The Collected Works of Hilaire Belloc. Hilaire Belloc
clear the last cultivation of the valleys, and as will give you some view of your further progress. The end of each day's march is clearly apparent from the beginning of it, and the whole is seen to lie along this astonishingly homogeneous ridge. You do not lose that advantage for perhaps four days of going until you reach the valley of the Wey and the Guildford Gap; and even then for many miles further, though no longer on the chalk but on the sand, a sharp hillside, still looking at the sun, is afforded you in the Hog's Back.
You may say that from the Straits of Dover to Farnham, Nature herself laid down the platform of a perfectly defined ridge, from which a man going west could hardly deviate, even if there were no path to guide him.
THESE PITS WHICH UNCOVER THE CHALK BARE FOR US
See page 191
From Farnham to the converging point near Salisbury, where he would meet the northern, the western, and the south-western roads, no definite ridge continued; but high rolling downs of chalk gave him good enough going, and led him along a water-parting which saved him the crossing of rivers, and afforded for his last two or three days a dry and firm soil.
Such, we must presume, was the full course of the original Road from east to west. To put it the other way round, and give from west to east the primeval track from the centre of south England to the Straits of Dover, we may say that it would leave Stonehenge to enter Hampshire near Quarley Hill, leave Bury Hill Camp on the right, pass near Whitchurch, and so proceeding eastward, following the southern edge of the watershed, would enter Farnham by the line of 'Farnham Lane'; it would thence follow the southern side of the range of hills until it reached the sea above the Portus Lemanis—the inlet which covered the marshy plain below the present village Lympne.
Such was undoubtedly the earliest form of the Old Road, but upon this original trajectory two exceptions fell in a time so remote that it has hardly left a record. The western end of the Road was deflected and came to spring, not from Stonehenge, but from the site of Winchester; the eastern portion was cut short: it terminated, not at some port, but at Canterbury, inland.
Why did Winchester come to absorb the traffic of the west, and to form the depôt and the political centre of southern England? Why did Canterbury, an inland town, become the goal of this long journey towards the narrow seas?
The importance of the one and of the other can be explained. Let me take them in order, and begin first with Canterbury.
The Causes of the Development of Winchester and Canterbury, and of their Position as Termini of the Old Road
The Straits of Dover fill the history of this island because they have afforded our principal gate upon a full life.
All isolated territories—valleys difficult of entry, peninsulas, islands—have this double quality: they are not sufficient to live a full life of themselves, but, receiving sufficient material of civilisation from the larger world outside, they will use it intensively and bring it to the summit of perfection.
Cut off, they wither. Nowhere does humanity fall more abject and lethargic than in such defended places, if the defence be too long maintained. But let them admit from time to time the invasion of armies or ideas, and nowhere does humanity flourish more densely or higher. The arts, the fierce air of patriotism, in whose heat alone the gems of achievement can form, the solution of abstract problems, the expression of the soul in letters—for all these things seclusion provides a special opportunity. It protects their origins from the enemies of seeds, it nurtures their growth with the advantage of a still air, it gives them a resting-place for their maturity.
The valleys prove my thesis. The abandoned valleys of Savoy and Piedmont are goitrous, smitten, sterile. They are the places where, in the Middle Ages, vapid degradations of religion (the Waldensian for instance) could arise; they are the back-waters of Europe. Contrast with them the principal and open valleys; the valley of the Grésivaudan, a trench sown with wealth and vigour, the dale which is the backbone of strong Dauphiné, or that valley of the Romanche from which the Revolution sprang, or that of the Ticino which comes down from the Alps to the Italian plain, rejoicing like a virgin stepping forward into the ample day of her womanhood, arms open and all informed with life. Remember the Limagne and the Nemosian vineyard; I could think that God had made these half-secluded places to prop up our fading memories of Paradise.
And as the valleys, so the islands also prove it. Consider Crete, Cyprus, Sicily—for the matter of that our own island—what they can be when they are linked with neighbouring civilisation, and what when they are cut off.
The place of landing, therefore, is always capital and sacred for islands, and with us that place was chiefly the Kentish shore.
It might seem natural that some special haven upon that shore should absorb our traditions and receive our principal road. It was not so. Canterbury, and no port, received that road and became the nucleus of worship in the island. Why?
Canterbury, and not some port, is the terminus of the Old Road, on account of the effect of the tide in the Straits of Dover. The bastion of Kent, jutting out into the sharpest current of the narrow seas, distorts and confuses the violent tides of the Channel. Now complexity of tides involves a multiplicity of harbours, and many neighbouring harbours among which seamen choose as necessity may drive them, involve a common centre inland.
That is the whole of my argument.
We have already seen how necessarily this corner of England will attract exit and entry. The most powerful emotion connected with that attraction was the sight of land. There is but one small section of the continental coast whence England, the sun shining on the chalk cliffs, can be clearly seen; and it can be so seen but upon certain days, say one day out of three. The little section lies between Sangatte and Ambleteuse. Here a great hill, whose seaward projection is the cape of Gris Nez, affords a good look-out, and hence I say that at least 120 days out of the year the further shore is visible. On rarer occasions it may be got beyond Calais on the east, and as far as the high sandhills near Etaples on the south and west.
Similarly there is but a small section of the Kentish coast whence the further shore can be seen. It extends from the South Foreland, you may say, to the hill above Folkestone; half a day's walk. There are days when you can see it as far north as Ramsgate Hill, but those days are rare; further west than Folkestone it is hardly ever seen (for the country is flat) save under conditions of mirage, such as startled the people of Hastings at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
There are from the continental side no good starting-points from the coast immediate to Gris Nez; it is rocky, uncertain, and unprovided with inlets. Calais, to the east, was probably the earliest port of departure. Here, at least, is a hole in the land, and there are two considerations which make it probable that the earliest men would start from this side of Gris Nez rather than the other. The first is that they could run as far as possible sheltered from the prevailing winds—for these come from the west and south-west; with such winds they would, up to the point of Gris Nez, be in calm water, while if they started from Boulogne they would have no such advantage. The second is that they could run with an ebb tide down to Gris Nez, and then if the wind failed so that they could not cross in one tide, the flood would be to their advantage when they neared the English coast. It would take them up again under lee of the land, round the South Foreland to Sandwich. From Boulogne they would have to start without shelter, run up on a flood tide, and if they missed that tide they might have drifted down again under the full force of the prevailing wind, any distance along the English coast. Boulogne ultimately became the principal port of exit and entry. It was certainly so used by the Romans; but Calais must, I think, have been the earliest starting-point.
From Calais, then, the run would have been made to the English shores.
But when we note the conditions of this corner of England several things strike us. In the first place, the number of the harbours. These included originally Winchelsea, Rye, the Portus Lemanis, Dover, Richborough, Reculvers; in all six