England -- Antiquities; England -- Description and travel; Roads -- Great Britain
Once arrived at the summit of Quarry Hangers we found the road to be
quite clear: a neat embankment upon the turf; and when, half a mile
beyond, we came to the cross-roads and the tower, we had reached a
part of the Pilgrim's Way which, though short, had already been
settled and did not need to detain us. It corresponds with the modern
lane, goes just north of the spur known as Arthur's Seat (a spur upon
the southern side of which stands a prehistoric camp), goes up over
the summit of Gravelly Hill (where it is the same as a modern road now
in the making), and at last strikes Godstone Woods just at the place
where a boundary-stone marks the corner of another little patch of
land belonging the War Office.
On the further side of this patch of land, which is a kind of isolated
cape or shoulder in the hills, runs a very long, deep combe, which may
be called Caterham Combe. Up this ran one of the Roman roads from the
south, and up this runs to-day the modern road from Eastbourne to
London. On the steep side of that precipitous ravine, which is a
regular bank of difficult undergrowth (called Upwood Scrubbs), the Old
Road was, as we had rightly expected from our previous study of the
map, very hopelessly lost.
It is a difficult bit. Had the road followed round the outer side of
the hill it would have been much easier to trace, but crossing as it
does to the north of the summit, in order to avoid the re-entrant
angle of Arthur's Seat, it has disappeared. For the damper soil upon
that side, and the absence of a slope into which it could have cut its
impression, has destroyed all evidence of the Old Road. One can follow
it in the form of a rough lane up to the second of the War Office
landmarks. After that it disappears altogether.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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