THE MOST IMPORTANT OF THE RIVERS IT MEETS UPON ITS COURSE, THE MEDWAY
A clear statement of the problem will lead one towards its solution.
I have said that for several miles before Wrotham, the chalk hills, well defined and steep, running almost due east and west, present an excellent dry and sunny bank for the road. As one goes along this part of one's journey, Wrotham Hill appears like a kind of cape before one, because beyond it the hills turn round northward, and their continuation is hidden. I have also told how, a long way off, over the broad flat of the Medway valley, the range may be seen continuing in the direction of Canterbury, and affording, when once the river is crossed, a similar platform to that from which one is gazing.
We knew, also, that the road does, as a fact, follow those distant hills, precisely as it had the range from which we made our observation, and if no physical obstacles intervened, the first travellers upon this track would undoubtedly have made a direct line from the projecting shoulder of Wrotham Hill to the somewhat less conspicuous turning-point which marks the further hills of Grey Wethers, where also Boxley once stood.
But obstacles do intervene, and these obstacles were of the most serious kind for men who had not yet passed the early stages of civilisation. A broad river with a swift tidal current, flanked here and there (as tidal rivers always are before their embankment) by marshes; a valley floor of clay, the crossing of which must prove far more lengthy than that of any they had hitherto encountered, made the negotiation of this gap a difficult matter. Moreover, the direct line would have led them by the marshiest way of all: the fields of Snodland brook.
Oddly enough the difficulty of rediscovering the original track by which the road forded the Medway, does not lie in the paucity of evidence, but rather in the confusion arising from its nature and amount. So great is this confusion that some authorities have been content to accept alternative routes at this point.
Savage trails, however, never present alternatives so widely separate, and least of all will they present any alternative, even one neighbouring the main road, where a formidable obstacle has to be overcome: to do so would be to forfeit the whole value which a primitive road possesses as a guide (for this value depends upon custom and memory), and when a tidal river had to be traversed, a further and very cogent reason for a single track was to be found in the labour which its construction upon a marshy soil involved.
If some one place of crossing had held a monopoly or even a pre-eminence within the limits of recorded history, the evidence afforded by it would be of the utmost value. But an indication of this simplicity is lacking.
It is certain that within historic times and for many centuries continuously, the valley and the river were passed at four places, each of which now may lay a claim to be the original passage.
The modern names of these places are, in their order from the sea, Cuxton, Lower Halling, Snodland, and Aylesford.
Before proceeding I must repeat what was said above, that two tracks of great antiquity continue the Old Road northward on each side of the Medway far beyond any point where it would have crossed; these tracks (I have called them elsewhere 'feeders') are not only clearly defined, but have each received the traditional name of the Pilgrim's Way, and their presence adds a considerable complexity to the search for the original passage.
So much of the elements of the problem being laid down, let us now recapitulate certain features which we have discovered to be true of the road in the earlier part of its course, where it had to cross a river, and certain other features which one knows to be common to other British track-ways over valleys broader than those of the Mole or the Wey. To these features we may add a few others, which are conjecturally those that such a road would possess although we might have no direct evidence of them.
A list of these features will run very much as follows:—
(1) The road will attempt the shortest passage of the valley floor, the breadth being more or less of an obstacle, according as the soil is more or less low, covered, or damp.
(2) It will seek for a ford.
(3) Other things being equal, it would naturally cross a river as high up as possible, where the stream was likely to be less difficult to ford.
(4) It would cross in as immediate a neighbourhood as possible to that height upon which survey could be made of the opportunities for crossing.
(5) The nature of the bottom at the crossing would influence it greatly, whether that bottom were gravel and sand, or treacherous mud. Moreover, a primitive road would often leave evidence of its choice by the relics of good material thrown in to harden the ford.
(6) A point of so much importance would probably be connected with religion, and almost always with some relic of habitation or weapons.
(7) It would often preserve in its place-name some record of the crossing.
(8) It would (as we had found it at Dorking and at Otford) choose a place where a spur on either side led down to the river.
To these eight points may be added the further consideration, that whatever was the more usual crossing in early historic times affords something of a guide as to prehistoric habits, and, finally, that where a tidal river was concerned, the motives which were present on any river for seeking a passage as far up stream as possible would be greatly strengthened, for the tide drowns a ford.
Now, in the light of what the map tells us, and of these principles, let us see where the crossing is most likely to be found, and having determined that, discover how far the hypothesis is supported by other evidence.
To begin with Cuxton:
At Cuxton the firm land of the hills comes upon either side close to the river. An ancient track-way upon either side leads very near to the point of crossing and cannot be followed, or at least nothing like so clearly followed further down the valley. At Cuxton, moreover, as a constant tradition maintains, the crossing of the river by pilgrims was common.
On the other hand there is nothing approaching a ford at this place. The bottom is soft mud, the width of the river very considerable, the tidal current strong, and of all the points at which the river might have been crossed, it is the most distant from the direct line; indeed, compared with the next point, Lower Halling, a traveller would add five or six miles to his journey by choosing Cuxton.
Now, consider Aylesford, the other extreme; the highest up as Cuxton is the lowest down the river of the four points. Aylesford has many powerful arguments in its favour. It has produced one of the most interesting and suggestive prehistoric relics in England: I mean that 'Aylesford pottery' which is an imitation, or possibly even an import, of the pottery of northern Italy in the first or second centuries before our area. It has furnished a mass of other antiquities: armillae of gold have been found in the river and British coins and graves on the northern bank. It preserves in the last part of its name the tradition of a ford, and though 'ford' in place-names by no means always signifies a ford any more than 'bridge' signifies a bridge, yet in this case we have historic knowledge that a ford existed; and (as is most frequently the case) the ford has been bridged.
A further argument, and in its way one of the strongest that could be adduced, is the position of the place in the earliest of our annals. Whether 'the Horse and the Mare,' Vortigern, and the rest are wholly legendary or not, cannot be determined. Certainly the texture of the story is fabulous, but Bede and 'Nennius' have both retained the memory of a great battle fought here, in which the British overcame the Pirates, and what is most significant of all, the legend or memory records a previous retreat of the Saxons from a defeat at Otford. We know, therefore, that a writer in the seventh century, though what he was writing might be fable, would take it for granted that a retreat westward from Otford would naturally lead along some road which passed the Medway at Aylesford. We get another much later example of the same thing when Edmund Ironside, after his great victory at Otford over the Danes, pursued them to Aylesford, and was only prevented from destroying them by their passage over the river under the cover of treason.
This