Free The Old Road by Hilaire Belloc Page A

these sites. They are but an indication, not a proof, of prehistoric sanctity. It would be impossible to say in what proportion the old churches of these islands stand upon spots of immemorial reverence, but it is certain that a sufficient proportion of them do so stand (the church of Bishopstoke, for instance, upon the site of a Druidical circle), as to afford, when a considerable number are in question, a fair presumption that many of the sites have maintained their meaning from an age long prior to Christianity. Apart from the mass of positive evidence upon this matter, we have our general knowledge upon the methods by which the Faith supplemented, and in part supplanted, older and worse rituals; and there is an impression, which no one who has travelled widely in western Europe will deny, that the church of a place has commonly something about it of the central, the unique, or the isolated in position; characters whichcannot wholly be accounted for by the subsequent growth of the community around them.
    Now, on its way from Winchester to Canterbury, the Old Road passes, not in the mere proximity of, but right up against, thirteen existing or ruined churches. They are, proceeding from west to east, as follows: King's Worthy, Itchen Stoke, Bishop Sutton, Seale, Puttenham, St. Martha's, Shere, Merstham, Titsey, Snodland, Burham, Boughton Aluph, and Chilham. [7] In the case of eight it passes right up against the south porch; in the case of two (Bishop Sutton and Seale) it is compelled to miss them by a few yards. One (St. Martha's) is passed on both sides by a reduplication of the track. One (Chilham) is conjectural, and the last (Shere) is doubtful.
    THE CHURCH OF SHERE
    The habit is the more remarkable from the fact that the Road commonly goes north of a village, and therefore should, unless it had some purpose, commonly go north of all churches. And, indeed, it does pass many churches to the north, but it always leavesthem (as at Chevening, Lenham, Charing, and the rest) to one side. It never goes close to their site.
    The importance of this rule will be apparent when we consider, later on, the spots in which a church stands, or has stood, and where, at the same time, the track is doubtful and has to be determined.
    V. In crossing a river-valley, the Road makes invariably for the point where spurs of dry ground and rising ground come closest upon either side, and leave the narrowest gap of marshy land between.
    I note this as a characteristic of the Road, quite apart from the more obvious considerations; such as, that primitive man would seek a ford; that he would seek gravel rather than clay; that he would try to pass as high up a river as possible, and that, other things being equal, he would keep to the general alignment of his path as much as possible in crossing a river. All these are self-evident without the test of experience, but this characteristic of which I speak is one that would not occur to a traveller who had not tested it with his own experience. It is so at the crossing of the Itchen,at the crossing of the Wey, at the crossing of the Mole, at the crossing of the Darent, and, as we shall see, it is useful in giving us a clue towards the much more important crossing of the Medway.
    VI. Where a hill must be taken, it is taken straight and by the shortest road to the summit, unless that road be too steep for good going.
    Here one has something to be found all over England where an old, has been superseded by a modern, way. I have an instance in my mind on the main road westward from Tavistock into Cornwall. It is exactly analogous to what the Indian trails in America do to the present day. It is civilisation or increased opportunities—especially the use of wheeled traffic on a large scale—which leads men to curve round a hill or to zig-zag up it. In the course of the Old Road there are not many examples of this. From the nature of the ground which it traverses the hills to be surmounted are few; but when