity beyond history, the track of hunters, the ford, the open hillside, chance opportunities of defence, soil, food, water, all the primal things which determine the settlements of savages, were again at work in the fifth century. The force of merely natural tendencies increased as the consciousness of civilisation faded, and when after the defeat of the pagans in the ninth century Christendom had just been saved and the light slowly began to grow, these forces remained (though with gradually diminishing power) and moulded Europe until the Angevine and the Capetian, the reinvigorated Papacy, the adventure of the Crusades, and the study of the Code, had created once more the fixity of a true civilisation: a civilisation whose institutions and philosophy are our own to-day.

What, then, are the common attributes which we can note in Winchester and Canterbury, which would have drawn savage men to their sites, which therefore give them their tradition, and from which we can induce the causes of their rival power?

Each is near the sea, each near a port or ports; in the case of each, this port, or group of ports, commands one of the two passages to the Continent, and to the homes of civilised men. In each case the distance from the sea is that of a day's march for an army with its baggage. Disembark your men at Southampton or at Dover with the dawn and you hope that night to rest secure behind the walls of Winchester or Canterbury.

The reason of this arrangement was as follows: an inland place has many advantages over a fortified town on the seashore as the resting-place of an army. It has a better food supply; communication from it radiates upon all sides, not only from half its circumference (indeed in many ports there is but one narrow exit along the isthmus of the peninsula or up the valley which forms its harbour). There is likely to be more wood, a matter of great importance for fuel and fortification and sometimes for the construction of engines of war; it will have more fresh water. It may not be a salient, but it is an important, fact that in early times the population of an inland place would be trained for fighting upon land, and its energies would not be divided by the occupation of sea-faring; and finally, your inland fortress is liable to but one form of attack. You may have landed your men after a successful voyage, but, on the other hand, you may have landed them after a hot pursuit. In the first case it is not a disadvantage to sleep the night sheltered by walls inland, and in the second case it is a necessity.

Remembering all these things, it is evident that to have your town of refuge within a day's march of the landing-place is a condition of its value to you. It is far preferable to reach fortification within the daylight than to pass your first halt under the strain of partial and temporary defence.

Winchester and Canterbury are each, of course, upon rivers. They are each upon rivers just above the limit to which the tide would help light-draught, primitive boats, and where yet they could enjoy the fresh water coming down from above. So Caen, so Norwich, and a hundred other cities, have been founded upon rivers a day's march inland from port, and (with the exception of the tide) similar conditions perhaps produced the greatest of all these examples—Rome.