Produced by Chris Curnow, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) Transcriber’s Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. Italics are represented thus _italic_, bold thus =bold= and superscripts thus y^{th}. THE HASTINGS ROAD WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR =The Portsmouth Road=, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old. =The Dover Road=: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. =The Bath Road=: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway. =The Exeter Road=: The Story of the West of England Highway. =The Great North Road=: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols. =The Norwich Road=: An East Anglian Highway. =The Holyhead Road=: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols. =The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road=: The Great Fenland Highway. =The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road=: Sport and History on an East Anglian Turnpike. =The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road=: The Ready Way to South Wales. Two Vols. =The Brighton Road=: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway. =Cycle Rides Round London.= =A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.= =Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore.= Two Vols. =The Ingoldsby Country=: Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby Legends.” =The Hardy Country=: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels. =The Dorset Coast.= =The South Devon Coast.= [_In the Press._ [Illustration: ENTRANCE TO HASTINGS, BY MINNIS ROCK AND THE OLD LONDON ROAD.] _THE_ _HASTINGS ROAD_ _AND_ _THE “HAPPY SPRINGS OF TUNBRIDGE”_ By CHARLES G. HARPER _ILLUSTRATED BY THE AUTHOR_ [Illustration: Knight on horseback] LONDON CHAPMAN & HALL, LTD. 1906 [_All rights reserved_] PRINTED AND BOUND BY HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD., LONDON AND AYLESBURY. PREFACE [Illustration: Armor] _The Road to Hastings is hilly. Not, perhaps, altogether so hilly as the Dover Road, and certainly never so dusty, nor so Cockneyfied; but the cyclist who explores it finds, or thinks he finds, an amazing amount of rising gradient in proportion to downhill, no matter which way he goes._