England -- Antiquities; England -- Description and travel; Roads -- Great Britain
Seale was built at the expense of Waverley, right in the enthusiasm
that followed the first pilgrimages, just after 1200. The names also
of the hamlets have been held to record the pilgrimage. How Seale (a
name found elsewhere just off the Old Road) may do so I cannot tell.
'Shoelands' has been connected with 'Shooling'--almsgiving. Compton
church itself was famous. Even little Puttenham had its pilgrim's
market, and Shalford its great fair, called Becket's fair. We left
Seale then, and at last, two miles on and very weary, we approached
Puttenham, where, for the first time since Alton, something of
exploration awaited us.
There was, indeed, just before reaching Puttenham, a small difficulty,
but it is not of this that I am writing. The Old Road, which had for
miles coincided with the lane, turned a sharp corner, and this, as I
have already remarked, is so much against its nature in every known
part of it, that I could only ascribe it to a cultivated field[22]
which has turned the road. Once tillage had begun, the road would be
led round this field, and the old track, crossing it diagonally, would
disappear under the plough; the original way must have run much as is
suggested at the point marked X upon the map, and the suggestion has
the greater force from the presence of a footpath following this line.
But the point is of little importance and is easily settled. In
Puttenham itself lay the more interesting problem, to elucidate which
this sketch was drawn.
[Illustration]
It arises, just before the church is reached, and affords a very
interesting example of how the Old Road has been lost and may be
recovered.
The present road goes round to the north of the church, outside a high
wall, which there forbids any passage. It turns sharp round a corner,
and then proceeds due south to the village of Compton. When it has
passed through this village, it turns north again, and so reaches St.
Catherine's chapel, near which point it is agreed that the passage of
the Wey was made.
Not only does the modern road take this circuitous course, but the
pilgrims of the later Middle Ages probably followed a direction not
very different. Compton church perhaps attracted them.
It is not the only place in which we shall find their leisurely piety
misleading our research.
The Pilgrimage and the modern road both tend to make us miss the
original track. That track, as a group of independent facts
sufficiently show, passed south of Puttenham church, continuing the
direction which it had hitherto followed from Seale; it went past the
inn miscalled 'The Jolly Farmer,' and so on in a straight line over
Puttenham Heath, where it is still marked by a rough cart-track kind
of way.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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