do so. The hills which everywhere else afford so even a platform for the prehistoric road are here of a contour which forbids their use. To-day, as a thousand years ago, any road down this valley must have run upon this lowest line.
The contour-lines, of which a rough sketch is here appended, are enough to prove it.
There is a deep combe at Holybourne Down, two more on either side of Froyle, a fourth beyond Bentley, a fifth—smaller—before Farnham. All these gullies cut up into a hopeless tangle what in Surrey and Kent will become one unbroken bank of chalk. Any path attempting these hillsides would either have doubled its length in avoiding the hollows, or would—had it remained direct—have been a succession of steep ascents and falls; all the dry slopes which bound the vale to the north are a succession of steep and isolated projections, thrust outfrom the distant main chain of the chalk; many of them are crowned with separated summits. The road is therefore compelled to follow the valley floor with all the consequences I have noted.
As far as Froyle, two and a half miles from Alton, it never leaves the river by more than a quarter of a mile, but the valley is here dry, the soil gravelly and sandy, the height considerable (above three hundred feet), and there is no reason why it should go further from the stream than it did in the valley of the Itchen. After Froyle you get the clay, and then right on through Bentley the road does attempt to get away northward from the stream, avoiding the marshy levels and keeping to the 300-feet contour-line. It does not approach the river again till firmer ground is found near the Bull Inn. Thence to within two miles of Farnham it has to negotiate a good deal of clay, but it picks out such patches of gravel as it can find, [21] and it must beremembered that the valley of the Wey, in this early part, drains more rapidly, and has a less supply of water than that of the Itchen. Near Farnham, somewhat beyond Runwick House, it finds the sand again, and can follow along the low level without difficulty.
The Old Road keeps throughout this passage to the sunny northern bank of the river, so that, while it is compelled to keep to the bottom of the valley, it attempts at least to get the driest part of it.
Farnham, at the mouth of this valley, the point of junction between the Old Road and its still older predecessor from Salisbury Plain, was always a place of capital importance, especially in war. The Roman entrenchment, two miles up the valley, the Roman dwellings to the south, tell us only a little of its antiquity; and though our knowledge of the castle extends no furtherthan the eleventh century, the fact that it was the meeting-place of the roads that came from Salisbury Plain, from the Channel, from London, and from the Straits of Dover, necessarily made it a key to southern England.
We have seen how the western roads converge there, first the Harrow Way, then our own road from Southampton Water and Winchester (a road which probably received the traffic of all the south beyond Dorsetshire), then the road from Portsmouth and the Meons, which came in at Chawton.
The accident of the Surrey hills made all men who wished to get to the south-western ports from the Thames valley and the east pass through Farnham. Travellers going west and north from the Weald were equally compelled, if they would avoid the ridge, to pass through Farnham. The former had to come down north of the Hog's Back, the latter from the south of it, and it was ever at Farnham that they met.
At Farnham, therefore, the first political division of our road may be said to end; and after Farnham the western tracks, now all in one, proceed to the Straits ofDover, or rather to Canterbury, which is the rallying-point of the several Kentish ports.
Just outside the town the road begins to rise: it is an indication that the road is about to take the flank of the hills, a position which it holds uninterruptedly (save for
The contour-lines, of which a rough sketch is here appended, are enough to prove it.
There is a deep combe at Holybourne Down, two more on either side of Froyle, a fourth beyond Bentley, a fifth—smaller—before Farnham. All these gullies cut up into a hopeless tangle what in Surrey and Kent will become one unbroken bank of chalk. Any path attempting these hillsides would either have doubled its length in avoiding the hollows, or would—had it remained direct—have been a succession of steep ascents and falls; all the dry slopes which bound the vale to the north are a succession of steep and isolated projections, thrust outfrom the distant main chain of the chalk; many of them are crowned with separated summits. The road is therefore compelled to follow the valley floor with all the consequences I have noted.
As far as Froyle, two and a half miles from Alton, it never leaves the river by more than a quarter of a mile, but the valley is here dry, the soil gravelly and sandy, the height considerable (above three hundred feet), and there is no reason why it should go further from the stream than it did in the valley of the Itchen. After Froyle you get the clay, and then right on through Bentley the road does attempt to get away northward from the stream, avoiding the marshy levels and keeping to the 300-feet contour-line. It does not approach the river again till firmer ground is found near the Bull Inn. Thence to within two miles of Farnham it has to negotiate a good deal of clay, but it picks out such patches of gravel as it can find, [21] and it must beremembered that the valley of the Wey, in this early part, drains more rapidly, and has a less supply of water than that of the Itchen. Near Farnham, somewhat beyond Runwick House, it finds the sand again, and can follow along the low level without difficulty.
The Old Road keeps throughout this passage to the sunny northern bank of the river, so that, while it is compelled to keep to the bottom of the valley, it attempts at least to get the driest part of it.
Farnham, at the mouth of this valley, the point of junction between the Old Road and its still older predecessor from Salisbury Plain, was always a place of capital importance, especially in war. The Roman entrenchment, two miles up the valley, the Roman dwellings to the south, tell us only a little of its antiquity; and though our knowledge of the castle extends no furtherthan the eleventh century, the fact that it was the meeting-place of the roads that came from Salisbury Plain, from the Channel, from London, and from the Straits of Dover, necessarily made it a key to southern England.
We have seen how the western roads converge there, first the Harrow Way, then our own road from Southampton Water and Winchester (a road which probably received the traffic of all the south beyond Dorsetshire), then the road from Portsmouth and the Meons, which came in at Chawton.
The accident of the Surrey hills made all men who wished to get to the south-western ports from the Thames valley and the east pass through Farnham. Travellers going west and north from the Weald were equally compelled, if they would avoid the ridge, to pass through Farnham. The former had to come down north of the Hog's Back, the latter from the south of it, and it was ever at Farnham that they met.
At Farnham, therefore, the first political division of our road may be said to end; and after Farnham the western tracks, now all in one, proceed to the Straits ofDover, or rather to Canterbury, which is the rallying-point of the several Kentish ports.
Just outside the town the road begins to rise: it is an indication that the road is about to take the flank of the hills, a position which it holds uninterruptedly (save for
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