The conjecture appears to be based upon nothing more than the name, 'Palmer's Wood,' at the turning point of this supposed track.
[33] We owed our knowledge of this, as so much else, to Mrs. Adie's book, of which I wish to make continual acknowledgment.
[34] The track here is well marked on the 1/2500 Ordnance map of Kent (XXVIII. 12, XXVIII. 16), first as a footpath (on field 73), then right across the small plantation to the east, past a clump of trees a little east of that (where it is marked by a distinct embankment), and so to the lane which has no local name, but bounds to the north the field numbered 19.
[35] Not quite half a mile of it. Snodland itself stands on gravel, which just touches the river at the site of the church and ferry.
[36] The full trace of this crossing may be followed in the 1/2500 Ordnance map for Kent (XXX. 3) as follows:—From Wrotham to (a) The Kentish Drover. The significance of this sign is the use of the Old Road by drovers in order to avoid turnpike charges, (b) on north of the Trottescliffe megalithic monument, under the old quarry there, on past Bunkers to the cross-roads. Then (c) leave present path and go a little east of south under another old pit, and so diagonally across field marked 79 (on map XXX. 4), thus reaching Paddlesworth Farm, when from the (d) ruined chapel the track is marked by the division between fields 72 and 73 till Mark Farm is reached, whence the track is a plain road ultimately becoming the High Street of Snodland. After crossing the river it is a road all the way, passing at last between the two megalithic monuments of the hundred stones and Kit's Coty House.
[37] Thus in the immediate neighbourhood alone were the Roman remains of Snodland, of Burham, of Hoborough. The group of a dozen or more round Maidstone, the bronze celts found at Wrotham. Oldbury Camp, the group of Roman foundations and coins at Plaxtol, the British and Roman coins found at Boxley. The megalithic monuments of Addington, of Coldrum, Kit's Coty House, and the hundred stones. The group already mentioned at Aylesford, the camp at Fosbery, the Roman pottery at Thurnham—and this is a very incomplete list.
[38] The lane is continuous after Boxley, though not everywhere equally important. North of Hollingbourne it is but a path. It soon becomes a lane again, is enclosed in the private grounds of Stede Hill (Kent, 1/2500 Ordnance map, XLIII. 12), and is but a track for three-quarters of a mile from Lenham quarries. It is lost after Cobham Farm, and reappears as a long hedge and division between fields, and after the pits at Hart Hill becomes a lane again.
[39] It has enemies, like all good things. Its neighbours to the south have sung for centuries:—
'Dirty Charing lies in a hole,
Has but one bell, and that she stole.'