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Denise Henry
The Old Road
The Old Road
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The Old Road by H. Belloc, Illustrated by William Hyde
1911
CONTENTS
Dedication
On the Road and the Fascination of Antiquity
The Theory of the Old Road that Such and Such Causes Determined the Track of the Old Road, and that It Ran from Winchester to Canterbury
The Causes of the Development of Winchester and Canterbury, and of Their Position as Termini of the Old Road
The Causes of the Preservation of the Old Road; Its General Character, and Our Application of this in Our Method of Recovering It
The Exploration of the Road Winchester to Alton: Eighteen Miles and a Half
Alton to Shalford - Twenty-One Miles
Shalford to Dorking Pits Eleven Miles
Boxhill to Titsey - Eighteen Miles
Titsey to Wrotham - Sixteen Miles
Wrotham to Boxley - Eleven Miles
Boxley to Canterbury - Twenty-Six Miles
On the Road and the Fascination of Antiquity
There are primal things which move us. Fire has the character of a free companion that has travelled with us from the first exile; only to see a fire, whether he need it or no, comforts every man. Again, to hear two voices outside at night after a silence, even in crowded cities, transforms the mind. A Roof also, large and mothering, satisfies us here in the north much more than modern necessity can explain; so we built in beginning: the only way to carry off our rains and to bear the weight of our winter snows. A Tower far off arrests a man’s eye always: it is more than a break in the sky-line; it is an enemy’s watch or the rallying of a defence to whose aid we are summoned. Nor are these emotions a memory or a reversion only as one crude theory might pretend; we craved these things--the camp, the refuge, the sentinels in the dark, the hearth--before we made them; they are part of our human manner, and when this civilisation has perished they will reappear.
Of these primal things the least obvious but the most important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it; it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and the most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest pioneers of our race. It was the most imperative and the first of our necessities. It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made.
It is easy to re-create in oneself to-day a sense of what the Road means to living things on land: it is easy to do it even in this crowded country. Walk, for instance, on the neglected Pennines along the watershed of England, from Malham Tarn, say, to Ribblehead, or from Kirkby Stephen up along the crest to Crossfell and so to Alston, and you will learn at once what follows on an untouched soil from the absence of a track--of a guide. One ravine out of the many radiating from a summit will lead to the one valley you seek; take another stream and you are condemned at last to traverse mountains to repair the error. In a fog or at night, if one has not such a path, there is nothing to help one but the lay of the snow or the trend of the vegetation under the last gale. In (Continued...)
1911
CONTENTS
Dedication
On the Road and the Fascination of Antiquity
The Theory of the Old Road that Such and Such Causes Determined the Track of the Old Road, and that It Ran from Winchester to Canterbury
The Causes of the Development of Winchester and Canterbury, and of Their Position as Termini of the Old Road
The Causes of the Preservation of the Old Road; Its General Character, and Our Application of this in Our Method of Recovering It
The Exploration of the Road Winchester to Alton: Eighteen Miles and a Half
Alton to Shalford - Twenty-One Miles
Shalford to Dorking Pits Eleven Miles
Boxhill to Titsey - Eighteen Miles
Titsey to Wrotham - Sixteen Miles
Wrotham to Boxley - Eleven Miles
Boxley to Canterbury - Twenty-Six Miles
On the Road and the Fascination of Antiquity
There are primal things which move us. Fire has the character of a free companion that has travelled with us from the first exile; only to see a fire, whether he need it or no, comforts every man. Again, to hear two voices outside at night after a silence, even in crowded cities, transforms the mind. A Roof also, large and mothering, satisfies us here in the north much more than modern necessity can explain; so we built in beginning: the only way to carry off our rains and to bear the weight of our winter snows. A Tower far off arrests a man’s eye always: it is more than a break in the sky-line; it is an enemy’s watch or the rallying of a defence to whose aid we are summoned. Nor are these emotions a memory or a reversion only as one crude theory might pretend; we craved these things--the camp, the refuge, the sentinels in the dark, the hearth--before we made them; they are part of our human manner, and when this civilisation has perished they will reappear.
Of these primal things the least obvious but the most important is The Road. It does not strike the sense as do those others I have mentioned; we are slow to feel its influence. We take it so much for granted that its original meaning escapes us. Men, indeed, whose pleasure it is perpetually to explore even their own country on foot, and to whom its every phase of climate is delightful, receive, somewhat tardily, the spirit of The Road. They feel a meaning in it; it grows to suggest the towns upon it, it explains its own vagaries, and it gives a unity to all that has arisen along its way. But for the mass The Road is silent; it is the humblest and the most subtle, but, as I have said, the greatest and the most original of the spells which we inherit from the earliest pioneers of our race. It was the most imperative and the first of our necessities. It is older than building and than wells; before we were quite men we knew it, for the animals still have it to-day; they seek their food and their drinking-places, and, as I believe, their assemblies, by known tracks which they have made.
It is easy to re-create in oneself to-day a sense of what the Road means to living things on land: it is easy to do it even in this crowded country. Walk, for instance, on the neglected Pennines along the watershed of England, from Malham Tarn, say, to Ribblehead, or from Kirkby Stephen up along the crest to Crossfell and so to Alston, and you will learn at once what follows on an untouched soil from the absence of a track--of a guide. One ravine out of the many radiating from a summit will lead to the one valley you seek; take another stream and you are condemned at last to traverse mountains to repair the error. In a fog or at night, if one has not such a path, there is nothing to help one but the lay of the snow or the trend of the vegetation under the last gale. In (Continued...)